Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Books

Cool Finds

Every Year for the Next 100 Years, Authors Will Write Books That Won’t Be Read Until 2114

Author Margaret Atwood’s new book became the first to go into the century-long time capsule project

Trending Today

Case Solved on Jack the Ripper? Not So Fast

An author and a scientist claim to have proven the identity of the notorious 19th century killer, but others say the evidence is lacking

Cool Finds

500 Years’ Worth of Book Illustrations Have Just Been Liberated From Print

The internet’s about to get a wealth of illustrations from more than two million books

A Lost Chapter From Roald Dahl’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” Was Just Released

The chapter was removed after being deemed “too wild” and subversive

Cool Finds

You Can Now Riffle Through the Same Library Charles Darwin Used Aboard the Beagle

The digital library includes 195,000 pages of text and 5,000 illustrations

Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong (L) and Buzz Aldrin prepare for an EVA training session, watched by Deke Slayton (R) in this undated handout photo courtesy of NASA.

Cool Finds

What Does It Feel Like to Be Told You’ll Be the First Man on the Moon?

A new book describes the conversation when NASA boss Deke Slayton told Neil Armstrong he would lead Apollo 11

William Powell and John Barrymore in the Silent Film Sherlock Holmes, 1922

Trending Today

“Sherlock Holmes” Is Now Officially Off Copyright and Open for Business

What amazing Holmes fan fiction will you create?

New Research

Kids Trust Written Words More Than Spoken Ones

Learning to read seems to make information conveyed in written form seem more authoritative

Cool Finds

How to Actually Remember What You Read: Print a Newspaper of Internet Articles

Now instead of just saving online articles to read later, you can create your own newspaper

New Research

Kids And Young Adults Don’t Read Books for Fun — They’ve Got Smartphones

Three times as many kids as in the 1980s just don’t read books

A page from Traité des couleurs servant à la peinture à l’eau

Cool Finds

This 300 Year Old Book Is a Guide to Every Paint Color Imaginable

Browse through color swatches from the 17th Century

Santa Barbara Church, built in the late 16th century.

Cool Finds

Mompox Does Exist: A Town Captured by Garcia Marquez Isn’t Just a Dream

Once a center of commerce, Mompox is now an isolated city in Colombia

Cool Finds

On These Book Tours, the Author Acts as a Tour Guide

Authors are literally bringing their readers along for the journey, by leading tours of places their books are set

Monument to Cervantes in Madrid

Cool Finds

Spain Begins to Search for Cervantes’ Bones

Experts use ground-penetrating radar to search for the author’s bones

Voynich Manuscript

Cool Finds

Is One of the Weirdest Books on the Planet Actually a Hoax?

This small book has puzzled scholars for decades and remains a mystery

New Research

Kids Get Confused by Anthropomorphized Animals in Storybooks

This doesn’t mean we should stop reading them those books, however

The protagonist, Tris (Shailene Woodley), and her friend Christina (Zoë Kravitz) jump from a train running through post-apocalyptic Chicago in a scene from the film Divergent.

We Asked Four Teenagers to Explain “Divergent” to Old People

The first movie in the dystopian young adult book trilogy comes out this weekend. Get ready

Cool Finds

These Apps Could Triple Your Reading Speed

They show you words one-by-one, at incredible speeds—up to 1,000 words per minute

 Anne Frank at Merwedeplein in Amsterdam

Trending Today

After Tokyo Libraries’ Anne Frank Books Were Defaced, Israel Offered to Replace Them

At least 300 books about the young Jewish girl who was killed in the Holocaust, including her famous diary, were vandalized in Tokyo libraries.

Cool Finds

A Team of Developers Wants to Print Out Wikipedia—All 1,000 Books Of It

A crowdfunding campaign seeks to make a print copy of the online encyclopedia

Page 63 of 86