Salon is currently featuring an interview with Jessica Helfand, the author of the new book Scrapbooks: An American History. Ms. Helfand is a graphic designer and critic who teaches at Yale, and she apparently got into some trouble a few years ago, when she wrote an article about her ambivalence regarding scrapbooking that managed to offend both professional designers and scrapbookers.

I'm not a fan of scrapbooking, but I am curious about Ms. Helfand's book. Apparently, it focuses on scrapbooks as artifacts of social history, and features images from the scrapbooks of various famous figures (Zelda Fitzgerald, Lillian Hellman, Anne Sexton, etc.), as well as memorable books by ordinary citizens, including one woman who carefully showcased her blisters!