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A book is a structured presentation of recorded information, primarily verbal and graphical, through a medium. Originally physical, electronic books and audiobooks are now existent. Physical books are objects that contain printed material, mostly of writing and images. Modern books are typically composed of many pages bound together and protected by a cover, what is known as the codex format; older formats include the scroll and the clay tablet.

As a conceptual object, a book often refers to a written work of substantial length by one or more authors, which may also be distributed digitally as an electronic book (ebook). These kinds of works can be broadly classified into fiction (containing invented content, often narratives) and non-fiction (containing content intended as factual truth). But a physical book may not contain a written work: for example, it may contain only drawings, engravings, photographs, sheet music, puzzles, or removable content like paper dolls.

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. The book publishing process is the series of steps involved in book creation and dissemination. Books are sold at both regular stores and specialized bookstores, as well as online (for delivery), and can be borrowed from libraries or public bookcases. The reception of books has led to a number of social consequences, including censorship.

Books are sometimes contrasted with periodical literature, such as newspapers or magazines, where new editions are published according to a regular schedule. Related items, also broadly categorized as "books", are left empty for personal use: as in the case of account books, appointment books, autograph books, notebooks, diaries and sketchbooks. (Full article...)

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  Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.
  • Image 1 Literary Hall, viewed from the south, facing West Main Street in Romney Literary Hall is a mid-19th-century brick library, building and museum located in Romney, a city in the U.S. state of West Virginia. It is located at the intersection of North High Street (West Virginia Route 28) and West Main Street (U.S. Route 50). Literary Hall was constructed between 1869 and 1870 by the Romney Literary Society. Founded in 1819, the Romney Literary Society was the first literary organization of its kind in the present-day state of West Virginia, and one of the first in the United States. In 1846, the society constructed a building which housed the Romney Classical Institute and its library. The Romney Literary Society and the Romney Classical Institute both flourished and continued to grow in importance and influence until the onset of the American Civil War in 1861. (Full article...)

    Literary Hall, viewed from the south, facing West Main Street in Romney

    Literary Hall is a mid-19th-century brick library, building and museum located in Romney, a city in the U.S. state of West Virginia. It is located at the intersection of North High Street (West Virginia Route 28) and West Main Street (U.S. Route 50). Literary Hall was constructed between 1869 and 1870 by the Romney Literary Society.

    Founded in 1819, the Romney Literary Society was the first literary organization of its kind in the present-day state of West Virginia, and one of the first in the United States. In 1846, the society constructed a building which housed the Romney Classical Institute and its library. The Romney Literary Society and the Romney Classical Institute both flourished and continued to grow in importance and influence until the onset of the American Civil War in 1861. (Full article...)
  • Image 2 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 Annie Elizabeth Crook, a working class girl. 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...)
    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 Annie Elizabeth Crook, a working class girl. 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...)
  • Image 3 Frontispiece and title page of 1773 edition Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies, published from 1760 to 1794, was an annual directory of prostitutes then working in Georgian London. A small pocketbook, it was printed and published in Covent Garden, and sold for two shillings and sixpence. A contemporary report of 1791 estimates its circulation at about 8,000 copies annually. Each edition contains entries describing the physical appearance and sexual specialities of about 120–190 prostitutes who worked in and around Covent Garden. Through their erotic prose, the list's entries review some of these women in lurid detail. While most compliment their subjects, some are critical of bad habits, and a few women are even treated as pariahs, perhaps having fallen out of favour with the list's authors, who are never revealed. (Full article...)
    Frontispiece and title page of 1773 edition

    Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies, published from 1760 to 1794, was an annual directory of prostitutes then working in Georgian London. A small pocketbook, it was printed and published in Covent Garden, and sold for two shillings and sixpence. A contemporary report of 1791 estimates its circulation at about 8,000 copies annually.

