Portal:Books
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The Books Portal
A book is a written work of substantial length created by one or more authors. They can be distributed in various forms such as printed books, audiobooks, and electronic books (ebooks). Books are broadly classified into fiction, which contains invented narratives or other imaginary content, and non-fiction, which contains content intended as factual truth.
The term may also refer to the physical or electronic object containing such a work. Modern books are typically printed in a codex format, composed of many pages bound together and protected by a cover. Before the wide adoption of the modern printing press, codices were used to create handwritten manuscripts. Older writing media include scrolls and clay tablets.
The book publishing process is the series of steps involved in its creation and dissemination, often undertaken in modern times by a commercial publishing company. The publishing industry has recently seen major changes due to new technologies, including ebooks and audiobooks (recordings of books read aloud). Awareness of the needs of people with print disabilities has led to a rise in accessible publishing formats such as braille printing and large-print editions. Google Books estimated in 2010 that roughly 130 million total unique books have been published.
Books are sold at general retail stores and specialized bookstores, as well as online, and can be borrowed from libraries or public bookcases. The reception of books has led to several social consequences, including censorship.
Books are sometimes contrasted with periodical literature, such as newspapers or magazines, for which new editions are published according to a regular schedule. Some objects broadly described as "books" are left empty for personal use, such as notebooks, diaries, sketchbooks, account books, and autograph books. (Full article...)
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Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.-
The Age of Reason; Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology is a work by English and American political activist Thomas Paine, arguing for the philosophical position of deism. It follows in the tradition of 18th-century British deism, and challenges institutionalized religion and the legitimacy of the Bible. It was published in three parts in 1794, 1795, and 1807.
It was a best-seller in the United States, where it caused a deistic revival. British audiences, fearing increased political radicalism as a result of the French Revolution, received it with more hostility. The Age of Reason presents common deistic arguments; for example, it highlights what Paine saw as corruption of the Christian Church and criticizes its efforts to acquire political power. Paine advocates reason in the place of revelation, leading him to reject miracles and to view the Bible as an ordinary piece of literature, rather than a divinely-inspired text. In The Age of Reason, he promotes natural religion and argues for the existence of a creator god. (Full article...) -
Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution is a book written by Stephen Knight first published in 1976. It proposed a solution to five murders in Victorian London that were blamed on an unidentified serial killer known as "Jack the Ripper".
Knight presented an elaborate conspiracy theory involving the British royal family, freemasonry and the painter Walter Sickert. He concluded that the victims were murdered to cover up a secret marriage between the second-in-line to the throne, Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, and working class girl Annie Elizabeth Crook, and that the killer was physician William Gull, aided by coachman John Netley. There are many facts that contradict Knight's theory, and his main source, Joseph Gorman (also known as Joseph Sickert), later retracted the story and admitted to the press that it was a hoax. (Full article...) -
Expedition to the Barrier Peaks is a 1980 adventure module for the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game written by Gary Gygax. While Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) is typically a fantasy game, the adventure includes elements of science fiction, and thus belongs to the science fantasy genre. It takes place on a downed spaceship; the ship's crew has died of an unspecified disease, but functioning robots and strange creatures still inhabit the ship. The player characters fight monsters and robots, and gather the futuristic weapons and colored access cards that are necessary for advancing the story.
Expedition to the Barrier Peaks was first played at the Origins II convention in 1976, where it was used to introduce Dungeons & Dragons players to the science fiction game Metamorphosis Alpha. In 1980, TSR published the adventure, updated for first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules. The adventure was not updated for later rules systems, but a Wizards.com article did provide a conversion to Future Tech. It included a separate booklet of illustrations, in both color and black and white. The adventure is an old-time favorite of many Dungeons & Dragons fans, including Stephen Colbert. It was ranked the fifth-best Dungeons & Dragons adventure of all time by Dungeon magazine in 2004, and received positive reviews from White Dwarf and The Space Gamer magazines. The other adventures in the S series include S1 Tomb of Horrors, S2 White Plume Mountain, and S4 The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. (Full article...) -
The Playboy is a graphic novel by the Canadian cartoonist Chester Brown, serialized in 1990 in Brown's comic book Yummy Fur and collected in different revised book editions in 1992 and 2013. It deals with Brown's guilt and anxiety over his obsessive masturbation to Playboy Playmate models.
