Portal:Books

The Books Portal

Johannes Trithemius'Polygraphiae (1518)

A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images. Modern books are typically in codex format, composed of many pages that are bound together and protected by a cover; they were preceded by several earlier formats, including the scroll and the tablet. The book publishing process is the series of steps involved in their creation and dissemination.

As a conceptual object, a book refers to a written work of substantial length, which may be distributed either physically or digitally as an ebook. These works can be broadly classified into fiction (containing invented content, often narratives) and non-fiction (containing content intended as factual truth). A physical book may not contain such a work: for example, it may contain only drawings, engravings, photographs, puzzles, or removable content like paper dolls. It may also be left empty for personal use, as in the case of account books, appointment books, autograph books, notebooks, diaries and sketchbooks.

Books are sold at both regular stores and specialized bookstores, as well as online for delivery, and can be borrowed from libraries. The reception of books has led to a number of social consequences, including censorship.

The modern book industry has seen several major changes due to new technologies, including ebooks and audiobooks (recordings of books being read aloud). Awareness of the needs of print-disabled people has led to a rise in formats designed for greater accessibility, such as braille printing and large-print editions. Google Books estimated in 2010 that approximately 130 million total unique books had been published. (Full article...)

Featured articles -

  Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.

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  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...)
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  Political Animals and Animal Politics is a 2014 edited collection published by Palgrave Macmillan and edited by the green political theorists Marcel Wissenburg and David Schlosberg. The work addresses the emergence of academic animal ethics informed by political philosophy as opposed to moral philosophy. It was the first edited collection to be published on the topic, and the first book-length attempt to explore the breadth and boundaries of the literature. As well as a substantial introduction by the editors, it features ten sole-authored chapters split over three parts, respectively concerning institutional change for animals, the relationship between animal ethics and ecologism, and real-world laws made for the benefit of animals. The book's contributors were Wissenburg, Schlosberg, Manuel Arias-Maldonado, Chad Flanders, Christie Smith, Clemens Driessen, Simon Otjes, Kurtis Boyer, Per-Anders Svärd, and Mihnea Tanasescu. The focus of their individual chapters varies, but recurring features include discussions of human exceptionalism, exploration of ways that animal issues are or could be present in political discourse, and reflections on the relationship between theory and practice in politics.
  
  In part, Political Animals and Animal Politics arose from a workshop that Wissenburg and Schlosberg organised at the 2012 European Consortium for Political Research Joint Sessions conference, though not all attendees contributed to the volume and not all contributors presented at the workshop. Footage of the workshop appeared in De Haas in de Marathon (The Pacer in the Marathon), a 2012 documentary about the Dutch Party for the Animals. Political Animals and Animal Politics was published as part of the Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series, edited by Andrew Linzey and Priscilla Cohn. (Full article...)
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  A Song Flung Up to Heaven is the sixth book in author Maya Angelou's series of autobiographies. Set between 1965 and 1968, it begins where Angelou's previous book All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes ends, with Angelou's trip from Accra, Ghana, where she had lived for the past four years, back to the United States. Two "calamitous events" frame the beginning and end of the book—the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Angelou describes how she dealt with these events and the sweeping changes in both the country and in her personal life, and how she coped with her return home to the U.S. The book ends with Angelou at "the threshold of her literary career", writing the opening lines to her first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
  
  As she had begun to do in Caged Bird, and continued throughout her series, Angelou upheld the long tradition of African-American autobiography. At the same time she made a deliberate attempt to challenge the usual structure of the autobiography by critiquing, changing, and expanding the genre. Most reviewers agreed that the book was made up of a series of vignettes. By the time Song was written in 2002, sixteen years after her previous autobiography, Angelou had experienced great fame and recognition as an author and poet. She recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at the inauguration of President Bill Clinton in 1993, becoming the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at John F. Kennedy's in 1961. She had become recognized and highly respected as a spokesperson for Blacks and women. Angelou was, as scholar Joanne Braxton has stated, "without a doubt, ... America's most visible black woman autobiographer". She had also become, as reviewer Richard Long stated, "a major autobiographical voice of the time". (Full article...)
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  Title page from the first edition of Original Stories (1788)

  
  Original Stories from Real Life; with Conversations Calculated to Regulate the Affections, and Form the Mind to Truth and Goodness is the only complete work of children's literature by the 18th-century English feminist author Mary Wollstonecraft. Original Stories begins with a frame story that sketches out the education of two young girls by their maternal teacher Mrs. Mason, followed by a series of didactic tales. The book was first published by Joseph Johnson in 1788; a second, illustrated edition, with engravings by William Blake, was released in 1791 and remained in print for around a quarter of a century.
  
