Rescuing History From the Trash Heap

While walking up Central Park West around 108th Street on my way home one Sunday afternoon, I found a huge coffee table book sitting atop some trash in a street corner trash can. On the cover, in large letters, was the title: The Story of America As Reported By Its Newspapers From 1690 to 1965.
I flipped through the pages and saw reproductions of front pages from such papers as the San Francisco Examiner, the Atlanta Constitution, the New York Times, and newspapers I'd never heard of like the Wheeling Intelligencer in West Virginia, chronicling famous events in American history.
Being a staunch newspaper buff (even in these times of dwindling newspapers and out of work journalists) rescuing that book from the trash heap was for me a no-brainer. Looking at those front pages with huge headlines like the 1944 one that announced ROOSEVELT WINS REELECTION reminded me of some bubble gum cards I once owned as a kid. On one side was an artist's drawing of some historical event like the assassination of Gandhi or the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 and the reverse side, the actual front page of an American newspaper about that event. I wish I still had those cards. They were a big reason I came to love history.