The story begins with Brown's first purchase of an issue of Playboy as a teenager. His obsessive masturbation gives him great guilt and anxiety, and out of fear of being caught he repeatedly rids himself of copies of the magazine, only to retrieve them later. His conflicting emotions follow him into adulthood until he purges them by revealing himself through his comics. The free, organic arrangement of odd-shaped panels of simple, expressive artwork contrasts with Brown's more detailed grid-like pages in his 1980s work, such as Ed the Happy Clown. (Full article...) -
Cover to the first edition of Gods' Man (1929) by American artist Lynd Ward (1905–1985).
Gods' Man is a wordless novel by American artist Lynd Ward (1905–1985) published in 1929 . In 139 captionless woodblock prints, it tells the Faustian story of an artist who signs away his soul for a magic paintbrush. Gods' Man was the first American wordless novel, and is considered a precursor of the graphic novel, whose development it influenced.
Ward first encountered the wordless novel with Frans Masereel's The Sun (1919) while studying art in Germany in 1926. He returned to the United States in 1927 and established a career for himself as an illustrator. He found Otto Nückel's wordless novel Destiny (1926) in New York City in 1929, and it inspired him to create such a work of his own. Gods' Man appeared a week before the Wall Street crash of 1929; it nevertheless enjoyed strong sales and remains the best-selling American wordless novel. Its success inspired other Americans to experiment with the medium, including cartoonist Milt Gross, who parodied Gods' Man in He Done Her Wrong (1930). In the 1970s, Ward's example of wordless novels inspired cartoonists Art Spiegelman and Will Eisner to create their first graphic novels. (Full article...) -
Everything Tastes Better with Bacon: 70 Fabulous Recipes for Every Meal of the Day is a book about cooking with bacon written by author, food commentator and The Oregonian columnist Sara Perry. The book was published in the United States on May 1, 2002, by Chronicle Books, and in a French language edition in 2004 by Les Éditions de l'Homme in Montreal. In it, Perry describes her original concept of recipes combining sugar and bacon. Her book includes recipes for bacon-flavored dishes and desserts.
The book received mainly positive reviews and its recipes were selected for inclusion in The Best American Recipes 2003–2004. The St. Petersburg Times classed it as among the "most interesting and unique cookbooks" published, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette highlighted it in the article "Favorite Cookbooks for 2002" and The Denver Post included it in a list of best cookbooks of 2002. A review in the Toronto Star criticized Perry's lack of creativity in her choice of recipes. Recipes from the work have been featured in related cookbooks. (Full article...) -
Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry like Christmas is the third book of Maya Angelou's seven-volume autobiography series. Set between 1949 and 1955, the book spans Angelou's early twenties. In this volume, Angelou describes her struggles to support her young son, form meaningful relationships, and forge a successful career in the entertainment world. The work's 1976 publication was the first time an African-American woman had expanded her life story into a third volume. Scholar Dolly McPherson calls the book "a graphic portrait of the adult self in bloom" and critic Lyman B. Hagen calls it "a journey of discovery and rebirth".
In Singin' and Swingin, Angelou examines many of the same subjects and themes in her previous autobiographies including travel, music, race, conflict, and motherhood. Angelou depicts the conflict she felt as a single mother, despite her success as a performer as she travels Europe with the musical Porgy and Bess. Her depictions of her travels, which take up 40 percent of the book, have roots in the African-American slave narrative. Angelou uses music and musical concepts throughout Singin' and Swingin'; McPherson calls it Angelou's "praisesong" to Porgy and Bess. Angelou's stereotypes about race and race relations are challenged as she interacts more with people of different races. During the course of this narrative, she changes her name from Marguerite Johnson to Maya Angelou for professional reasons. Her young son changes his name as well, from Clyde to Guy, and their relationship is strengthened as the book ends. (Full article...) -
The Bread-Winners: A Social Study is an 1883 novel by John Hay, former secretary to Abraham Lincoln who in 1898 became U.S. Secretary of State. The book takes an anti-organized labor stance, and when published anonymously sold well and provoked considerable public interest in determining who the author was.