  In Original Stories, Wollstonecraft employed the then-burgeoning genre of children's literature to promote the education of women and an emerging middle-class ideology. She argued that women would be able to become rational adults if they were educated properly as children, which was not a widely held belief in the 18th century, and contended that the nascent middle-class ethos was superior to the court culture represented by fairy tales and to the values of chance and luck found in chapbook stories for the poor. Wollstonecraft, in developing her own pedagogy, also responded to the works of the two most important educational theorists of the 18th century: John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. (Full article...)
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  Southern Cross is the sole wordless novel by Canadian artist Laurence Hyde (1914–1987). Published in 1951, its 118 wood-engraved images narrate the impact of atomic testing on Pacific islanders. Hyde made the book to express his anger at the US military's nuclear tests in the Bikini Atoll.
  
  The wordless novel genre had flourished primarily during the 1920s and 1930s, but by the 1940s even the most prolific practitioners had abandoned it. Hyde was familiar with some such works by Lynd Ward, Otto Nückel, and the form's pioneer Frans Masereel. The high-contrast artwork of Southern Cross features dynamic curving lines uncommon in wood engraving and combines abstract imagery with realistic detail. It has gained appreciation in comics circles as a precursor to the Canadian graphic novel, though it had no direct influence. (Full article...)
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  First edition cover

  
  The Story of Miss Moppet is a tale about teasing, featuring a kitten and a mouse, that was written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter, and published by Frederick Warne & Co for the 1906 Christmas season. Potter was born in London in 1866, and between 1902 and 1905 published a series of small-format children's books with Warne. In 1906, she experimented with an atypical panorama design for Miss Moppet, which booksellers disliked; the story was reprinted in 1916 in small book format.
  
  Miss Moppet, the story's eponymous main character, is a kitten teased by a mouse. While pursuing him she bumps her head on a cupboard. She then wraps a duster about her head, and sits before the fire "looking very ill". The curious mouse creeps closer, is captured, "and because the Mouse has teased Miss Moppet—Miss Moppet thinks she will tease the Mouse; which is not at all nice of Miss Moppet". She ties him up in the duster and tosses him about. However, the mouse makes his escape, and once safely out of reach, dances a jig atop the cupboard. (Full article...)
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  The Heart of a Woman (1981) is an autobiography by American writer Maya Angelou. The book is the fourth installment in Angelou's series of seven autobiographies. The Heart of a Woman recounts events in Angelou's life between 1957 and 1962 and follows her travels to California, New York City, Cairo, and Ghana as she raises her teenage son, becomes a published author, becomes active in the civil rights movement, and becomes romantically involved with a South African anti-apartheid fighter. One of the most important themes of The Heart of a Woman is motherhood, as Angelou continues to raise her son. The book ends with her son leaving for college and Angelou looking forward to newfound independence and freedom.
  
  Like Angelou's previous volumes, the book has been described as autobiographical fiction, though most critics, as well as Angelou, have characterized it as autobiography. Although most critics consider Angelou's first autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings more favorably, The Heart of a Woman has received positive reviews. It was chosen as an Oprah's Book Club selection in 1997. (Full article...)
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  Title page from History of a Six Weeks' Tour (1817), Thomas Hookham, Jr. and Charles and James Ollier, London.

  
  History of a Six Weeks' Tour through a part of France, Switzerland, Germany, and Holland; with Letters Descriptive of a Sail Round the Lake of Geneva and of the Glaciers of Chamouni is a travel narrative by the English Romantic authors Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Published anonymously in 1817, it describes two trips taken by Mary, Percy, and Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont: one across Europe in 1814, and one to Lake Geneva in 1816. Divided into three sections, the text consists of a journal, four letters, and Percy Shelley's poem "Mont Blanc". Apart from the poem, preface, and two letters, the text was primarily written and organised by Mary Shelley. In 1840 she revised the journal and the letters, republishing them in a collection of Percy Shelley's writings.
  
