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In our efforts to increase and diffuse knowledge, we highly recommend these titles this year.

The Best Books of 2024

Whether you're doing some holiday shopping or looking for your own next read, consider our thoughtfully curated lists.

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The Ten Best Books About Travel of 2024

These top titles of the year whisk readers away on adventures and remind us of the many wonders in this world

The plant-based egg substitutes available today are less than perfect. Food scientists are working hard to improve them — and, maybe, make them better tasting and more nutritious than the real thing.

Scientists Are Trying to Crack the Recipe for the Perfect Plant-Based Eggs

With new ingredients and processes, the next generation of substitutes will be not just more egg-like, but potentially more nutritious

Smithsonian's picks for the best history books of 2024 include The Barn, Eden Undone and The Wide Wide Sea.

The Ten Best History Books of 2024

Our favorite titles of the year resurrect forgotten histories and examine how the United States ended up where it is today

Smithsonian's picks for the best books about food of 2024 include McAtlas, A Call to Farms, Slow Noodles and more.

The Ten Best Books About Food of 2024

Travel to the American South, Vietnam and beyond with this year’s best cookbooks, memoirs and historic deep dives

Today’s traditional Thanksgiving dinner includes turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes. However, the very first Thanksgiving most likely included wildfowl, corn, porridge and venison.

What Food Was Served at the First Thanksgiving in 1621?

Turkey may have been part of the holiday meal, along with venison, shellfish and corn, but pies and potatoes were decidedly not on the menu

Queen Victoria at the Drury Lane Theatre, Edmund Thomas Parris, 1837

How an Engraving of Queen Victoria Ushered in the Era of the Bouquet Holder in England

The monarch set fashion trends during her time, and the flower holder became a sought-after accessory in Victorian society

Iznik tile, 16th  to 17th century, Syria or Turkey.
 

An Astonishing, Rarely Seen Islamic Art Collection Goes on Display

At the oldest public art museum in the United States, miniatures, glassware and other intricately created works transport visitors around the world

Song-sharking companies sometimes began by offering free consultations for everyday poets—as in this 1921 advertisement in Film Fun magazine.

A Curious Industry Once Gave Anyone With a Song in Their Heart a (Long) Shot at Stardom

How the dubious tradition of song-sharking led to a strangely beautiful repository of folk art

The mistletoe plant has white berries, not red like the fake ones have.

How Mistletoe Became a Christmas Kissing Tradition

The thorny origins of the yuletide canoodling ritual

A potato baked in a hay crust at Hisa Franko.

Discover the Fresh and Unexpected Flavors of Slovenia, a Secret European Delight

In the young, tiny nation, inventive chefs are putting their own twists on classic regional dishes, using river trout, berries and other locally sourced delicacies to create some of the hautest cuisine around

The proudly jutting—and sometimes-imperiled—terraces above the cataract that gave the world-famous house its name.

How Fallingwater Gave Frank Lloyd Wright a Second Wind

The architectural wonder re-established the designer as a titan of his generation and shifted the public's view of Modernism from a foreign movement to a part of the American character

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The Feminist Who Inspired the Witches of Oz

The untold story of suffragist Matilda Gage, the woman behind the curtain whose life story captivated her son-in-law L. Frank Baum as he wrote his classic novel

Floating Clouds, Hisako Hibi, oil on canvas, 1944 

Discover the Remarkable Paintings of Three Japanese Americans Whose Life Stories Are Told Through Their Work

A new exhibition spotlights a trio who pushed the boundaries of American art and illustrated the experiences of World War II incarceration

Reflecting on Romare Bearden's art, playwright August Wilson wrote, “What I saw was Black life presented on its own terms, on a grand and epic scale, with all its richness and fullness.”

The Surprising Artwork That Inspired Netflix's 'The Piano Lesson,' a New Movie Based on August Wilson's Award-Winning Play

A Romare Bearden print served as a starting point for the American playwright's 1987 drama, which follows a Black family's struggle to decide the fate of an ancestral heirloom

Quincy Jones at an awards ceremony in 2014

Quincy Jones Was a ‘Musician’s Musician’ Who Was Uniquely Beloved in the Cutthroat Music Industry

A Smithsonian curator reflects back on the artistic legend, a "Renaissance man" with 28 Grammys to his name, who died Sunday at 91 years old

“Cité Mémoire” is a digital multimedia installation illustrating the moments that have shaped Montreal’s last 400 years.

Cities Are Projecting Their History Onto Streets and Buildings After Dark

Pedestrians in Montreal, Grand Rapids and other locations can time-travel thanks to installations that map historical scenes directly onto the cityscapes

A couple visits a cemetery during Day of the Dead, against the backdrop of storm clouds.

Celebrate Day of the Dead With These 15 Scenes of Festivities and Remembrance

These images from the Smithsonian Magazine Photo Contest show how communities in Mexico and beyond mark Día de los Muertos.

Users of the Sortes Astrampsychi chose a specific question from a list of 92. Then, they randomly picked a number between one and ten, which, when added to the number of the chosen question, directed them to one of 1,030 possible answers.

To Divine the Future, the Ancients Relied on These Chance-Based Fortune-Telling Tools

Texts like the "Sortes Astrampsychi" promised insights on clients' love lives, career prospects, financial woes and families

As the story goes, the makers of the first talking board asked the board what they should call it; the name “Ouija” came through.

The Ouija Board Can't Connect Us to Paranormal Forces—but It Can Tell Us a Lot About Psychology, Grief and Uncertainty

The game was born from Americans' obsession with Spiritualism in the 19th century. Since then, it's functioned as a reflection of their deep-seated beliefs and anxieties for more than a century

Photo of the day

Forest floor made of moss, lichen and blueberries. Forest Carpet