• 6
  A ’70s TV Soundtrack

  Charles Fox set an era of popular television programs to music.

• 12
  A Milestone for VHP

  Library program marks 25 years of preserving the stories of veterans.

• 20
  Picturing War

  A view of military service through the photographs of those who served.

• 
• January / february 2026
  Vol. 15 No. 1
• Mission of the Library of Congress
• The Library’s mission is to engage, inspire and inform Congress and the American people with a universal and enduring source of knowledge and creativity.
• Library of Congress Magazine is issued bimonthly by the Office of Communications of the Library of Congress and distributed free of charge to publicly supported libraries and research institutions, donors, academic libraries, learned societies and allied organizations in the United States. Research institutions and educational organizations in other countries may arrange to receive Library of Congress Magazine on an exchange basis by applying in writing to the Library’s Director for Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington DC 20540-4100. LCM also is available in pdf form at loc.gov/lcm. All other correspondence should be addressed to the Office of Communications, Library of Congress, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington DC 20540-1610.
• news@loc.gov
  loc.gov/lcm
  ISSN 2169-0855 (print)
  ISSN 2169-0863 (online)
• Robert Randolph Newlen
  Acting Librarian of Congress
• William Ryan
  Executive Editor
• Mark Hartsell
  Editor
• Ashley Jones
  Designer
• Shawn Miller
  Photo Editor
• Contributors

  Travis Bickford
  Nathan Cross
  Gwenanne Edwards
  Kaley Harman
  Megan Harris
  Zach Klitzman
  Liza Mundy
  Julie Stoner
  Neely Tucker
  Kerry Ward

Few works in Western classical music achieved the enduring popularity of Handel’s 18th-century oratorio “Messiah” — the thrilling power of its “Hallelujah” chorus has given audiences goosebumps for 283 years and counting. And unlike many works or composers, “Messiah” never went out of fashion, never needed to be “rediscovered.”

Handel’s masterwork, which chronicles the prophecy, birth, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, originally was most associated with Easter.

Over time, especially in the U.S., it became a Christmas tradition, performed in big city concert halls, college auditoriums and small-town churches just down the road. The “Messiah” singalong is a ’tis-the-season programming staple for major performing arts centers and community chorales alike.

The Geography and Map Division’s oldest globe, and one of its rarest, is an armillary sphere created by Caspar Vopel in 1543. The German mathematician and geographer operated a prominent workshop that produced celestial and terrestrial globes, armillary spheres, sundials, quadrants and astrolabes. Nine of his globes are known to exist today, including the exquisite example held by the Library.

The majority of the physical collections are, of course, on paper. But before paper was invented in China and introduced globally, papyrus dominated as the writing surface of the Mediterranean world. Made from a freshwater sedge found in the Egyptian Nile valley, papyrus was used as a writing surface as early as 3000 B.C. The earliest text on papyrus at the Library is from around 2000 B.C., held in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

A recent Library workshop focused on the conservation treatment of papyrus texts from the African and Middle Eastern Division. These texts, which come from Egypt and date from the 7th to 11th centuries A.D., are written primarily in Arabic with a few in Greek and Coptic. They were recovered from a midden in Fustat, an area now part of Cairo.

The Library has many iterations of “Genji” from down the centuries — full copies, in Japanese and in translations, plus summaries, satires and what you might call graphic novel versions from the 17th century. Like the endless reinventions of Western classics, from “The Iliad” to “Romeo and Juliet,” “Genji” holds a central place in Japanese culture, with new works adding to that heft as time goes by.

These characters and hundreds more can be found in the Library of Congress Crime Classics series. Launched in April 2020, the critically acclaimed series features some of the finest American crime writing from the 1860s to the 1960s. Drawn from the Library’s collections, each volume includes the original text, an introduction, author bio, notes, recommendations for further reading and suggested discussion questions from mystery expert Leslie S. Klinger.

This past summer, the Library published the 20th title in the series “Uncle Abner”; the most recent one, “The Cannibal Who Overate,” hit shelves Dec. 9.

He was a rather somber native New Yorker who got busted on a Havana steamer in 1870 with contraband Cuban cigars. The arresting agent spotted something in the 29-year-old, though. Instead of charging him with a crime, he offered Kennoch a badge and a career with the U.S. Secret Service, the agency created in 1865 to combat counterfeiting.

Kennoch took to the gig with gusto, drawing acclaim from his bosses and from newspapers. He traveled undercover, used aliases, staked out sleazy houses, hung out in bars. Tools of his trade included a long thin knife in a leather sleeve (some of his suspects were violent) and a brass loupe to inspect bills.

His Veterans History Project collection consists of photographs and more than 300 wartime letters that he sent home during World War II, along with 370 works of art — sketchbooks, drawings, paintings (some made using shoe polish) and intricately crafted woodcut prints.

Before he was drafted into the Army in 1941, Munro worked as a muralist and commercial artist. After initially training as a medic, he served as a supply clerk for the 58th Medical Battalion, a unit that provided medical care to front-line troops in North Africa, Italy, France and Germany.

Created by Congress in 2000, this growing archive ensures that future generations hear directly from those who lived through war, conflict and military service.

The project includes more than 121,000 collections thanks to volunteers, families and community members across the country. You can help carry it forward, one story at a time.

By age 22, my mother, Mary Janette Holcombe, was overseas during World War II as part of the 15th Evacuation Hospital, a 450-bed mobile tent hospital that received the wounded directly off the battlefield — often while being bombed and shelled themselves. She worked hard but also played hard.

Unfortunately, Mama shared very little of her past with my sister or me. This stunning, rebellious woman with an exquisitely dry Southern sense of humor was a mystery to us … but she left a paper trail.

If something isn’t factual, it can’t be included. If you can’t locate or corroborate a thing, you, the historian, cannot use it. When starting a project, I lie awake excited about the research discoveries ahead. But also anxious: What if this time, I come up empty? Embarking on “Code Girls” — my book about the more than 10,000 American women who broke enemy codes during World War II — I was further haunted by the ponderous declaration of one editor who passed on the book proposal, telling my agent he thought the women codebreakers made for a great story but suspected the historical record would be scanty and the result, as he put it, “thin beer.” I set out to prove him wrong.

Luckily, I had an ally — an army of allies, you could say: the volunteers and staff of the Library of Congress’ Veterans History Project, a lush repository of first-person interviews that includes many recorded accounts from veterans who did the work I was describing.