The plot of the book revolves around former army captain Arthur Farnham, a wealthy resident of Buffland (an analog of Cleveland). He organizes Civil War veterans to keep the peace when the Bread-winners, a group of lazy and malcontented workers, call a violent general strike. He is sought in marriage by the ambitious Maud Matchin, daughter of a carpenter, but instead weds a woman of his own class. (Full article...) -
True at First Light is a book by American writer Ernest Hemingway about his 1953–54 safari in Kenya with his fourth wife Mary. It was released posthumously in his centennial year in 1999. In the book, which blends memoir and fiction, Hemingway explores conflict within a marriage, the conflict between the European and native cultures in Africa, and the fear a writer feels when his work becomes impossible. True at First Light includes descriptions of his earlier friendships with other writers and digressive ruminations on the nature of writing.
Hemingway began writing the book after he and his wife were involved in two plane crashes in the African bush in a two-day period in January 1954. He spent much of the next two years in Havana, recuperating and writing the manuscript of what he called "the Africa book", which remained unfinished at the time of his suicide in July 1961. Hemingway's son Patrick edited the work to half its original length to strengthen the underlying storyline and emphasize the fictional aspects. (Full article...) -
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is a 1974 nonfiction narrative book by American author Annie Dillard. Told from a first-person point of view, the book details Dillard's explorations near her home, and various contemplations on nature and life. The title refers to Tinker Creek, which is outside Roanoke in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains. Dillard began Pilgrim in the spring of 1973, using her personal journals as inspiration. Separated into four sections that signify each of the seasons, the narrative takes place over the period of one year.
The book records the narrator's thoughts on solitude, writing, and religion, as well as scientific observations on the flora and fauna she encounters. It touches on themes of faith, nature, and awareness, and is also noted for its study of theodicy and the cruelty of the natural world. The author has described it as a "book of theology", and she rejects the label of nature writer. Dillard considers the story a "single sustained nonfiction narrative", although several chapters have been anthologized separately in magazines and other publications. The book is analogous in design and genre to Henry David Thoreau's Walden (1854), the subject of Dillard's master's thesis at Hollins College. Critics often compare Dillard to authors from the Transcendentalist movement. (Full article...) -
The Halo Graphic Novel is a 2006 graphic novel anthology published by Marvel Comics in partnership with Bungie, set in the universe of the science fiction franchise Halo. The Halo Graphic Novel was the series' first entry into the sequential art medium, and features aspects of the Halo universe which until then had not been discussed or seen in any medium.
The majority of the book is divided into four short stories by different writers and artists from the computer game and comic industries. Each story focuses on different aspects of the Halo universe, revealing stories that are tangential to the main plot of the game. Apart from the stories, the book also contains an extensive art gallery compiled from contributions from Bungie, Marvel and independent sources. (Full article...) -
Ravenloft is an adventure module for the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) fantasy role-playing game. The American game publishing company TSR, Inc. released it as a standalone adventure booklet in 1983 for use with the first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game. It was written by Tracy and Laura Hickman, and includes art by Clyde Caldwell with maps by David Sutherland III. The plot of Ravenloft focuses on the villain Strahd von Zarovich, a vampire who pines for his lost love. Various story elements, including Strahd's motivation and the locations of magical weapons, are randomly determined by drawing cards. The player characters attempt to defeat Strahd and, if successful, the adventure ends.
The Hickmans began work on Ravenloft in the late 1970s, intent on creating a frightening portrait of a vampire in a setting that combined Gothic horror with the D&D game system. They play-tested the adventure with a group of players each Halloween for five years before it was published. Strahd has since appeared in a number of D&D accessories and novels. The module has inspired numerous revisions and adaptations, including a campaign setting of the same name and a sequel. In 1999, on the 25th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons, two commemorative versions of Ravenloft were released. (Full article...) -
Gather Together in My Name is a 1974 memoir by American writer and poet Maya Angelou. It is the second book in Angelou's series of seven autobiographies. Written three years after the publication of and beginning immediately following the events described in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, it follows Angelou, called Rita, from the ages of 17 to 19. The title is taken from the Bible, but also conveys how one Black female lived in the white-dominated society of the U.S. following World War II.