    Each edition contains entries describing the physical appearance and sexual specialities of about 120–190 prostitutes who worked in and around Covent Garden. Through their erotic prose, the list's entries review some of these women in lurid detail. While most compliment their subjects, some are critical of bad habits, and a few women are even treated as pariahs, perhaps having fallen out of favour with the list's authors, who are never revealed. (Full article...)
  • Image 4 Page from Hemming's Cartulary, folio 121 of the manuscript Hemming's Cartulary is a manuscript cartulary, or collection of charters and other land records, collected by a monk named Hemming around the time of the Norman Conquest of England. The manuscript comprises two separate cartularies that were made at different times and later bound together; it is in the British Library as MS Cotton Tiberius A xiii. The first was composed at the end of the 10th or beginning of the 11th century. The second section was compiled by Hemming and was written around the end of the 11th or the beginning of the 12th century. The first section, traditionally titled the Liber Wigorniensis, is a collection of Anglo-Saxon charters and other land records, most of which are organized geographically. The second section, Hemming's Cartulary proper, combines charters and other land records with a narrative of deprivation of property owned by the church of Worcester. The two works are bound together in one surviving manuscript, the earliest surviving cartulary from medieval England. A major theme is the losses suffered by Worcester at the hands of royal officials and local landowners. Included amongst the despoilers are kings such as Cnut and William the Conqueror, and nobles such as Eadric Streona and Urse d'Abetot. Also included are accounts of lawsuits waged by the Worcester monks in an effort to regain their lost lands. The two sections of the cartulary were first printed in 1723. The original manuscript was slightly damaged by fire in 1733, and required rebinding. (Full article...)

    Page from Hemming's Cartulary, folio 121 of the manuscript

    Hemming's Cartulary is a manuscript cartulary, or collection of charters and other land records, collected by a monk named Hemming around the time of the Norman Conquest of England. The manuscript comprises two separate cartularies that were made at different times and later bound together; it is in the British Library as MS Cotton Tiberius A xiii. The first was composed at the end of the 10th or beginning of the 11th century. The second section was compiled by Hemming and was written around the end of the 11th or the beginning of the 12th century. The first section, traditionally titled the Liber Wigorniensis, is a collection of Anglo-Saxon charters and other land records, most of which are organized geographically. The second section, Hemming's Cartulary proper, combines charters and other land records with a narrative of deprivation of property owned by the church of Worcester.

    The two works are bound together in one surviving manuscript, the earliest surviving cartulary from medieval England. A major theme is the losses suffered by Worcester at the hands of royal officials and local landowners. Included amongst the despoilers are kings such as Cnut and William the Conqueror, and nobles such as Eadric Streona and Urse d'Abetot. Also included are accounts of lawsuits waged by the Worcester monks in an effort to regain their lost lands. The two sections of the cartulary were first printed in 1723. The original manuscript was slightly damaged by fire in 1733, and required rebinding. (Full article...)
  • Image 5 The Log from the Sea of Cortez is an English-language book written by American author John Steinbeck and published in 1951. It details a six-week (March 11 – April 20) marine specimen-collecting boat expedition he made in 1940 at various sites in the Gulf of California (also known as the Sea of Cortez), with his friend, the marine biologist Ed Ricketts. It is regarded as one of Steinbeck's most important works of non-fiction chiefly because of the involvement of Ricketts, who shaped Steinbeck's thinking and provided the prototype for many of the pivotal characters in his fiction, and the insights it gives into the philosophies of the two men. The Log from the Sea of Cortez is the narrative portion of an earlier work, Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research, which was published by Steinbeck and Ricketts shortly after their return from the Gulf of California, and combined the journals of the collecting expedition, reworked by Steinbeck, with Ricketts' species catalogue. After Ricketts' death in 1948, Steinbeck dropped the species catalogue from the earlier work and republished it with a eulogy to his friend added as a foreword. (Full article...)
    The Log from the Sea of Cortez is an English-language book written by American author John Steinbeck and published in 1951. It details a six-week (March 11 – April 20) marine specimen-collecting boat expedition he made in 1940 at various sites in the Gulf of California (also known as the Sea of Cortez), with his friend, the marine biologist Ed Ricketts. It is regarded as one of Steinbeck's most important works of non-fiction chiefly because of the involvement of Ricketts, who shaped Steinbeck's thinking and provided the prototype for many of the pivotal characters in his fiction, and the insights it gives into the philosophies of the two men.