  Part of the new genre of the Romantic travel narrative, History of a Six Weeks' Tour exudes spontaneity and enthusiasm; the authors demonstrate their desire to develop a sense of taste and distinguish themselves from those around them. The romantic elements of the work would have hinted at the text's radical politics to nineteenth-century readers. However, the text's frank discussion of politics, including positive references to the French Revolution and praise of Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, was unusual for a travel narrative at the time, particularly one authored primarily by a woman. (Full article...)
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  Mary Shelley wrote of the Simplon Pass: "There was a majestic simplicity that inspired awe; the naked bones of a gigantic world were here."

  
  
  Rambles in Germany and Italy, in 1840, 1842, and 1843 is a travel narrative by the British Romantic author Mary Shelley. Issued in 1844, it is her last published work. Published in two volumes, the text describes two European trips that Mary Shelley took with her son, Percy Florence Shelley, and several of his university friends. Mary Shelley had lived in Italy with her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, between 1818 and 1823. For her, Italy was associated with both joy and grief: she had written much while there but she had also lost her husband and two of her children. Thus, although she was anxious to return, the trip was tinged with sorrow. Shelley describes her journey as a pilgrimage, which will help cure her depression.
  
  At the end of the second trip, Mary Shelley spent time in Paris and associated herself with the "Young Italy" movement, Italian exiles who were in favour of Italian independence and unification. One revolutionary in particular attracted her: Ferdinando Gatteschi. To assist him financially, Shelley decided to publish Rambles. However, Gatteschi became discontented with Shelley's assistance and tried to blackmail her. She was forced to obtain her personal letters from Gatteschi through the intervention of the French police. (Full article...)
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  First edition cover

  
  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...)
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  Title page from the second volume of Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of France (1838)

  
  
  The Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men comprised ten volumes of Dionysius Lardner's 133-volume Cabinet Cyclopaedia (1829–1846). Aimed at the self-educating middle class, this encyclopedia was written during the 19th-century literary revolution in Britain that encouraged more people to read.
  
  The Lives formed part of the Cabinet of Biography in the Cabinet Cyclopaedia. Within the set of ten, the three-volume Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of Italy, Spain and Portugal (1835–37) and the two-volume Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of France (1838–39) consist of biographies of important writers and thinkers of the 14th to 18th centuries. Most of them were written by the Romantic writer Mary Shelley. Shelley's biographies reveal her as a professional woman of letters, contracted to produce several volumes of works and paid well to do so. Her extensive knowledge of history and languages, her ability to tell a gripping biographical narrative, and her interest in the burgeoning field of feminist historiography are reflected in these works. (Full article...)
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  The Halo Graphic Novel is a graphic novel anthology of the military science fiction video game series Halo, published by Marvel Comics in partnership with Bungie. 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 of contributions from Bungie, Marvel and independent sources. (Full article...)
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  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...)
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  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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  I Never Liked You is a graphic novel by Canadian cartoonist Chester Brown. The story first ran between 1991 and 1993 under the title Fuck, in issues #26–30 of Brown's comic book Yummy Fur; published in book form by Drawn & Quarterly in 1994. It deals with the teenage Brown's introversion and difficulty talking to others, especially members of the opposite sex—including his mother. The story has minimal dialogue and is sparsely narrated. The artwork is amongst the simplest in Brown's body of work—some pages consist only of a single small panel.
  
  Brown established his reputation in the early alternative comics scene of the 1980s with the surreal, taboo-breaking Ed the Happy Clown. He brought that story to an abrupt end in 1989 when, excited by the autobiographical comics of Joe Matt and Julie Doucet, he turned towards personal stories. The uncomplicated artwork of his friend and fellow Toronto cartoonist Seth inspired him to simplify his own. Brown intended I Never Liked You as part of a longer work with what became his previous book, The Playboy (1992), but found the larger story too complex to handle at once. I Never Liked You was the last work of Brown's early autobiographical period. (Full article...)

Selected picture

The Radcliffe Camera in Oxford, England as viewed from the tower of the Church of St Mary the Virgin.

Credit: Diliff

The Radcliffe Camera (colloquially, "Rad Cam" or "Radders") is a building in Oxford, England, designed by James Gibbs in the English Palladian style and built in 1737–1749 to house the Radcliffe Science Library.