Angelou expands upon many themes that she started discussing in her first autobiography, including motherhood and family, racism, identity, education and literacy. Rita becomes closer to her mother in this book, and goes through a variety of jobs and relationships as she tries to provide for her young son and find her place in the world. Angelou continues to discuss racism in Gather Together, but moves from speaking for all Black women to describing how one young woman dealt with it. The book exhibits the narcissism of young people, but describes how Rita discovers her identity. Like many of Angelou's autobiographies, Gather Together is concerned with Angelou's on-going self-education. (Full article...) -
A Voyage Round the World (complete title A Voyage Round the World in His Britannic Majesty's Sloop, Resolution, Commanded by Capt. James Cook, During the Years 1772, 3, 4, and 5) is Georg Forster's report on the second voyage of the British explorer James Cook. During the preparations for Cook's voyage, the expedition's naturalist Joseph Banks had withdrawn his participation, and Georg's father, Johann Reinhold Forster, had taken his place at very short notice, with his seventeen-year-old son as his assistant. They sailed on HMS Resolution with Cook, accompanied by HMS Adventure under Tobias Furneaux. On the voyage, they circumnavigated the world, crossed the Antarctic Circle and sailed as far south as 71° 10′, discovered several Pacific islands, encountered diverse cultures and described many species of plants and animals.
When they returned to England after more than three years, disagreement about the publication rights for a narrative of the journey arose. After plans agreed with John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, the First Lord of the Admiralty, to publish a joint work with contributions by both Cook and Reinhold Forster had fallen through, Georg, who was not bound by any agreement with the Admiralty, began writing Voyage in July 1776. He published on 17 March 1777, six weeks before Cook's A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World appeared. While 63 copper engravings, paid for by the Admiralty, illustrated Cook's account, only a chart of the Southern Hemisphere showing the expedition ships' courses illustrated Forster's Voyage, which was sold for the same price. (Full article...) -
A Journey is a memoir by Tony Blair of his tenure as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Published in the UK on 1 September 2010, it covers events from when he became leader of the Labour Party in 1994 and transformed it into "New Labour", holding power for a party record three successive terms, to his resignation and replacement as prime minister by his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown. Blair donated his £4.6-million advance, and all subsequent royalties, to the British Armed Forces charity the Royal British Legion. It became the fastest-selling autobiography of all time at the bookstore chain Waterstones. Promotional events were marked by anti-war protests.
Two of the book's major topics are the strains in Blair's relationship with Brown after Blair allegedly reneged on the pair's 1994 agreement to step down as prime minister much earlier, and his controversial decision to participate in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Blair discusses Labour's future following the 2010 general election, his relations with the Royal Family, and how he came to respect President of the United States George W. Bush. Reviews were mixed; some criticised Blair's writing style, but others called it candid. (Full article...)
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Selected picture
Credit: Leonardo da Vinci
A page from Leonardo Leonardo da Vinci's journal showing his study of a foetus in the womb (c.1510) Royal Library, Windsor Castle.
More Did you know (auto generated)
- ... that former adult actress Suzumi Suzuki's book Gifted was nominated for the Akutagawa Prize in 2022?
- ... that The Oceanic Languages is so ubiquitous among scholars of the Oceanic languages that it is known simply as "the blue book"?
- ... that Tim Birkhead wrote a book about bird's eggs after watching a presenter spin an egg on television?
- ... that scholars have described the 1946 book The Failure of Technology as a precursor to the environmental movement?
- ... that the subjects of Robert M. Edsel's book The Monuments Men returned more than five million objects stolen by the Nazis during World War II?
- ... that a book about a Finnish Santa figure sold particularly well in Germany and Japan?
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The Demands of Liberal Education is a 1999 political philosophy book by Meira Levinson that establishes a liberal political theory of children's education that fits the mutual needs of the state and its diverse citizenry. She writes that the intent of a liberal education—an education that follows from a liberal society's values—is to maximize the autonomy of individual children through increasing their capacity for liberty. Levinson argues autonomy as a right to children. The book, published by Oxford University Press, aims to address a lacuna between educational policy and liberal political theory.
Levinson advocates for a weak perfectionist state that can promote thick autonomy while accepting citizens who do not agree. She argues for public schools "common" to all citizens and "detached" from individual citizen or community values, and argues for a constitutional mandate to this end. (Full article...) -
On Eliminating Dogmatism and Formalism and Establishing Juche in Ideological Work (Korean: 사상사업에서 교조주의와 형식주의를 퇴치하고 주체를 확립할 데 대하여), also known as the "Juche speech", was a speech delivered on 28 December 1955 by Kim Il Sung. The address mentioned his Juche ideology by name for the first time. It is considered one of Kim's most important works and a "watershed moment" in North Korean history. Views differ if the speech used the term juche to launch an ideology or more conservatively to assert that the Korean people were the subject of the revolution. The former believes that Juche, as a distinct ideology, was developed by Hwang Jang-yop on his re-discovery of the speech. The speech was published for the first time in 1960 and in many subsequent, heavily edited revisions since.
