Welcome to The Librarian is in the New York Public Library's podcast about books, culture, and what to read next. I'm Frank. And I'm Glenn.

And later we will be joined by Rina Glazer, who she works at a nonprofit in D.C. called the Pro Bono Institute.

And she's a podcast host, and she creates these great reading lists for people who want to learn more about pro bono work.

And they do, like, a summer reading thing. And also, she is my cousin.

Nepotism. Is she just, are her books all about law and legalities?

No, well, so the, well, you know what?

Let's let her tell us. Yeah, all right. The summer reading books are not, but yeah. Okay. Yeah, I'll find out more later. Yes, you will. I have more sex books. Great. But then I will move on to other issues of humanity. Okay. It just happens to be. but it's actually a fun, well-written, but it's a biography. It's, it's called Mary Aster's Purple Diary, the Great American Sex Scandal of 1936. So now you're into

like historical stuff. By Edward Sorrell. And it is really, it's catalogued in the library as a biography of Mary Aster.

And it's by a very famous political cartoonist, Edward Sorrell, who did cartoons for very

left-wing liberal magazines in the 60s, came to fame in that period of time.

And he, this book is illustrated with his

sort of jangly, you know, character, character, characteristic drawings. And what's interesting,

he also interweaves in the story of Marriester and this great American sex scandal, his own life as a cartoonist

and a bit of his personal life.

But how he also came to discover this great American sex scandal.

In the 60s, he was living in like a railroad flat in New York, and he was digging up the

linoleum.

And underneath the linoleum were all these newspapers sort of like as a you know a

base to put the previous tenants to put the linoleum on and as he was digging up the linoleum

he noticed the headlines of these newspapers which dated from 1936 and they were all about

this actress named mary astor and this this scandal that she was embroiled in.

And he stopped digging into the linoleum

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