    The Log from the Sea of Cortez is the narrative portion of an earlier work, Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research, which was published by Steinbeck and Ricketts shortly after their return from the Gulf of California, and combined the journals of the collecting expedition, reworked by Steinbeck, with Ricketts' species catalogue. After Ricketts' death in 1948, Steinbeck dropped the species catalogue from the earlier work and republished it with a eulogy to his friend added as a foreword. (Full article...)
  • Image 6 Epiphanius of Salamis' book the Panarion is the main source of information regarding the Gospel of the Ebionites. The Gospel of the Ebionites is the conventional name given by scholars to an apocryphal gospel extant only as seven brief quotations in a heresiology known as the Panarion, by Epiphanius of Salamis; he misidentified it as the "Hebrew" gospel, believing it to be a truncated and modified version of the Gospel of Matthew. The quotations were embedded in a polemic to point out inconsistencies in the beliefs and practices of a Jewish Christian sect known as the Ebionites relative to Nicene orthodoxy. The surviving fragments derive from a gospel harmony of the Synoptic Gospels, composed in Greek with various expansions and abridgments reflecting the theology of the writer. Distinctive features include the absence of the virgin birth and of the genealogy of Jesus; an Adoptionist Christology, in which Jesus is chosen to be God's Son at the time of his Baptism; the abolition of the Jewish sacrifices by Jesus; and an advocacy of vegetarianism. (Full article...)
    An illuminated manuscript
    Epiphanius of Salamis' book the Panarion is the main source of information regarding the Gospel of the Ebionites.

    The Gospel of the Ebionites is the conventional name given by scholars to an apocryphal gospel extant only as seven brief quotations in a heresiology known as the Panarion, by Epiphanius of Salamis; he misidentified it as the "Hebrew" gospel, believing it to be a truncated and modified version of the Gospel of Matthew. The quotations were embedded in a polemic to point out inconsistencies in the beliefs and practices of a Jewish Christian sect known as the Ebionites relative to Nicene orthodoxy.

    The surviving fragments derive from a gospel harmony of the Synoptic Gospels, composed in Greek with various expansions and abridgments reflecting the theology of the writer. Distinctive features include the absence of the virgin birth and of the genealogy of Jesus; an Adoptionist Christology, in which Jesus is chosen to be God's Son at the time of his Baptism; the abolition of the Jewish sacrifices by Jesus; and an advocacy of vegetarianism. (Full article...)
  • Image 7 Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment is a 2007 non-fiction book by journalist Anthony Lewis about freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of thought, and the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The book starts by quoting the First Amendment, which prohibits the U.S. Congress from creating legislation which limits free speech or freedom of the press. Lewis traces the evolution of civil liberties in the U.S. through key historical events. He provides an overview of important free speech case law, including U.S. Supreme Court opinions in Schenck v. United States (1919), Whitney v. California (1927), United States v. Schwimmer (1929), New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964), and New York Times Co. v. United States (1971). The title of the book is drawn from the dissenting opinion by Supreme Court Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. in United States v. Schwimmer. Holmes wrote that "if there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought—not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate." Lewis warns the reader against the potential for government to take advantage of periods of fear and upheaval in a post-9/11 society to suppress freedom of speech and criticism by citizens. (Full article...)
    Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment is a 2007 non-fiction book by journalist Anthony Lewis about freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of thought, and the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The book starts by quoting the First Amendment, which prohibits the U.S. Congress from creating legislation which limits free speech or freedom of the press. Lewis traces the evolution of civil liberties in the U.S. through key historical events. He provides an overview of important free speech case law, including U.S. Supreme Court opinions in Schenck v. United States (1919), Whitney v. California (1927), United States v. Schwimmer (1929), New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964), and New York Times Co. v. United States (1971).

