If you’re in the D.C. area this weekend you may be interested in the Library of Congress’s 2011 National Book Festival, which will feature talks by dozens of authors, including Eric Foner and David McCullough. Along with that news, we’ve also rounded up links this week to an interview with Jack Rakove on why he became a historian, actor Richard Dreyfuss’s Constitution Day talk, the Smithsonian Institution Archives new website, a free Civil War poster resource, and a digitized ledger from the New York Society Library. Finally, hear from MacArthur award winner and AHA member Tiya Miles on a controversial decision by the Cherokee Nation and read a review on the baseball history series The Tenth Inning.
News

•  History at the 2011 National Book Festival
  The 2011 National Book Festival, sponsored annually by the Library of Congress, comes to the National Mall this weekend for two days of book talks with authors. Eric Foner and David McCullough are just two of over a dozen writers of history and biography who will be in attendance at the event.

Video

• Jack Rakove: Why I Became a Historian
  Randall Stephens from the Historical Society Blog interviews Jack Rakove on why he became a historian. The Historical Society Blog is planning to feature more interviews like this as a new series. 
• Richard Dreyfuss on “The Constitutional Convention and the Miracle of Democracy”
  C-SPAN’s American History TV featured Richard Dreyfuss this past Saturday, which was Constitution Day, discussing the creation of the Constitution and its importance today.

Resources

• Smithsonian Institution Archives: New Website
  Smithsonian Institution Archives recently announced the launch of its new website, redesigned in order to offer better access to its collections.
• Civil War Poster–Print and Online
  TeachingHistory.org is offering a free print poster on the Civil War for use by teachers in the classroom. Use it in conjunction with the interactive online version of the poster.
• The New York Society Library Ledger
  With funding from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, The New York Society Library has digitized and transcribed its earliest surviving charging ledger, which documents the borrowing history of its membership from July 1789 to April 1792. 

Insights

• America’s 2nd Largest Indian Tribe Expels Blacks
  MacArthur Fellowship winner Tiya Miles discusses with NPR the Cherokee Nation’s recent decision to strip “citizenship from a majority of African-Americans who descended from slaves of wealthy Cherokee Indians before the Civil War.”
• Film Review: The Tenth Inning
  Teachinghistory.org continues its series of film reviews reprinted from the pages of the Journal of American History with an examination of The Tenth Inning, a two-part series on the history of baseball.

Contributors: Elisabeth Grant, Vernon Horn, and Pillarisetti Sudhir

This post first appeared on AHA Today.