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Green Eggs and Salmonella?
Beware the hidden hazards lurking within popular children's books
June 2010 |
By Abigail Green
Bonobo Handshake: A Memoir
I once told a friend about bonobos—"they're like chimpanzees," I said, "but they're peaceful and have sex all the time"—and he thought I was making them up. My computer doesn't think they exist either; it suggests alternative spellings including "bonbons" and "bongos." Bonobos are our closest livin...
May 26, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Mark Twain in Love
A chance encounter on a New Orleans dock in 1858 haunted the writer for the rest of his life
May 2010 |
By Ron Powers
Squeezed: The Secrets of the Orange Juice Industry
There are some food truths we hold to be self-evident, and one of them is that orange juice is inherently good. It's packed with vitamin C; it's what your mom tells you to drink when you feel a cold coming on; it looks like sunshine in a glass. Plus, it's delicious.Those things are true, but Alissa...
April 27, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
Sea Pie and Dandy Funk
Usually reading about food makes me hungry, or at least curious to taste what's being described. But I just came across an example of something that I truly have no desire to try: Sea Pie.Working at a magazine often means receiving review copies of new books in the mail, whether I requested them or...
April 26, 2010 |
By Amanda Bensen
Shell Games: Rogues, Smugglers, and the Hunt for Nature's Bounty
When we think of wildlife trafficking, we usually think of stories like this one from the December issue of Smithsonian, which details the exotic creatures being stolen from Ecuador's rainforest. We don't think about the trafficking taking place here in the United States, and we certainly don't thi...
April 06, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Lewis Carroll's Shifting Reputation
Why has popular opinion of the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland undergone such a dramatic reversal?
April 2010 |
By Jenny Woolf
How the Paperback Novel Changed Popular Literature
Classic writers reached the masses when Penguin paperbacks began publishing great novels for the cost of a pack of cigarettes
March 31, 2010 |
By Anne Trubek
How Food Shaped Humanity
A few months ago I wrote about the book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human by Richard Wrangham, which claimed that eating cooked food was the central factor that allowed us to evolve into Homo sapiens. I recently finished another book, An Edible History of Humanity by Tom Standage, that essen...
March 26, 2010 |
By Lisa Bramen
"Fair" Use of our Cells
I've been telling everyone I know that they should read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. (If you haven't read my interview with the book's author, journalist Rebecca Skloot, please do.) This fascinating book details Skloot's search for the source of a laboratory cell line called "HeLa." The c...
February 02, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
What Children's Books Taught Us About Food
I read the other day that Kellogg's is teaming up with an Irish publisher and a bookstore to give away free books to children there who buy Rice Krispies cereal. I'm all for free books, and any effort to get children to read. The books they chose don't appear to have anything to do with food, but i...
January 15, 2010 |
By Lisa Bramen
Science Books for Kids
For weeks, Smithsonian editor Kathleen Burke has been sifting through piles of kids' books to put together her annual list of notable books for children, now online. I dove in behind her to pull out some of the wonderful science books that I would have loved to have read when I was young:Almost Ast...
December 21, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Smithsonian Notable Books for Children 2009
Our annual list of children's books highlights the most fascinating titles published in the past year
December 17, 2009 |
By Kathleen Burke
Cooking With My Great-Grandmother
I never knew my maternal great-grandmother, Grace. She lived in Wichita, Kansas, and died long before I was born. But I was recently given the opportunity to cook with her, in a way.Earlier this year, one of my mother's wedding presents to me was a small, age-mottled hardcover book called "A Little...
December 14, 2009 |
By Amanda Bensen
Drawn From Life
Artist Janice Lowry's illustrated diaries record her history—and ours
November 2009 |
By Owen Edwards
Historical Laughter
Those who don't have power tend to make fun of those who do. But what happens when the power shifts?
November 2009 |
By Lance Morrow
Frank Bruni on Being "Born Round"
Frank Bruni, who recently stepped down from what is quite possibly the world's best job---the New York Times' restaurant critic---was in town Tuesday night to discuss his new memoir, "Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater."And as if he didn't already provide enough star power to pack...
October 01, 2009 |
By Amanda Bensen
The Flap Over Foie Gras
Some people consider foie gras, the fattened liver of a duck or goose, one of the finest gourmet pleasures available. Others consider it the product of intolerable animal cruelty because of the way it's made—by force-feeding the bird through a tube until its liver grows to several times its natural...
September 08, 2009 |
By Lisa Bramen
The Curse of the Labrador Duck
You have never seen a live Labrador Duck (Camptorhynchus labradorius); the species went extinct in the late 1800s. The rather plain-looking bird isn't found on display in many museums, and other extinct birds like auks and moas get more attention, all of which might explain why I had never heard of...
September 08, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