Details on when Kim Il Sung delivered the speech and where remain unclear or have been backdated. The speech was delivered against a backdrop of factional strife within the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) in reaction to the Korean War, de-Stalinization in the Soviet Union, the Soviet–Yugoslav thaw, and economic reconstruction. Kim criticizes Soviet Korean propaganda workers of "dogmatism" and "formalism" by citing Soviet practices they had naively adopted to Korean conditions. Most of the speech is not about Juche, but about ways to win South Koreans' hearts and minds through propaganda. (Full article...) -
The Path of Modern Yoga: The History of an Embodied Spiritual Practice is a 2016 history of the modern practice of postural yoga by the yoga scholar Elliott Goldberg. It focuses in detail on eleven pioneering figures of the transformation of yoga in the 20th century, including Yogendra, Kuvalayananda, Pant Pratinidhi, Krishnamacharya, B. K. S. Iyengar and Indra Devi.
The book's thesis is that modern yoga progressed in three stages from its pre-1900 state to what is observed today. Before 1900, haṭha yoga was the despised religious practice of a small minority on the fringes of Indian society. In the first stage, pioneers such as Yogendra and Kuvalayananda treated yoga as the subject of medical inquiry, making it both secular and socially acceptable. Next, advocates of exercise brought standing poses from gymnastics into yoga: Pant Pratinidhi advocated Surya Namaskar (the sun salutation), a jumped sequence of poses, as daily exercise, while Krishnamacharya incorporated those poses and others as standing asanas in his yoga, along with the jumped transitions (vinyasas) between them, making yoga dynamic. Finally, two pupils of Krishnamacharya, Iyengar and Indra Devi, resacralised yoga, connecting the practice of asanas to ancient yoga tradition, and helped to spread yoga across the Western world. (Full article...) -
The Zuo Zhuan (Chinese: 左傳; Wade–Giles: Tso Chuan; [tswò ʈʂwân]), often translated as The Zuo Tradition or as The Commentary of Zuo, is an ancient Chinese narrative history traditionally regarded as a commentary on the ancient Chinese chronicle Spring and Autumn Annals. It comprises 30 chapters that cover the period from 722 to 468 BC, and it focuses mainly on the Chinese political, diplomatic, and military affairs from that era.
For many centuries, the Zuo Zhuan was the primary text through which educated Chinese learned their ancient history. The Zuo Zhuan does not simply explain the wording of the Spring and Autumn Annals, but rather expounds upon its historical background with rich and lively accounts of the history and culture of the Spring and Autumn period (771–476 BC). The Zuo Zhuan is the source of more Chinese sayings and idioms than any other classical work, and its concise, flowing style served as a paragon of elegant Classical Chinese. Its tendency toward third-person narration and portraying characters through direct speech and action became hallmarks of Chinese narrative in general, and its style was imitated by historians, storytellers, and ancient-style prose masters for over 2000 years of subsequent Chinese history. (Full article...) -
A scene from the Kunsthistorisches Museum’s Freydal Illuminated manuscript: Freydal jousts with Veit von Wolkenstein (fol.133}
Freydal is an uncompleted illustrated prose narrative commissioned by the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I in the early 16th century. It was intended to be a romantic allegorical account of Maximilian's own participation in a series of jousting tournaments in the guise of the tale's eponymous hero, Freydal. In the story, Freydal takes part in the tournaments to prove that he is worthy to marry a princess, who is a fictionalised representation of Maximilian's late wife, Mary of Burgundy.
