Books
- Explore more »
Wicked Bugs (and Spiders and Worms and Other Creepy Crawlies)
Let's face it, we don't like bugs. Sure, they do plenty of good---such as keeping their naughty brethren in check, contributing to the world of medicine, providing key roles in the food webs that are essential to healthy ecosystems---but we can't help but focus on the bad. And so does Amy Stewart i...
May 03, 2011 |
By Sarah Zielinski
What Secrets Do Ancient Medical Texts Hold?
The Smithsonian's Alain Touwaide studies ancient books to identify medicines used thousands of years ago
May 2011 |
By Megan Gambino
The Essentials: Six Books on the Civil War
These six histories of the Civil War that are must-reads if you want to better understand the conflict
April 20, 2011 |
By T.A. Frail
The Curious World of Zombie Science
Zombies seem to be only growing in popularity, and I'm not talking about the biological kind
April 18, 2011 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Pen and Ink Dinosaurs: Dinosaurs: A Celebration
Paleo, Age of Reptiles, Tyrant—this week I've been looking back at comics that tell the stories of dinosaurs in Mesozoic settings (no humans allowed). How dinosaurs have appeared in comics can tell us something about the way images of these creatures have changed and how science trickles into popul...
April 07, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
Pen and Ink Dinosaurs: Tyrant
Comic books about the day-to-day lives of dinosaurs pop up only every once in a while. More often than not, pen and ink dinosaurs threaten to stomp and chomp unlucky humans who cross their paths, and occasionally a dinosaur will make a cameo appearance in one of the more famous comic franchises. By...
April 06, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
Pen and Ink Dinosaurs: Age of Reptiles
Yesterday's post kicked off my look back at dinosaurs that stomped, roared and chomped their way through comics with Jim Lawson's Paleo. Rather than placing dinosaurs in the modern era or sending people back to the Cretaceous, Lawson's stories stood out because he considered dinosaurs in their own ...
April 05, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
Traditional Cookbooks vs. E-Readers, Searches and Apps
Whenever a new cookbook comes into my possession, the first thing I do is sit down, scan through the recipes and use Post-Its to flag the things I might actually take the time to make, paying attention to ingredients and the time required to pull a dish together. It makes for easy referencing, espe...
March 31, 2011 |
By Jesse Rhodes
What Do You Call a Flock of Birds?
Recently, while perusing the shelves of my bird-crazy colleague Laura, I came across "Winged Wonders: A Celebration of Birds in Human History," by Peter Watkins and Jonathan Stockland. The book is full of examples of how birds can be found in art and language, but what particularly intrigued me was...
March 29, 2011 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Fourteen Fun Facts About Squid, Octopuses and Other Cephalopods
Most people are familiar with cephalopods, even if they don't realize it. Those tasty fried calamari, for example, are squid, as are the octopuses you sometimes see on a restaurant menu. But the cephalopod world is huger and more fascinating than the limited taste of the restaurant world, as Wendy ...
March 10, 2011 |
By Sarah Zielinski
How to Make the Pies From Waitress and Other Movie-Inspired Meals
It's that time once again when people do last-minute shopping for their Oscar parties, which leads to the agonizing task of meal planning. For those of you who really want to work the themed party angle, check out Cooking with the Movies: Meals on Reels. The book draws inspiration from 14 films fro...
February 25, 2011 |
By Jesse Rhodes
Long Overdue, the Bookmobile Is Back
Even in the age of the Kindle and the Nook, the library on wheels can still attract an audience
February 23, 2011 |
By Jeff Greenwald
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