    The title of the book is drawn from the dissenting opinion by Supreme Court Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. in United States v. Schwimmer. Holmes wrote that "if there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought—not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate." Lewis warns the reader against the potential for government to take advantage of periods of fear and upheaval in a post-9/11 society to suppress freedom of speech and criticism by citizens. (Full article...)
  • Image 8 Book title page Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, or Parrots is an 1832 book containing 42 hand-coloured lithographs by Edward Lear. He produced 175 copies for sale to subscribers as a part-publication, which were later bound as a book. Lear started painting parrots in 1830 when he was 18 years old, and to get material for his book he studied live birds at the London Zoo and in private collections. The latter included those of Edward Smith Stanley, later 13th Earl of Derby, who had a large menagerie at Knowsley Hall, and Benjamin Leadbeater, a taxidermist and trader in specimens. Lear drew onto lithographic plates for printing by Charles Joseph Hullmandel, who was known for the quality of his reproductions of fine art. Although the book was a financial failure, Lear's paintings of parrots established his reputation as one of the best natural history artists of his time. It found him work with John Gould, Stanley and other leading contemporary naturalists, and the young Queen Victoria engaged him to help her with her painting technique. Parrots was a forerunner to the major volumes of bird paintings by Gould, and Lear's serious work has influenced bird specialists like William T. Cooper, Elizabeth Butterworth, and Walton Ford. (Full article...)

    Book title page

    Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, or Parrots is an 1832 book containing 42 hand-coloured lithographs by Edward Lear. He produced 175 copies for sale to subscribers as a part-publication, which were later bound as a book. Lear started painting parrots in 1830 when he was 18 years old, and to get material for his book he studied live birds at the London Zoo and in private collections. The latter included those of Edward Smith Stanley, later 13th Earl of Derby, who had a large menagerie at Knowsley Hall, and Benjamin Leadbeater, a taxidermist and trader in specimens. Lear drew onto lithographic plates for printing by Charles Joseph Hullmandel, who was known for the quality of his reproductions of fine art.

    Although the book was a financial failure, Lear's paintings of parrots established his reputation as one of the best natural history artists of his time. It found him work with John Gould, Stanley and other leading contemporary naturalists, and the young Queen Victoria engaged him to help her with her painting technique. Parrots was a forerunner to the major volumes of bird paintings by Gould, and Lear's serious work has influenced bird specialists like William T. Cooper, Elizabeth Butterworth, and Walton Ford. (Full article...)
  • Image 9 John Vanbrugh (1664–1726), author of The Relapse, by Godfrey Kneller The Relapse, or, Virtue in Danger is a Restoration comedy from 1696 written by John Vanbrugh. The play is a sequel to Colley Cibber's Love's Last Shift, or, The Fool in Fashion. In Cibber's Love's Last Shift, a free-living Restoration rake is brought to repentance and reform by the ruses of his wife, while in The Relapse, the rake succumbs again to temptation and has a new love affair. His virtuous wife is also subjected to a determined seduction attempt, and resists with difficulty. (Full article...)
    John Vanbrugh (1664–1726), author of The Relapse, by Godfrey Kneller


    The Relapse, or, Virtue in Danger is a Restoration comedy from 1696 written by John Vanbrugh. The play is a sequel to Colley Cibber's Love's Last Shift, or, The Fool in Fashion.

    In Cibber's Love's Last Shift, a free-living Restoration rake is brought to repentance and reform by the ruses of his wife, while in The Relapse, the rake succumbs again to temptation and has a new love affair. His virtuous wife is also subjected to a determined seduction attempt, and resists with difficulty. (Full article...)
  • Image 10 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; Edward Abbey in particular deemed her Thoreau's "true heir". (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; Edward Abbey in particular deemed her Thoreau's "true heir". (Full article...)
  • Image 11 A Vindication of the Rights of Men, in a Letter to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke; Occasioned by His Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) is a political pamphlet, written by the 18th-century British writer and women's rights advocate Mary Wollstonecraft, which attacks aristocracy and advocates republicanism. Wollstonecraft's was the first response in a pamphlet war sparked by the publication of Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), a defense of constitutional monarchy, aristocracy, and the Church of England. Wollstonecraft attacked not only hereditary privilege, but also the rhetoric that Burke used to defend it. Most of Burke's detractors deplored what they viewed as his theatrical pity for Marie Antoinette, but Wollstonecraft was unique in her love of Burke's gendered language. By saying the sublime and the beautiful, terms first established by Burke himself in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1756), she kept his rhetoric as well as his argument. In her first unabashedly feminist critique, which Wollstonecraft scholar Claudia Johnson describes as unsurpassed in its argumentative force, Wollstonecraft indicts Burke's justification of an equal society founded on the passivity of women. (Full article...)