The text was never completed, although a manuscript draft is held by the Austrian National Library. Over 200 high quality drawings were created to be used as planning sketches, 203 of which are held in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., with a small number of others preserved in the British Museum and the Vatican Library. Based on these drawings, 256 miniature paintings were created by court painters, and 255 are preserved in an illuminated manuscript, the Freydal tournament book held by the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. These miniatures vividly record the different types of jousts that were popular at the time as well as the court masquerades, or ‘mummeries’, that took place at the end of the day after each tournament. It is the most extensive visual record of late medieval tournaments and court masquerades that exists. (Full article...) -
Yash Chopra (known as Yash Chopra: Fifty Years in Indian Cinema in India) is a biography written by the British professor and author Rachel Dwyer, chronicling the life and career of the Indian filmmaker Yash Chopra. The book details Chopra's birth in 1932 in Lahore, his career both as a director and producer, and his 1970 marriage to the then-playback singer Pamela, with whom he had two sons Aditya and Uday. The British Film Institute published Yash Chopra on 29 April 2002 in the United Kingdom and Roli Books did so on 30 July in India.
While writing All You Want is Money, All You Need is Love: Sexuality and Romance in Modern India (2000), Dwyer saw Chopra on a televised interview in 1993, which aired following the release of Darr. She watched the film and was impressed by it. She subsequently conceived a biography about the filmmaker and with some difficulty held meetings to interview him. Upon its release, the book received mixed reviews, with Dwyer's writing garnering the most appreciation, but her literal translation of Chopra's interviews from Hindi and Urdu to English generated critical negative responses. (Full article...) -
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln is a 2005 book by Pulitzer Prize-winning American historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, published by Simon & Schuster. The book is a biographical portrait of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and some of the men who served with him in his cabinet from 1861 to 1865. Three of his Cabinet members had previously run against Lincoln in the 1860 election: Attorney General Edward Bates, Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase and Secretary of State William H. Seward. The book focuses on Lincoln's mostly successful attempts to reconcile conflicting personalities and political factions on the path to abolition and victory in the American Civil War.
Goodwin's sixth book, Team of Rivals was well received by critics and won the 2006 Lincoln Prize and the inaugural Book Prize for American History of the New-York Historical Society. US President Barack Obama cited it as one of his favorite books and was said to have used it as a model for constructing his own cabinet, although he later wrote this was not the reason he chose Hillary Clinton as his Secretary of State. In 2012, a Steven Spielberg film based on the book was released to critical acclaim. (Full article...) -
Price's Lost Campaign: The 1864 Invasion of Missouri is a 2011 book written by Mark A. Lause and published by the University of Missouri Press. The book discusses the early stage of Price's Raid, especially how what was originally designed as a full-fledged invasion became known to posterity as a less-important raid. Other themes include the failings of Confederate leader Sterling Price and Union leader William S. Rosecrans and a debunking of Lost Cause myths suggesting that the Confederate soldiers refrained from total war and behaved with chivalry during the campaign. The book's coverage cuts off midway through the campaign, when Price decided not to attempt to capture Jefferson City, Missouri, which Lause views as when the campaign shifted from an invasion to a raid. Several reviewers have criticized the decision to break off coverage at that point. Other points of concern mentioned by reviewers include the lack of a bibliography, insufficient quantity and quality of maps, and copy editing errors. The book was praised for its objective treatment of the campaign and the quality of Lause's research. A sequel, The Collapse of Price's Raid, was published in 2016. (Full article...)
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Wooden Leg: A Warrior Who Fought Custer is a 1931 book by Thomas Bailey Marquis about the life of a Northern Cheyenne Indian, Wooden Leg, who fought in several historic battles between United States forces and the Plains Indians, including the Battle of the Little Bighorn, where he faced the troops of George Armstrong Custer. The book is of great value to historians, not only for its eyewitness accounts of battles, but also for its detailed description of the way of life of 19th-century Plains Indians.
The book was dictated to Marquis by Wooden Leg in Plains Indian Sign Language, their only common language. Marquis gathered the stories for the book from Wooden Leg and others while he was a physician at the agency in Montana from 1922. They were reluctant to open up to him at first, but eventually Marquis gained their trust. (Full article...) -
The Last Hurrah: Sterling Price's Missouri Expedition of 1864 is a 2015 book written by Kyle Sinisi and published by Rowman & Littlefield about Price's Missouri Expedition, an 1864 campaign of the American Civil War that failed to wrest control of the state of Missouri from the Union. Sinisi focused on the military expedition itself, but also covered political machinations that occurred during the expedition as well as topography and logistics. The Last Hurrah posits that the campaign should not be viewed as a raid due to its magnitude, that the Battle of Mine Creek had elements of a massacre, and that Missouri did not want to give up Union control. Reviewers praised the work, especially its ability to cover the campaign comprehensively while also discussing factors such as politics and the effects of guerrilla warfare. (Full article...)
