Books: Currier & Ives

MR. CURRIER & MR. IVES—Russel Grouse—Doubleday, Doran ($5).

When 13 Manhattan acres were swept by fire (Dec. 16-17, 1835), it was a blow to the city but a boost for Nathaniel Currier. Four days after the fire he was selling lithographed prints of the disaster by the thousand; his years of hard sledding were over. In 1852 Currier was joined by James Merritt Ives, "a young man who yearned to be an artist but who was a bookkeeper because he had no particular desire to starve." Till 1907 the firm of Currier &...