Books
A Botanical Wonderland Resides in the World of Rare and Unusual Books
The Smithsonian’s librarian and antiquarian Leslie Overstreet time travels, sharing centuries of horticultural splendors
The Literary Salon That Made Ayn Rand Famous
Seventy-five years after the publishing of ‘The Fountainhead’, a look back at the public intellectuals who disseminated her Objectivist philosophy
How Darwin’s Theory of Evolution Evolved
A new Smithsonian Book highlights firsthand accounts, diaries, letters and notebooks from aboard the <i>HMS Beagle</i>
How "Young Adult" Fiction Blossomed With Teenage Culture in America
In the '60s and '70s, books like <em>The Outsiders</em> and <em>The Chocolate War</em> told stories that dealt with complex emotions and social realities
Zora Neale Hurston's 'Barracoon' Tells the Story of the Slave Trade's Last Survivor
Published eight decades after it was written, the new book offers a first-hand account of a Middle Passage journey
Scholar Finds New Isaac Bashevis Singer Story
“The Boarder,” which is published for the first time in the <i>New Yorker</i>, was discovered while going through the prominent writer’s vast archives
One of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Earliest Middle-Earth Stories Will Be Published as a Novel
The author wanted to transform 'The Fall of Gondolin' into a book, but never finished the text before his death
How British Gun Manufacturers Changed the Industrial World Lock, Stock and Barrel
In ‘Empire of Guns,’ historian Priya Satia explores the microcosm of firearm manufacturing through an unlikely subject—a Quaker family
The First Novel for Children Taught Girls the Power of Reading
Nearly three centuries before heroines like Katniss and Meg Murray, Sarah Fielding published a book on the values of female education
‘Our Bodies, Ourselves,’ the Revolutionary Feminist Health Book, Will No Longer Print New Editions
In the 1970s, the book promoted nonjudgemental discussions about women’s sexual and reproductive health
How a Legendary Storm Chaser Changed the Face of Tornado Science
In 2013, Tim Samaras died in one of the epic storms he'd spent decades chasing. A new book chronicles his harrowing last days
How Children's Books Reveal Our Evolving Relationship With Whales
Storybooks feature a fair amount of factual errors—and those errors can be revealing
What Happened When a Southern Airways Flight 242 Crashed in Sadie Burkhalter’s Front Yard
Her home became a makeshift hospital when she looked out her front door to a fiery inferno
Investigators on Lookout for 314 Items Stolen From Carnegie Library’s Rare Books Room
A first edition of Isaac Newton’s “Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica” was among the items taken
What Frankenstein Can Still Teach Us 200 Years Later
An innovative annotated edition of the novel shows how the Mary Shelley classic has many lessons about the danger of unchecked innovation
Daydream About Summer With These Color-Drenched Photos of the Great American Fair
Photographer Pamela Littky set off across the United States to discover why these timeless summer festivals have such staying power
The 19th-Century “Golden Hours” Convention Brought Young Readers Together to Meet Their Literary Heroes
The dime novels and story papers entertained boys and launched a popular culture we still consume today
Winnie-the-Pooh Returns to the Big Screen in a New Teaser Trailer
A live-action film of the iconic tubby little cubby all stuffed with fluff hits theaters this summer
One Man's Search to Find the Families of the "Deportees" in the Famous Woody Guthrie Song
Seventy years after the 1948 crash, Tim Hernandez is bringing new recognition to the 28 unidentified "braceros" who died when the plane blew up
‘Frankenstein’ Manuscript Shows the Evolution of Mary Shelley’s Monster
A British publisher is releasing 1,000 facsimiles of the two notebooks in which Shelly scrawled her iconic novel
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