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American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House is a 2008 biography of Andrew Jackson, the seventh President of the United States, written by Jon Meacham. It won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Biography, with the prize jury describing it as "an unflinching portrait of a not always admirable democrat but a pivotal president, written with an agile prose that brings the Jackson saga to life".
Meacham wrote American Lion drawing in part on previously unavailable documents, including letters, diaries, memorabilia, and accounts from Jackson's intimate circle that had been largely privately owned for 175 years. Much of the correspondence was found in archives at the Hermitage, Jackson's estate in Nashville, Tennessee. American Lion is not a full-scale account of Jackson's entire life or political career, but rather focuses on his presidency and his domestic arrangements in the White House. (Full article...) -
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Wrecking Ball is the 14th book in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney. The story focuses on Greg; his mother, Susan; his father, Frank; and his best friend, Rowley; as the Heffley family renovate their house and prepare to move to a new neighborhood. It was released on November 5, 2019. (Full article...)
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Theory of Literature is a book on literary scholarship by René Wellek, of the structuralist Prague school, and Austin Warren, a self-described "old New Critic". The two met at the University of Iowa in the late 1930s, and by 1940 had begun writing the book; they wrote collaboratively, in a single voice over a period of three years. Its contents were based on their shared understandings of literature.
Originally consisting of twenty chapters – one was cut in later editions – Theory of Literature describes various aspects of literary theory, criticism, and history. After defining various aspects and relationships of literature in general, Wellek and Warren divide analysis of literature based on two approaches: extrinsic, relating to factors outside a work such as the author and society, and intrinsic, relating to factors within such as rhythm and meter. They stress the need to focus on the intrinsic elements of a work as the best way to truly understand it. In doing so they adapt the phenomenology used by Roman Ingarden. (Full article...) -
The Encyclopedia of Chicago is a historical reference work covering Chicago and the entire Chicago metropolitan area published by the University of Chicago Press. Released in October 2004, the work is the result of a ten-year collaboration between the Newberry Library and the Chicago Historical Society. It exists in both a hardcover print edition and an online format, known as the Electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago. The print edition is 1117 pages and includes 1400 entries, 2000 biographical sketches, 250 significant business enterprise descriptions, and hundreds of maps. Initially, the internet edition included 1766 entries, 1000 more images and sources.
The concept was fueled by other regional encyclopedias that had met with commercial success in 1980s and 1990s. Eventually, the vision to create the book found initial financing from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The book was well received and became a bestseller during the 2004 Christmas season following its October 2004 release. In May, 2005, the Electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago was released. Northwestern University joined the Newberry Library/Chicago Historical Society collaboration to publish the internet edition. The internet edition was the second of its kind for a U.S. city. (Full article...) -
Roots of Yoga is a 2017 book of commentary and translations from over 100 ancient and medieval yoga texts, mainly written in Sanskrit but including several other languages, many not previously published, about the origins of yoga including practices such as āsana, mantra, and meditation, by the scholar-practitioners James Mallinson and Mark Singleton.
Critics unanimously welcomed the book, noting that it was surprising given yoga's popularity that many of its key texts had never before been translated. They described the book as scholarly, unprecedented, and admirably unbiased, making available a wealth of material in far more accessible form than ever before, and revealing yoga to consist of many strands rather than having a single definite philosophy and interpretation. (Full article...)
Selected quote
| “ | The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,
And all the sweet serenity of books. |
” |
| — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | ||
Did you know ...
- ... that the Arabic translation of Borunsi sold one million copies in its first year of publication?
- ... that Kichuś majstra Lepigliny known as the "Polish Pinocchio" was published a hundred years ago?
- ... that the library of the Institut Français d'Archéologie de Beyrouth contained about 24,000 volumes by 1970?
General images
The following are images from various book-related articles on Wikipedia.
