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Books

The Skipper got a bite!

Castaway Cuisine, Fictional and Real

How would you survive if stranded on a desert island with only your wits and the resources at hand?

Anthony Bourdain's Medium Raw

Summer Reading List: Seven Tasty New Titles

The common thread among these recent releases is that the best food stories are really about people

Salisbury steak TV dinner

Salisbury Steak: Civil War Health Food

After 30 years of research Dr. Salisbury finally published his ideas, setting off one of the earliest American fad diets

Books for Dads Who Love to Cook (Or Want to Learn)

Our 21st century culture is encouraging men to dispense with old gender roles and crack out the pots and pans

Though admired for his essays, his fiction and revisions of William Strunk's Elements of Style, it is Charlotte's Web that keeps his name before the public, generation after generation.

How E.B. White Wove Charlotte’s Web

A new book explores how the author of the beloved children’s book was inspired by his love for nature and animals

The cover of Doug TenNapel's Tommysaurus Rex.

Pen and Ink Dinosaurs: Tommysaurus Rex

Tyrannosaurus rex is the antithesis of everything a good pet should be. “Literally awful and almost certainly needing a special insurance policy” to keep

Alain Touwaide, a science historian in the botany department at the National Museum of Natural History, has devoted his career to unearthing lost knowledge.

What Secrets Do Ancient Medical Texts Hold?

The Smithsonian’s Alain Touwaide studies ancient books to identify medicines used thousands of years ago

A group of officers in Culpeper, Virginia reading letters from home.

The Civil War

The Essentials: Six Books on the Civil War

These six histories of the Civil War that are must-reads if you want to better understand the conflict

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The Curious World of Zombie Science

Zombies seem to be only growing in popularity, and I’m not talking about the biological kind

An Octopus Vulgaris at the Palma Aquarium in Spain

Fourteen Fun Facts About Squid, Octopuses and Other Cephalopods

The cephalopod world is huger and more fascinating than the limited taste of the restaurant world

By the mid-20th century bookmobiles had become a part of American life, with more than 2,000 plying our inner cities and rural roadways.

Long Overdue, the Bookmobile Is Back

Even in the age of the Kindle and the Nook, the library on wheels can still attract an audience

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