More Did you know (auto generated)

• ... that an old cookbook recommends eating tiger meat to ward off tigers?
• ... that the 2019 book Pacifying the Homeland was compared to an ice-cold shower for individuals acclimatized to mass surveillance in the US due to its pervasiveness in daily life?
• ... that Tadeusz Gebethner, a soccer player, bookseller, soldier and resistance fighter, was recognized as a Polish Righteous Among the Nations?
• ... that Bochart's 1646 Geographia Sacra seu Phaleg et Canaan was the first full-length book devoted to the Phoenicians?
• ... that according to David Baddiel's book Jews Don't Count, antisemitism has become perceived as a "second-class racism"?
• ... that Elizabeth II's 1994 state visit to Russia was overshadowed in the UK by a Prince Charles biographical book?

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• Bibliophilia
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This is a Good article, an article that meets a core set of high editorial standards.

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  Encyclopedia of the Central Intelligence Agency is a 2003 book by W. Thomas Smith Jr. It is an encyclopedic work on the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the only independent agency of the United States federal government that is tasked with intelligence-gathering. The work chronicles the history of the agency from its founding in 1947 through the war on terror, which began after the September 11 attacks. The encyclopedia's chronology ends in 2003. It provides approximately 550 entries across 282 pages on topics including notable contributors, intelligence operations, historical events, and depictions of the CIA in fictional media.
  
  The encyclopedia was praised by the School Library Journal for its reference value and comprehensiveness. Booklist recommended the encyclopedia be placed in academic, public, and high school libraries as a helpful resource. Publishers Weekly was critical of the author's objectivity, suggesting that the encyclopedia was biased in favor of the agency's intelligence operations, but concluded that the book was still a useful reference tool. (Full article...)
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  Bodyguard of Lies is a 1975 non-fiction book on Allied military deception operations during World War II written by Anthony Cave Brown. His first major historical work, it derives its name from a wartime quote of Winston Churchill, and offers a narrative account of aspects of both the Allied and German intelligence operations during the war. The British and American governments resisted Brown's attempts to research the book. Many of the topics were still classified and he was denied access to British war records. The material in the book is predominantly based on oral testimony as well as some American records, declassified toward the end of Brown's research.
  
  Critical reception has been mixed, initially more balanced, generally more negative with time. Contemporary historians, such as Charles B. MacDonald, praised the work – although some did comment on its length. Modern reviewers have identified inconsistencies or errors in the material, based on later declassified records. Also, some of Brown's personal conclusions have been questioned. (Full article...)
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  Stolen Childhood: Slave Youth in Nineteenth-Century America is a 1995 history book about nineteenth century slave children in America by Wilma King. As the first full-length book on the subject, it began the scholarship of slave childhood. The book uses historical documents to argue that enslaved children were deprived of experiences now understood to constitute childhood, due to early work responsibilities, frequent bodily and emotional trauma, and separations from family. The book covers themes of the children's education, leisure, religion, transitions to freedmen, and work expectations. It was published in the Indiana University Press's Blacks in the Diaspora series, and a revised edition was released in 2011.
  
  Critics regarded Stolen Childhood positively for taking the historiography of children, slavery, and education in an unexplored direction. Scholars placed the book in a lineage of studies on slave families and women, with King's book as the first dedicated to slave children. Reviewers generally praised her research contribution but condemned the book's structure and repetitive style. The book won the 1997 Outstanding Book Award from the National College of Black Political Scientists. Choice named King's 2011 revised edition an "outstanding title" for academic libraries. (Full article...)
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  Who Killed Canadian History? is a 1998 book by the Canadian historian J. L. Granatstein. The book argues that Canadians lack national unity because of their failure to teach their country's history. Granatstein contends that multiculturalism, social historians and weak history teaching standards are responsible for Canada's lack of a historical narrative. He advocates for a greater emphasis on the study of Canadian history in schools and university history departments, especially political and military history.
  