    A Vindication of the Rights of Men, in a Letter to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke; Occasioned by His Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) is a political pamphlet, written by the 18th-century British writer and women's rights advocate Mary Wollstonecraft, which attacks aristocracy and advocates republicanism. Wollstonecraft's was the first response in a pamphlet war sparked by the publication of Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), a defense of constitutional monarchy, aristocracy, and the Church of England.

    Wollstonecraft attacked not only hereditary privilege, but also the rhetoric that Burke used to defend it. Most of Burke's detractors deplored what they viewed as his theatrical pity for Marie Antoinette, but Wollstonecraft was unique in her love of Burke's gendered language. By saying the sublime and the beautiful, terms first established by Burke himself in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1756), she kept his rhetoric as well as his argument. In her first unabashedly feminist critique, which Wollstonecraft scholar Claudia Johnson describes as unsurpassed in its argumentative force, Wollstonecraft indicts Burke's justification of an equal society founded on the passivity of women. (Full article...)
  • Image 12 First edition cover The Story of Miss Moppet is a story that was written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter, and published by Frederick Warne & Co for the 1906 Christmas season. The story is a tale about teasing featuring a kitten and a mouse. 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...)

    First edition cover

    The Story of Miss Moppet is a story that was written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter, and published by Frederick Warne & Co for the 1906 Christmas season. The story is a tale about teasing featuring a kitten and a mouse. 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...)
  • Image 13 Night is a 1960 memoir by Elie Wiesel based on his Holocaust experiences with his father in the Nazi German concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald in 1944–1945, toward the end of the Second World War in Europe. In just over 100 pages of sparse and fragmented narrative, Wiesel writes about his loss of faith and increasing disgust with humanity, recounting his experiences from the Nazi-established ghettos in his hometown of Sighet, Romania, to his migration through multiple concentration camps. The typical parent–child relationship is inverted as his father dwindled in the camps to a helpless state while Wiesel himself became his teenaged caregiver. His father died in January 1945, taken to the crematory after deteriorating from dysentery and a beating while Wiesel lay silently on the bunk above him for fear of being beaten too. The memoir ends shortly after the United States Army liberated Buchenwald in April 1945. After the war, Wiesel moved to Paris and in 1954 completed an 862-page manuscript in Yiddish about his experiences, published in Argentina as the 245-page Un di velt hot geshvign (Yiddish: און די װעלט האט געשװיגן, lit. 'And the World Remained Silent'). The novelist François Mauriac helped him find a French publisher. Les Éditions de Minuit published 178 pages as La Nuit in 1958, and in 1960 Hill & Wang in New York published a 116-page translation as Night. (Full article...)
    Night is a 1960 memoir by Elie Wiesel based on his Holocaust experiences with his father in the Nazi German concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald in 1944–1945, toward the end of the Second World War in Europe. In just over 100 pages of sparse and fragmented narrative, Wiesel writes about his loss of faith and increasing disgust with humanity, recounting his experiences from the Nazi-established ghettos in his hometown of Sighet, Romania, to his migration through multiple concentration camps. The typical parent–child relationship is inverted as his father dwindled in the camps to a helpless state while Wiesel himself became his teenaged caregiver. His father died in January 1945, taken to the crematory after deteriorating from dysentery and a beating while Wiesel lay silently on the bunk above him for fear of being beaten too. The memoir ends shortly after the United States Army liberated Buchenwald in April 1945.