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Photograph of a printing press in Egypt, c. 1922 (from History of books) -
A traditional bookbinder at work (from Bookbinding) -
A Chinese bamboo book, The Art of War, commissioned by the Qianlong Emperor in 18th-century China (from History of books) -
Modern paperback spines (from Bookbinding) -
Woman holding wax tablets in the form of the codex. Wall painting from Pompeii, before 79 CE. (from History of books) -
Detailed blind tooling of a book binding (from Bookbinding) -
Decorative binding with figurehead of the 12th century manuscript Liber Landavensis (from Bookbinding) -
A Sumerian clay tablet, currently housed in the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, inscribed with the text of the poem Inanna and Ebih by the priestess Enheduanna, the first author whose name is known -
Chinese Bookseller, illustration, c. 1824 (from History of books) -
Marbled book board from a book published in London in 1872 (from Bookbinding) -
Hardbound book spine stitching (from Bookbinding) -
Design by Hans Holbein the Younger for a metalwork book cover (or treasure binding) (from Book design) -
European output of manuscripts 500–1500 (from History of books) -
Traditionally sewn book opened flat (from Bookbinding) -
Page from a Jain manuscript depicting the birth of Mahavira, c. 1400 (from History of books) -
Illustration from the Codex Manesse, a German book from the Middle Ages (from History of books) -
Folio from the Shah Jahan Album, c. 1620, depicting the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan (from History of books) -
A 15th-century incunable. Notice the blind-tooled cover, corner bosses, and clasps. (from History of books) -
Gilt front cover adorned with walrus ivory on the Horne Book, Denmark, 13th century (from Bookbinding) -
9th-century Qur'an in Reza Abbasi Museum (from Bookbinding) -
Books with different spine orientations:
ascending (left); descending (middle); upright (right) (from Book design) -
A twentieth-century copyright imprint from McLoughlin Bros that features three rams and the copyright year, 1903 (from History of books) -
Jikji, Selected Teachings of Buddhist Sages and Seon Masters, the earliest known book printed with movable metal type, 1377. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris. (from History of books) -
European output of printed books c. 1450–1800 (from History of books) -
Page 49 of the Dresden Codex (from History of books) -
Modern book spine designs (from Bookbinding) -
Book conservators at the State Library of New South Wales, 1943 (from Bookbinding) -
Bookbinder's type holder (from Bookbinding) -
The annual production of handwritten manuscripts and printed books per 1000 people in Western Europe (from History of books) -
Rebacking saving original spine, showing one volume finished and one untouched (from Bookbinding) -
The intricate frontispiece of the Diamond Sutra from Tang dynasty China, i.e. 868 CE, the oldest known dated printed book in the world (British Library) (from History of books) -
Three books with different titling orientations:
ascending (left); descending (middle); upright (right) (from Bookbinding) -
Early medieval bookcase containing about ten codices depicted in the Codex Amiatinus (c. 700) (from Bookbinding) -
The spine of the book is an important aspect in book design, especially in the cover design. When the books are stacked up or stored in a shelf, the details on the spine is the only visible surface that contains the information about the book. In a book store, it is often the details on the spine that attract the attention first. (from Book design)
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Cloth book cover with attached paper panel, mimicking half leather binding (from Bookbinding) -
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Hardbound book with half leather binding (spine and corners) and marbled boards (from Bookbinding) -
An author portrait of Jean Miélot writing his compilation of the Miracles of Our Lady, one of his many popular works. (from History of books) -
Sammelband of three alchemical treatises, bound in Strasbourg by Samuel Emmel c. 1568, showing metal clasps and leather covering of boards (from Bookbinding) -
Page spread with J. A. van de Graaf's construction of classical text area (print space) and margin proportions (from Book design) -
European output of books 500–1800 (from History of books) -
The scene in Botticelli's Madonna of the Book (1480) reflects the presence of books in the houses of richer people in his time. (from History of books) -
The Book of the Dead of Hunefer, c. 1275 BCE, ink and pigments on papyrus, in the British Museum (London) (from History of books) -
12-metre-high (40 ft) sculpture of a stack of books at the Berlin Walk of Ideas, commemorating the invention of modern book printing (from History of books) -
Scheme of common book design(from Bookbinding)- Belly band
- Flap
- Endpaper
- Book cover
- Head
- Fore edge
- Tail
- Right page, recto
- Left page, verso
- Gutter
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Web resources
- Bookbinding and the Conservation of books, A Dictionary of Descriptive Terminology, 1982 by Matt T. Roberts and Don Etherington
- IOBA glossary of book terms
- Project Gutenberg - Free e-Books
- Words at Large: The best in books from CBC.ca
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