Books

An illustration from the 1820 edition of The Governess, a popular work of children's literature written by Sarah Fielding.

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

The tornado that touched down near El Reno, Oklahoma plowed through the region. The violent winds and subsequent floods injured 155 and killed 20 people, including the first known storm chasers to die in the twister's swirling path.

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

A whale with water gushing out of its blowhole would not be smiling. It would be drowning.

How Children's Books Reveal Our Evolving Relationship With Whales

Storybooks feature a fair amount of factual errors—and those errors can be revealing

The wreckage of a Southern Airways DC-9 sits in the front yard of a home facing the road that the plane attempted an emergency landing on in New Hope, Ga., April 5, 1977. The pilot's attempt to save himself and his passengers occurred after the plane's engines failed during a heavy thunderstorm.

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

Dr. Frankenstein at work in his laboratory

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

Cimarron, Kansas

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

These two covers are emblematic of the popular "Golden Hours" papers

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

Ewan McGregor stars in Christopher Robin.

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

After Audubon's health began to fail, his family completed the project, producing the color plates in installments for about 300 subscribers.

The Fantastic Beasts of John James Audubon's Little-Known Book on Mammals

The American naturalist spent the last years of his life cataloguing America's four-legged creatures

How One Amateur Historian Brought Us the Stories of African-Americans Who Knew Abraham Lincoln

Once John E. Washington started to dig, he found an incredible wealth of untapped knowledge about the 16th president

French philosopher Michael Foucault in a studio during a radio broadcast in Paris, France, on December 16, 1981.

Unfinished Volume of Foucault’s ‘History of Sexuality’ Released in France

Foucault did not want the work to be published posthumously, but his family and heirs decided that the time had come for the book to be released

A decline in women authors and named characters has subtly shaped our understanding of literary history, says study author Ted Underwood.

Women Were Better Represented in Victorian Novels Than Modern Ones

Big data shows that women used to be omnipresent in fiction. Then men got in the way

This copy of David Walker’s “Appeal”, held in the collections of Emory University's Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library, was owned and signed by W.E.B. Du Bois.

The Book That Spooked the South

David Walker’s “Appeal” laid bare the ethical bankruptcy of slavery moreso than any other book of its time

Thomas Jefferson's two-volume personal copy of George Sale's 1734 translation of the Qur'an is now in the collections of the Library of Congress.

Why Thomas Jefferson Owned a Qur’an

Islam in America dates to the founding fathers, says Smithsonian’s religion curator Peter Manseau

This Book Is Bound in Lab-Grown Jellyfish Leather

<i>Clean Meat</i>, a history of cellular agriculture, is the first book with a lab-grown leather cover

British Author Takes Fresh Look at the Black Dahlia Murder

Piu Eatwell's recent true crime book on the case suggests that one-time suspect Leslie Dillon was the killer of Elizabeth Short in the unsolved 1947 murder

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