  The 1980s and 1990s saw increasing disputes among Canadian historians, splitting between political and social historians. The historian Adam Chipnick describes Who Killed Canadian History? as "the pinnacle" of these disputes, termed the "history wars". According to Granatstein, the expanding reach of social historians in the history departments of Canadian universities has resulted in ineffectual and uneducated graduates. He further argues that poor teaching standards and political correctness have led to historical ignorance among Canadians, leaving them unable to properly appreciate their present and future. He suggests a number of measures to increase historical awareness, including implementing national teaching standards. (Full article...)
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  The Dictator Pope: The Inside Story of the Francis Papacy (Italian: Il papa dittatore) is an unauthorized biography of Pope Francis authored by the Anglo–French historian H. J. A. Sire under the pseudonym "Marcantonio Colonna" (the name of a Catholic admiral who fought at the Battle of Lepanto). Published initially in Italian, and later in English, the book takes a highly critical view of Pope Francis and his papacy over the Catholic Church. The book contends to be "the inside story of the most tyrannical and unprincipled papacy of modern times," arguing that Pope Francis, while presenting himself as humble, rules over the Church through fear and has allied to some of the most corrupt elements in the Vatican. On its 2017 release, the book reached 4th place on Amazon Kindle's Religion and Spirituality bestseller list.
  
  A revised and updated English edition of The Dictator Pope was released both in hardcover and e-book formats by Regnery Publishing on April 23, 2018. An audiobook edition produced by Blackstone Audio was also released the same day. (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...)
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  American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic is a 2007 non-fiction book written by American historian Joseph Ellis and published by Alfred A. Knopf, examining the successes and failures of the Founding Fathers. Structured episodically, the book examines six turning points in the early history of the United States: the writing of the Declaration of Independence, George Washington's winter at Valley Forge, James Madison's debate with Patrick Henry over Constitutional ratification, Washington's treaty with Creek leader Alexander McGillivray, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison's founding of the Democratic-Republican Party, and the Louisiana Purchase.
  
  Ellis, who had previously won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for History, wanted to write a book portraying the Founders neither as demigods nor villains, but as flawed men who were improvising in response to immediate crises. The book reached #4 on The New York Times Best Seller list, and received largely positive reviews from critics. (Full article...)
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  Ethnic Identity and the State in Iran is a 2013 book by Alam Saleh in which the author examines inter-ethnic tension and the politicization of ethnic identity in Iran. He suggests that problems with ethnicity and nationality in Iran, as in other countries of the Middle East, has not been so much the result of ethnic identity formation, but the product of the securitization of ethnic issues. The book has received positive reviews in the Middle East Journal, Review of Middle East Studies, the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, and Nations and Nationalism. (Full article...)
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  Christgau's Consumer Guide: Albums of the '90s is a music reference book by American music journalist and essayist Robert Christgau. It was published in October 2000 by St. Martin's Press's Griffin imprint and collects approximately 3,800 capsule album reviews, originally written by Christgau during the 1990s for his "Consumer Guide" column in The Village Voice. Text from his other writings for the Voice, Rolling Stone, Spin, and Playboy from this period is also featured. The book is the third in a series of influential "Consumer Guide" collections, following Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981) and Christgau's Record Guide: The '80s (1990).
  
  Covering a variety of genres within and beyond the conventional pop/rock axis of most music press, the reviews are composed in a concentrated, fragmented prose style characterized by layered clauses, caustic wit, one-liner jokes, political digressions, and allusions ranging from common knowledge to the esoteric. Adhering to Christgau's mainstream tastes and some personal eccentricities, the guide favors music on standards of catchiness, rhythmic vitality, and practical significance, while generally penalizing qualities like sexist content and hour-plus album lengths. It also introduces a new grading system Christgau developed in response to the proliferation in music production over the 1990s, an event he cites as a reason why this project was the most difficult of the three "Consumer Guide" collections. (Full article...)
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  Wings for My Flight: The Peregrine Falcons of Chimney Rock is a 1991 book by American wildlife biologist Marcy Cottrell Houle. Wings for My Flight documents Houle's observations of a pair of the then-endangered peregrine falcons at Chimney Rock, a prominent rock formation in Colorado, while employed by the Colorado Division of Wildlife in the summer of 1975. To protect the falcons, Houle had to halt a million-dollar project to turn ancient Anasazi ruins in the area into a tourist attraction and faced opposition and harassment by the Chimney Rock community as a result.
  
