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Books

Tucked inside the campus of Indiana University, the Lilly Library is your one-stop shop for rare cultural treasures

See the Gutenberg Bible, 32,000 3D Mechanical Puzzles and a Lock of Edgar Allen Poe’s Hair at This Rare Library

Curiosity is a credential at Indiana University Library’s Lilly Library

The library's current location isn't where Hamilton and Burr read books, but the membership library still owns books that they checked out.

Cool Finds

This Library Has Books Checked Out by Hamilton and Burr

The New York Society Library was wide enough for both men

The Consuegra Windmills.

Relive ‘Don Quixote’ With a Trip Through Miguel de Cervantes’ Spain

Tilt at windmills for the 400th anniversary of the author’s death

Hemingway made this airy estate his Cuban home away from home—and wrote some of his most famous novels here.

Cool Finds

As U.S.-Cuba Relations Warm, This Long-Dead Author Benefits

A new conservation facility is on its way to Hemingway’s home near Havana

The Rolling Stones performing live at Summerfest, Milwaukee, on 23 June 2015

For Rolling Stones Fans, This Book Is a Dream Come True

Journalist and author Rich Cohen first covered the Stones on tour in the 90s. Now he revisits that trip and the band’s epic history

Tolkien relied on maps to write his books—and cared a lot about how his fans saw Middle-earth.

Cool Finds

One Day Only: A Chance to View One Map to Rule Them All

A rare Tolkien-annotated map goes on display June 23

Robot librarians might one day help human librarians track down misplaced books.

Cool Finds

This Robot Librarian Locates Haphazardly Placed Books

It’s the next best thing since the Dewey Decimal System

Andrew Jackson's official White House portrait by Ralph E.W. Earl.

What the Politics of Andrew Jackson’s Era Can Tell Us About Today

NPR correspondent Steve Inskeep speaks about his book Jacksonland and what it says about America’s democratic tradition

Cool Finds

X-Rays Reveal “Hidden Library” on the Spines of Early Books

Researchers are uncovering fragments of medieval texts used in early book binding

Leslie Odom Jr. as Aaron Burr in "Hamilton"

Before There Was “Hamilton,” There Was “Burr”

Although Gore Vidal’s book never became a hit on Broadway, the novel helped create the public personae of Alexander Hamilton’s nemesis

Is the Internet an Enormous Work of Realist Art?

Journalist Virginia Heffernan makes a compelling case that it is in a new book

A sketch of a Lycaeides melissa samuelis butterfly.

Art Meets Science

Vladimir Nabokov’s Butterfly Drawings Take Flight in This New Book

A little-known fact: The author of “Lolita” was also an avid lepidopterist

Cool Finds

These Are America’s Most Well-Read Cities

Did your bookish burg make Amazon.com’s list?

Sarah Josepha Hale was the 19th century's answer to Oprah.

Cool Finds

Five Fascinating Details About the Media Mogul Who May Have Written ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’

Everywhere that Sarah Josepha Hale went, success was sure to go

Sanora Babb with unidentified migrant workers

The Forgotten Dust Bowl Novel That Rivaled “The Grapes of Wrath”

Sanora Babb wrote about a family devastated by the Dust Bowl, but she lost her shot at stardom when John Steinbeck beat her to the punch

In his book The Gene: An Intimate History, Siddhartha Mukherjee discusses family, cancer, and the meaning of genetic normalcy.

Siddhartha Mukherjee Follows Up Biography of Cancer With “An Intimate History” of Genetics

The Pulitzer Prize winner calls his latest not a sequel, but a prequel to his bestseller

Mary Reynolds sits in a moss-covered pod designed by the West Cork artist Peter Little.

The Unlikely, Charming Designer Who Is Changing the Face of Gardening

With weeds, critters and Celtic symbols, Mary Reynolds is transforming what it means to garden

In the tranquility of old Vienna, Stefan Zweig writes, one could never “dream how dangerous man can be.” This 1901 photograph shows a city market.

Austria

The Unhurried World of Pre-War Vienna

Author Stefan Zweig, who inspired Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, recalls Austria at the dawn of the 20th century

A set of the volumes published by 2010 of the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae

Cool Finds

This Latin Thesaurus Has Been in Progress Since 1894

Scholars are still working on the letter “N”

If Grit Breeds Success, How Can I Get Grittier?

University of Pennsylvania psychologist Angela Duckworth talks about her new book and the importance of the personal quality

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