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Farmer/Writer Kristin Kimball, Author of The Dirty Life
City person moves to the country, takes up farming, can't believe how much work it is, writes a book: a healthy stack of titles along these lines has come out in the last decade or so, as a new wave of back-to-the-landers and locavores has discovered the joys and perils of small-scale agriculture. ...
February 15, 2011 |
By Lisa Bramen
The World's Most Mysterious Manuscript
When book collector Wilfrid M. Voynich acquired several items from a Jesuit college near Rome in 1912, he discovered a manuscript like no other. Now know as the "Voynich manuscript," it had weird writing in some unrecognizable language and biological, botanical and astronomical images that may give...
February 11, 2011 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Happy Birthday, Laura Ingalls Wilder
We were all glad to hear from the Punxsutawney groundhog last week that spring would come soon. It's been a long winter, and colleagues around the office have been trading survival tips around the proverbial water cooler for how to cope when the power goes out. And that's when Laura's name came up....
February 07, 2011 |
By Beth Py-Lieberman
Q&A: Foodscape Artist Carl Warner
I have always been a fast eater, and even as a kid I was not picky. So I never really built log cabins with my carrots or sculpted my mashed potatoes into gravy-spewing volcanoes.With the exception of scrawling smiley faces with his catsup, says Carl Warner, he didn't play much with his food, eithe...
January 21, 2011 |
By Megan Gambino
The Year in Science: A List of Lists
It's the end of the year, so you know what that means—it's time for the parade of "year in review" articles. Start with Smithsonian.com's Top 10 Stories of 2010, which features lots of science, and then move on to these others:* Discover magazine picked the top 100 stories of 2010 (and my brother w...
December 29, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Track Food Trends With Google Books
Google Books, the online digital library that allows you to search inside thousands of books, might be the most useful tool for journalists, fact-checkers and other researchers since the Dewey decimal system. I love my neighborhood library, and I still buy books, but sometimes I just need one quote...
December 27, 2010 |
By Lisa Bramen
Antipasto: A Holiday Tradition
Three years ago, on Thanksgiving morning, I gathered all the ingredients—lettuce, salami, prosciutto, aged provolone cheese, roasted red peppers, black olives, stuffed green olives and marinated mushrooms, eggplant and artichokes—for the coveted antipasto salad.The salad is actually rather simple t...
December 22, 2010 |
By Megan Gambino
Holiday Gift Guide: A Food Book for Everyone On Your List
As Christmas draws closer, have you finished your shopping yet? If not, try turning to your local bookstore to find something for nearly everyone on your list:The Aspiring Home CookRadically Simple: Brilliant Flavors with Breathtaking Ease, by Rozanne Gold. All the recipes in this lovely cookbook a...
December 17, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
Smithsonian’s 2010 Notable Books for Children
In our annual tradition, we present some of the best that children's literature has to offer this year
December 16, 2010 |
By Kathleen Burke
Cooking With the Stars: Celebrity Cookbooks
There was a time when celebrity chefs were rare. When I was growing up, there was Julia Child and...umm...does Famous Amos count?Now celebrity chefdom is easier to achieve than ever. Cordon Bleu training is no longer a prerequisite—a perky (or, in some cases, cranky) personality and a knack for coi...
December 15, 2010 |
By Lisa Bramen
Great Science Books for the Little Ones
How do you raise a miniature scientist? Start with books, of course. Below is a list of my favorite children's science books from the past year (if you're looking for other types of kids' books, Smithsonian.com will have our annual list of notables online later this week):Adventure Beneath the Sea,...
December 13, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
When Zits Meant Food: Learning from Culinary Ephemera
Have you ever eaten zits?Gross, right? But a century ago, the term didn't refer to hormonally-induced epidermal horrors. It was simply a brand of cheese-covered popcorn!According to the new book "Culinary Ephemera: An Illustrated History," by William Woys Weaver, a Philadelphia company called Tasse...
December 02, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
Holiday Gift Guide: New Children's Books About Food
Know a kid who's interested in food—eating, growing, or cooking it—or who you wish would be? With the holidays coming up, one of these food-related children's books could be the perfect gift idea.Unless otherwise noted, all titles were published this year. If I've missed something great, please add...
November 30, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
Nine Science Books I Wish I'd Had Time to Read This Year
This has been a truly excellent year in science books, and I've written about five of them: Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which seems to be on the top of everyone's "Best of 2010" list; Shell Games by Craig Welch, who delved into the hidden world of wildlife trafficking in ...
November 30, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Rare Science Books up for Auction Next Week
Are you having difficulty figuring out what to buy that special someone? Do you have $600,000 to $800,000 on hand? Well, then you can bid on a first edition of Galileo's Sidereus nuncius (Starry Messenger), which is just one lot in next week's auction "Beautiful Evidence: The Library of Edward Tuft...
November 22, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
From Harold and Maude to Harry Potter: Making Fictional Foods Real
One blogger's quest to recreate the ginger pie from the movie Harold and Maude got us thinking about other fictional foods
November 19, 2010 |
By Lisa Bramen
The Anatomy of Renaissance Art
The Renaissance may be best known for its artworks: Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel and “David,” and Da Vinci’s "Mona Lisa" and "Vitruvian Man" have without a doubt shaped the course of art history. But a new exhibit at the National Gallery of Art, “The Body Inside and Out: Anatomical Literature and ...
October 18, 2010 |
By Jess Righthand
Rare Copy of Audubon's Birds of America for Sale
John James Audubon's Birds of America holds the record as the world's most expensive book. Not to buy, but to publish. Audubon had to raise more than $115,000 in the early 1800s ($2 million in today's dollars) for a print run of the multi-volume, large (39 x 26 inches) work that contained 435 hand-...
September 10, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
The Calculus Diaries
Though I was a very good at math in school, I usually found the subject incredibly boring, so much so that I often slept through class (teachers didn't mind as long as I aced the exams). The one exception was a college math course for biologists that gave us real-world problems like figuring out th...
August 31, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
The Unsolved Case of the "Lost Cyclist"
Author David V. Herlihy discusses his book about Frank Lenz's tragic failed attempt to travel the world by bicycle
August 27, 2010 |
By Megan Gambino