    After the war, Wiesel moved to Paris and in 1954 completed an 862-page manuscript in Yiddish about his experiences, published in Argentina as the 245-page Un di velt hot geshvign (Yiddish: און די װעלט האט געשװיגן, lit. 'And the World Remained Silent'). The novelist François Mauriac helped him find a French publisher. Les Éditions de Minuit published 178 pages as La Nuit in 1958, and in 1960 Hill & Wang in New York published a 116-page translation as Night. (Full article...)
  • Image 14 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...)

    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...)
  • Image 15 Title page from the first edition of A Voyage Round the World 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...)

    Title page from the first edition of A Voyage Round the World

    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...)
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  • Image 1 United Kingdom Election Results is an e-book and former website written by David Boothroyd, first published in 1994. Boothroyd also wrote The History of British Political Parties, published in 2001. The website includes material about elections in the United Kingdom, including election results, resources for further information and links to relevant websites. Boothroyd used a minimalist approach for the site's design, avoiding "flashy graphics" and placing an emphasis on "authoritative unbiased information". Boothroyd's website has been cited by several organisations and authors, including the United Nations Development Programme and the Parliament of Australia. Boothroyd's site is listed as a resource by the website of the Parliamentary Library of the Parliament of Australia, and the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law at The University of New South Wales. The Data & Information Services Center of the University of Wisconsin said that Boothroyd maintains "an emphasis on including the entire range of parties", and The University of York library said that the "site maintained by David Boothroyd provides detailed results data for all UK Parliamentary Elections since 1983". (Full article...)
    United Kingdom Election Results is an e-book and former website written by David Boothroyd, first published in 1994. Boothroyd also wrote The History of British Political Parties, published in 2001. The website includes material about elections in the United Kingdom, including election results, resources for further information and links to relevant websites. Boothroyd used a minimalist approach for the site's design, avoiding "flashy graphics" and placing an emphasis on "authoritative unbiased information".

    Boothroyd's website has been cited by several organisations and authors, including the United Nations Development Programme and the Parliament of Australia. Boothroyd's site is listed as a resource by the website of the Parliamentary Library of the Parliament of Australia, and the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law at The University of New South Wales. The Data & Information Services Center of the University of Wisconsin said that Boothroyd maintains "an emphasis on including the entire range of parties", and The University of York library said that the "site maintained by David Boothroyd provides detailed results data for all UK Parliamentary Elections since 1983". (Full article...)
  • Image 2 Against the Giants is an adventure module written by Gary Gygax and published by TSR in 1981 for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. It combines the G series of modules previously published in 1978: Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl, and Hall of the Fire Giant King. All three were produced for use with the 1st edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules. In 1999, to recognize the 25th anniversary of TSR, the company released an updated version, Against the Giants: The Liberation of Geoff. Later in 1999, Wizards of the Coast published a novelization of Against the Giants by Ru Emerson. The plot of each of the three original modules focuses on a different type of evil giant. Each can be played as a standalone adventure, or as a series. In Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, a tribe of hill giants have been raiding lands occupied by humans, and the humans hire the player characters to defeat them. Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl pits the player characters against the evil Jarl of the frost giants. Hall of the Fire Giant King concludes the series, this time against a group of fire giants. The first two modules disclose the existence of a secret force behind the giants, which in the third module is revealed to be evil drow elves. The plot involving the drow continues in four additional modules printed between 1978 and 1980. (Full article...)
    Against the Giants is an adventure module written by Gary Gygax and published by TSR in 1981 for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. It combines the G series of modules previously published in 1978: Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl, and Hall of the Fire Giant King. All three were produced for use with the 1st edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules. In 1999, to recognize the 25th anniversary of TSR, the company released an updated version, Against the Giants: The Liberation of Geoff. Later in 1999, Wizards of the Coast published a novelization of Against the Giants by Ru Emerson.

