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Books

William Dudley Pelley, Silver Shirt leader, pictured as he appeared before Congress.

History of Now

The Screenwriting Mystic Who Wanted to Be the American Führer

William Dudley Pelley and his Silver Shirts were just one of many Nazi-sympathizers operating in the United States in the 1930s

"Slab City: Dispatches from the Last Free Place" is a new book that explores a one-square-mile patch of desert in Imperial County, California, that once served as a military base. Seen here is a sentry box that once guarded Camp Dunlap’s southwest perimeter.

Inside Slab City, a Squatters’ Paradise in Southern California

Architect and author Charlie Hailey and photographer Donovan Wylie capture one of America’s last free places

Interior view of the House of Culture.

Armenia

Photos Document What Remains of a Soviet Atomic City

A new book explores the architectural history of Metsamor, Armenia, once a planned utopia for nuclear power plant workers

A record 105 tons of ivory was burned in Kenya in 2016, destroying tens of millions of dollars in illegal wildlife goods.

Rhino Horn and Tiger Wine: How the Illegal Wildlife Trade Is Growing Bolder

Wildlife author and journalist Rachel Nuwer discusses her new book Poached about one of the world’s fastest-growing contraband industries

A.D. 200-300. A burning river of fire and other flaming torments described in the Apocalypse of Paul shaped medieval Europe’s understanding of damnation—and our own.

What Does Hell Look Like?

A new book imagines how the underworld may appear with these illustrations

Cathleen Naundorf’s signature style celebrates the Grand Palais’ dramatic design and the “sculptural” details of two dresses from Chanel’s 2010 collection.

A Vintage Take on High Fashion Showcases the Beauty of a Stitch in Time

Photographer Cathleen Naundorf mined Chanel’s archives for a majestic new book

The Artist Who Made Coloring Books Cool for Adults Returns With a New Masterpiece

Johanna Basford, whose fanciful, hand-drawn illustrations launched a worldwide craze, is back with flying colors

Now You Can View the Travel Sketchbooks of Françoise Gilot, Artist and Inspiration to Picasso

The sketches were made in the ‘70s and ‘80s, during Gilot’s journeys abroad

A few pages from the recently digitized codex.

Cool Finds

See Leonardo da Vinci’s Genius Yourself in These Newly Digitized Sketches

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has made ultra high-resolution scans of two codices available online

The new book tells the tale of Tuor, a man living in an age where the world is dominated by the dark lord Melko—known in other Tolkien books as Morgoth.

Trending Today

J.R.R. Tolkien’s Final Posthumous Book Is Published

The author tinkered with and rewrote The Fall of Gondolin, one of his first tales of Middle-earth, many times during his career

The NYPL's Insta Novels are available via Instagram.

Fall Down the Rabbit Hole With the New York Public Library’s Instagram Version of Classic Tales

Featured texts include ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,’ ‘The Metamorphosis’ and ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’

The couch on which Freud’s patients lay became identified with psychoanalysis itself. He shipped it to London when he left Vienna.

Secrets of American History

What Drove Sigmund Freud to Write a Scandalous Biography of Woodrow Wilson?

The founder of psychoanalysis collaborated with a junior American diplomat to lambaste the former president

How an Artist Is Rebuilding a Baghdad Library Destroyed During the Iraq War

“168:01,” an installation now on view at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, encourages visitors to donate books to the University of Baghdad

Hemingway photographed in 1956, the year he completed “A Room on the Garden Side.”

Trending Today

New Semi-Autobiographical Hemingway Story Published

“A Room On the Garden Side” was written in 1956 and takes place during the liberation of Paris in 1944

Following Malcolm X's 1965 assassination, the original manuscript and unpublished chapters of his autobiography remained hidden from the public

New York Public Library Acquires Unpublished Chapter of Malcolm X’s Autobiography

The public is just weeks away from being able to view these “lost” works

The Royal Library where the bill was found

The Prince Who Preordered Jane Austen’s First Novel

The future George IV was a big fan of the author, a feeling she half-heartedly reciprocated with a dedication years later

Cover of a propaganda comic book, 1947. During the Cold War, book publishing and popular culture became an ideological battleground.

This Cold War-Era Publishing House Wanted To Share American Values With the World

Funded by the U.S. government, Franklin Publications was viewed as pushing imperialist propaganda

Cool Finds

Oldest Greek Fragment of Homer Discovered on Clay Tablet

The verses come from the ancient city of Olympia and date to the Roman era

“A great deal of slow poisoning is going on in Great Britain,” Birmingham doctor William Hinds wrote in 1857, as widespread coverage of arsenic-related deaths began to turn the public away from the toxin

Arsenic-Laced Books Discovered in University Library

During the Victorian era, the toxin was commonly found hidden in wallpaper, paints and dyes

John Wesley Powell by Edmund Clarence Messer, 1889

The Visionary John Wesley Powell Had a Plan for Developing the West, But Nobody Listened

Powell’s foresight might have prevented the 1930s dust bowl and perhaps, today’s water scarcities

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