  By 1975, peregrine falcons had been reduced to 324 pairs in North America, primarily as a result of DDT, a widely used pesticide. DDT lowered estrogen levels in female peregrines and inhibited the production of calcium, causing eggs to thin and break during incubation. Recovery efforts for the peregrine falcon have been remarkably successful: agricultural DDT was banned by the U.S. in 1972 and efforts to breed and train peregrine falcons in captivity to later release to the wild were effective. In 1999, the peregrine falcon was removed from the U.S. Endangered Species list. (Full article...)
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  Rekha: The Untold Story is a 2016 Indian biographical book by Yasser Usman, detailing the life of Indian film actress Rekha. The book chronicles her birth to South Indian actors Gemini Ganesan and Pushpavalli, which generated rumors in the media at the time, her well-publicised marriage to Delhi-based industrialist Mukesh Agarwal, who died by suicide in seventh months of marriage, and her fifty-year-long acting career.
  
  After the success of his first book, Rajesh Khanna: The Untold Story of India's First Superstar (2014), Usman was motivated to write a biography about Rekha. He collected archives of pre-2000s magazines and her interviews at the National Film Archive of India. While writing the book, Usman faced difficulties since mostly Rekha's collaborator forgot or refused to talk about her; it took more than a year for him to finish it. Rekha: The Untold Story was released on 29 August 2016 by Juggernaut Books, and was critically praised. (Full article...)
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  Title page of the original Danish edition from 1843

  
  Either/Or (Danish: Enten – Eller) is the first published work of Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. It appeared in two volumes in 1843 under the pseudonymous editorship of Victor Eremita (Latin for "victorious hermit"). It outlines a theory of human existence, marked by the distinction between an essentially hedonistic, aesthetic mode of life and the ethical life, which is predicated upon commitment.
  
  Either/Or portrays two life views. Each life view is written and represented by a fictional author, with the prose reflecting and depending on the life view. The aesthetic life view is written in short essay form, with poetic imagery and allusions, discussing aesthetic topics such as music, seduction, drama, and beauty. The ethical life view is written as two long letters, with a more argumentative and restrained prose, discussing moral responsibility, critical reflection, and marriage. The views are expressed as experiences embodied by the fictional authors. The book's central concern is Aristotle's primal question, "How should we live?" His motto comes from Plutarch, "The deceived is wiser than one not deceived." (Full article...)
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  Butterflies from the 1828 edition

  
  Le Règne Animal (lit. 'The Animal Kingdom') is the most famous work of the French naturalist Georges Cuvier. It sets out to describe the natural structure of the whole of the animal kingdom based on comparative anatomy, and its natural history. Cuvier divided the animals into four embranchements ("Branches", roughly corresponding to phyla), namely vertebrates, molluscs, articulated animals (arthropods and annelids), and zoophytes (cnidaria and other phyla).
  
  The work appeared in four octavo volumes in December 1816 (although it has "1817" on the title pages); a second edition in five volumes was brought out in 1829–1830 and a third, written by twelve "disciples" of Cuvier, in 1836–1849. In this classic work, Cuvier presented the results of his life's research into the structure of living and fossil animals. With the exception of the section on insects, in which he was assisted by his friend Pierre André Latreille, the whole of the work was his own. It was translated into English many times, often with substantial notes and supplementary material updating the book in accordance with the expansion of knowledge. It was also translated into German, Italian and other languages, and abridged in versions for children. (Full article...)
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  Dioscorides' De Materia Medica, Byzantium, 15th-century manuscript, by which time the text had been in circulation for about 1500 years

  
  
  A herbal is a book containing the names and descriptions of plants, usually with information on their medicinal, tonic, culinary, toxic, hallucinatory, aromatic, or magical powers, and the legends associated with them. A herbal may also classify the plants it describes, may give recipes for herbal extracts, tinctures, or potions, and sometimes include mineral and animal medicaments in addition to those obtained from plants. Herbals were often illustrated to assist plant identification.
  
  Herbals were among the first literature produced in Ancient Egypt, China, India, and Europe as the medical wisdom of the day accumulated by herbalists, apothecaries and physicians. Herbals were also among the first books to be printed in both China and Europe. In Western Europe herbals flourished for two centuries following the introduction of moveable type (c. 1470–1670). (Full article...)
• 
  What's So Amazing About Grace? is a 1997 book by Philip Yancey, an American journalist and editor-at-large for Christianity Today. The book examines grace in Christianity, contending that people crave grace and that it is central to the gospel, but that many local churches ignore grace and instead seek to exterminate immorality. What's So Amazing About Grace? includes Bible stories, anecdotes from Yancey's life, accounts of historical events and other stories. These include a modern retelling of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, an account of Yancey's friendship with Mel White who came out as gay, a comparison of the teachings of early Christians Pelagius and Augustine of Hippo, and a summary of Karen Blixen's short story "Babette's Feast".
  
