LIBERTY ARRIVES!

Lady Liberty’s arrival almost didn’t happen.

Intended as a 100th-birthday gift from France, the statue was the brainchild of a French judge who envisioned a symbol of friendship between the two nations and hired sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi to create it. After choosing its New York Harbor site, he fashioned numerous, ever larger models and chose copper for its light weight. Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel devised an “iron skeleton” to support Liberty, and then the completed statue was exhibited in Paris; parts of it had already been shown in the States. A pedestal was designed—with no funds to build it. Nonetheless, Bartholdi had the statue’s pieces shipped in crates to America nine years after the centennial. Finally, Joseph Pulitzer successfully encouraged Americans to donate; Emma Lazarus’ poem “The New Colossus” was initially written as a fundraiser. In a crowded field, Byrd’s signature narrative and artistic styles elevate this effort. Pages with type set in newspaperlike double columns feature outsized, capitalized headlines and datelines denoting years and places. Spreads include masterly ink-and-watercolor illustrations with details that invite readers to pore over artwork. The author’s awestruck writing, featuring punchy, taut sentences, makes for fast-paced reading, as do dramatic page turns, and it emphasizes the grandeur of the enterprise; fascinating, quirky facts abound. In most illustrations, persons default white.

A book worthy of the statue herself.