Books

A painting of a bird from the 1633 Manual of Calligraphy and Painting.

The World's Oldest Multicolor Printed Book Was Too Fragile to Read...Until Now

The 1633 book has now been digitized

Players from the University of Sydney and McGill University grapple over the quaffle during the 2014 Quidditch World Cup in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

Muggles, Rejoice: Quidditch is Becoming a Serious Sport

The Harry Potter-inspired game is now played by more than 300 teams around the world

A blue Egyptian water lily, a potential inspiration for flower petals painted on a casket found in Tut's tomb.

How Flowers Changed the World, From Ecosystems to Art Galleries

A new book by entomologist Stephen Buchmann explores the beautiful and sometimes bizarre history of flowering plants

A Bengali edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The beloved children's book by British scholar Charles Lutwidge Dodgson has been translated into every major language and numerous minor ones, including many that are extinct or invented.

The Mad Challenge of Translating "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"

Explore the linguistic tricks used to make Lewis Carroll's puns, parodies and nonsense accessible in hundreds of tongues

What to Expect From Harper Lee’s Long-Lost Second Novel

Controversy still surrounds the release of <i>Go Set a Watchman</i>

Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster’s first book, was published in 1961 and came about accidentally, through procrastination and boredom.

Why Milo's Sunrises Are a Symphony of Color in The Phantom Tollbooth

Author Norton Juster says one boon to his magical writing is that he was born with synesthesia and hears colors

Lee's Maycomb, indelibly evoked in the novel that sells a million copies annually, endures in the small-town reality of Monroeville.

What's Changed, and What Hasn't, in the Town That Inspired 'To Kill a Mockingbird'

Traveling back in time to visit Harper Lee's hometown, the setting of her 1960 masterpiece and the controversial sequel hitting bookstores soon

Melville joked that Dana’s descriptions of Cape Horn “must have been written with an icicle.”

Before Moby-Dick, There Was "Two Years Before the Mast"

This salty memoir by Richard Henry Dana Jr. was one of America's first literary classics

An 1898 portrait of Twain painted by Italian artist Ignace Spiridon, which now hangs in the Mark Twain Library in Redding.

The Library Mark Twain Built

The author helped create a library in the last town he called home—and it's full of great summer reading suggestions

The Most Loved and Hated Novel About World War I

An international bestseller, Erich Maria Remarque's <em>All Quiet on the Western Front</em> was banned and burned in Nazi Germany

Copies of Hitler's Mein Kampf are displayed at a German museum. The controversial manifesto has been banned in Germany since the end of World War II.

Houghton Mifflin Once Sued Another Publisher on Behalf of Hitler and Mein Kampf

Rival versions of the book once vied for American readers

The Independent Bookstore Is Not Dead Yet

Membership in the American Booksellers Association is up

A blood-sucker creeping around on a potential victim's pristine white sheets.

How Our Modern Lives Became Infested With Bed Bugs

After being bitten by the tiny pests, author Brooke Borel set out to learn all she could about her blood-sucking foes

The Mystery of Colorado’s “Book Tosser” Has Been Solved

The litterbug blames Amazon, arthritis for his habit of illegally discarding books

An early draft of the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Personal Writings of Arthur C. Clarke Reveal the Evolution of "2001: A Space Odyssey"

Works donated from the author's archives in Sri Lanka include letters to Kubrick and an early draft of his most famous novel

A stunning, modern wing of the Royal Library of Copenhagen, added in 1999.

The World's Most Interesting (and Accessible) Library Collections

From the Magna Carta to Winnie the Pooh, what you can see at some of the world's great libraries

These Were 2014’s Most Challenged Books

Native Americans, Iran and gay penguins top the American Library Association’s Top Ten List of Frequently Challenged Books

The great Charles Dickens may one day come to the aid of the creators of bad password.

Trouble Remembering Passwords? Charles Dickens May Be Able Help

A programmer has devised a creative “password generation scheme” using <i>A Tale of Two Cities</i>

The Children’s Book That Caused Japan’s Raccoon Problem

When the story of one man’s childhood pet raccoon became a hit in 1970s Japan, it heralded a biological invasion still troubling the country today

It's time for the Romance Novel to get its due as an influential genre in the literary canon.

Why Can’t Romance Novels Get Any Love?

The genre is long overdue to be the focus of serious study from academics

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