  Yancey was inspired to write What's So Amazing About Grace? after President Bill Clinton asked him, "Why do Christians hate so much?" Although Yancey initially intended to call the book What's So Amazing About Grace: and Why Don't Christians Show More of It?, Zondervan, its publisher, objected to this title despite the author's contention that he wrote the book to communicate the belief that grace is one of the best quality Christians, like himself, have to offer but are not necessarily identified with it. The book was successful at secular and Christian stores, selling more than 15 million copies by 2006 and becoming Yancey's best-known book. In it, Yancey coined the phrase "scandal of grace", referring to the idea that God forgives some of the worst people, citing the conversion of Paul the Apostle. (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 Black Beauty was banned in South Africa because of the use of the word 'black' in the title?(Pictured)
• ...that in December 1936, George Orwell went to Spain as a fighter for the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War ?
• ...that Epigraphia Carnatica, compiled by Benjamin L. Rice, contains a study of about 9000 inscriptions found in the Old Mysore region of India?

General images

The following are images from various book-related articles on Wikipedia.

• 
  Page from the Blue Quran manuscript, ca. 9th or 10th century CE (from History of books)
• 
  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)
• 
  Modern book spine designs (from Bookbinding)
• 
  Bookbinder's type holder (from Bookbinding)
• 
  Sammelband of three alchemical treatises, bound in Strasbourg by Samuel Emmel c. 1568, showing metal clasps and leather covering of boards (from Bookbinding)
• 
  Chinese Bookseller, illustration, c. 1824 (from History of books)
• 
  A traditional bookbinder at work (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
• 
  Example of blind tooling a book binding with exquisite detail (from Bookbinding)
• 
  European output of books 500–1800 (from History of books)
• 
  Folio from the Shah Jahan Album, c. 1620, depicting the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan (from History of books)
• 
  European output of printed books c. 1450–1800 (from History of books)
• 
  Design by Hans Holbein the Younger for a metalwork book cover (or treasure binding) (from Book design)
• 
  Initial on the opening page of a book printed by the Kelmscott Press (from Book design)
• 
  Rebacking saving original spine, showing one volume finished and one untouched (from Bookbinding)
• 
  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)
• 
  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)
• 
  9th-century Qur'an in Reza Abbasi Museum (from Bookbinding)
• 
  Marbled book board from a book published in London in 1872 (from Bookbinding)
• 
  The Codex Manesse, a German book from the Middle Ages (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)
• 
  A 15th-century Incunable. Notice the blind-tooled cover, corner bosses, and clasps. (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)
• 
  Hardbound book with half leather binding (spine and corners) and marbled boards (from Bookbinding)
• 
  Cloth book cover with attached paper panel, mimicking half leather binding (from Bookbinding)
• 
  Hardbound book spine stitching (from Bookbinding)
• 
  Page from a Jain manuscript depicting the birth of Mahavira, c. 1400 (from History of books)
• 
  Book conservators at the State Library of New South Wales, 1943 (from Bookbinding)
• 
  A twentieth-century copyright imprint from McLoughlin Bros that features three rams and the copyright year, 1903 (from History of books)
• 
  Traditionally sewn book opened flat (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)
• 
  European output of manuscripts 500–1500 (from History of books)
• 
  Folio from a manuscript of the Shanamah (Book of Kings) (from History of books)
• 
  Scheme of common book design

  1. Belly band
  2. Flap
  3. Endpaper
  4. Book cover
  5. Head
  6. Fore edge
  7. Tail
  8. Right page, recto
  9. Left page, verso
  10. Gutter

  (from Bookbinding)
• 
  Dresden Codex (page 49) (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)
• 
  Photograph of a printing press in Egypt, c. 1922 (from History of books)
• 
  Page spread with J. A. van de Graaf's construction of classical text area (print space) and margin proportions (from Book design)
• 
  Early medieval bookcase containing about ten codices depicted in the Codex Amiatinus (c. 700) (from Bookbinding)
• 
  Three books with different titling orientations:
  (left) ascending
  (middle) descending
  (right) upright (from Bookbinding)
• 
  A Chinese bamboo book (from History of books)

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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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