Collections : [Rare Book & Manuscript Library]

Approximately 12,000 letters to Allan Nevins from various correspondents including James Truslow Adams, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Willa Cather, Frances Folsom Cleveland, Van Wyck Brooks, Robert Frost, Newton D. Baker, Archibald MacLeish, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Carl Sandburg, and Henry Wallace; notes and typescripts for Nevins' books including Emergence of Lincoln, The Ordeal of Democracy, Rockefeller, and History and Historians, with notes by editor Ray A. Billington; miscellaneous transcripts, clippings, newspapers, and photographs. Also, autograph letters and manuscripts by presidents, Civil War figures, financiers, politicians, and authors. There are also the Brand Whitlock World War I Diaries and letters to him by such people as Herbert Hoover, Gen. John J. Pershing, and others.

Correspondence, manuscripts, memorabilia, photographs, phonograph and tape recordings, and printed files. Included are Cerf's personal correspondence files, 1929-1945, and the diaries and scrapbooks which he maintained from his school days throughout his active career. The diaries, in date-book format, contain terse notes on Cerf's meetings with authors and friends, on his travels and publishing activities; the scrapbooks contain correspondence and photographs, as well as memorabilia and printed items, and were annotated by Cerf and his wife, Phyllis Fraser Cerf Wagner. Also in the collection are manuscripts and proofs for Cerf's books including "The Laugh's on Me""Treasury of Atrocious Puns""The Sound of Laughter""Stories to Make You Feel Better", and "At Random: the Reminiscences of Bennett Cerf", which was edited by Phyllis Cerf Wagner and Albert Erskine, 1977. The papers also include condolence letters written at the time of Cerf's death, photographs and photo albums,certificates and awards, and miscellaneous printed material, including Random House and Modern Library catalogues. Among the major correspondents are: Truman Capote, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Edna Ferber, Moss Hart, J. Edgar Hoover, Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon B. Johnson, John Lindsay, Joshua Logan, John O'Hara, Jacqueline Onassis, Richard Rodgers, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Gertrude Stein, Adlai Stevenson, Harry Truman, and Robert Penn Warren

Correspondence, manuscripts, lectures, notes, diaries, notebooks, reports, financial records, blueprints, photographs, and printed materials of Y.C. James Yen and the IIRR concerned with the development, sharing, and financing innovative methods of teaching, improving agriculture, health and family planning, and education in impoverished villages. Among the cataloged correspondents are: Pearl Buck, William O. Douglas, Nelson Rockefeller, and DeWitt Clinton.