    The plot of each of the three original modules focuses on a different type of evil giant. Each can be played as a standalone adventure, or as a series. In Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, a tribe of hill giants have been raiding lands occupied by humans, and the humans hire the player characters to defeat them. Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl pits the player characters against the evil Jarl of the frost giants. Hall of the Fire Giant King concludes the series, this time against a group of fire giants. The first two modules disclose the existence of a secret force behind the giants, which in the third module is revealed to be evil drow elves. The plot involving the drow continues in four additional modules printed between 1978 and 1980. (Full article...)
  • Image 3 The beginning of the Libellus responsionum in an eighth-century canon law manuscript (Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, HB VI 113, fol. 166r) The Libellus responsionum (Latin for "little book of answers") is a papal letter (also known as a papal rescript or decretal) written in 601 by Pope Gregory I to Augustine of Canterbury in response to several of Augustine's questions regarding the nascent church in Anglo-Saxon England. The Libellus was reproduced in its entirety by Bede in his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, whence it was transmitted widely in the Middle Ages, and where it is still most often encountered by students and historians today. Before it was ever transmitted in Bede's Historia, however, the Libellus circulated as part of several different early medieval canon law collections, often in the company of texts of a penitential nature. The authenticity of the Libellus (notwithstanding Boniface's suspicions, on which see below) was not called into serious question until the mid-twentieth century, when several historians forwarded the hypothesis that the document had been concocted in England in the early eighth century. It has since been shown, however, that this hypothesis was based on incomplete evidence and historical misapprehensions. In particular, twentieth-century scholarship focused on the presence in the Libellus of what appeared to be an impossibly lax rule regarding consanguinity and marriage, a rule that (it was thought) Gregory could not possibly have endorsed. It is now known that this rule is not in fact as lax as historians had thought, and moreover that the rule is fully consistent with Gregory's style and mode of thought. Today, Gregory I's authorship of the Libellus is generally accepted. The question of authenticity aside, manuscript and textual evidence indicates that the document was being transmitted in Italy by perhaps as early as the beginning of the seventh century (i.e. shortly after Gregory I's death in 604), and in England by the end of the same century. (Full article...)

    The beginning of the Libellus responsionum in an eighth-century canon law manuscript (Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, HB VI 113, fol. 166r)

    The Libellus responsionum (Latin for "little book of answers") is a papal letter (also known as a papal rescript or decretal) written in 601 by Pope Gregory I to Augustine of Canterbury in response to several of Augustine's questions regarding the nascent church in Anglo-Saxon England. The Libellus was reproduced in its entirety by Bede in his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, whence it was transmitted widely in the Middle Ages, and where it is still most often encountered by students and historians today. Before it was ever transmitted in Bede's Historia, however, the Libellus circulated as part of several different early medieval canon law collections, often in the company of texts of a penitential nature.

    The authenticity of the Libellus (notwithstanding Boniface's suspicions, on which see below) was not called into serious question until the mid-twentieth century, when several historians forwarded the hypothesis that the document had been concocted in England in the early eighth century. It has since been shown, however, that this hypothesis was based on incomplete evidence and historical misapprehensions. In particular, twentieth-century scholarship focused on the presence in the Libellus of what appeared to be an impossibly lax rule regarding consanguinity and marriage, a rule that (it was thought) Gregory could not possibly have endorsed. It is now known that this rule is not in fact as lax as historians had thought, and moreover that the rule is fully consistent with Gregory's style and mode of thought. Today, Gregory I's authorship of the Libellus is generally accepted. The question of authenticity aside, manuscript and textual evidence indicates that the document was being transmitted in Italy by perhaps as early as the beginning of the seventh century (i.e. shortly after Gregory I's death in 604), and in England by the end of the same century. (Full article...)
  • Image 4 Growing Up Absurd is a 1960 book by Paul Goodman on the relationship between American juvenile delinquency and societal opportunities to fulfill natural needs. Contrary to the then-popular view that juvenile delinquents should be led to respect societal norms, Goodman argued that young American men were justified in their disaffection because their society lacked the preconditions for growing up, such as consideration and self-respect, meaningful work, honorable community, sexual freedom, and spiritual sustenance. Goodman's book drew from his prior works, psychotherapy practice, and personal experiences and relations in New York City. The small New York press that originally commissioned the book asked Goodman to return his advance when the resulting book, written in late 1959, focused less on the commissioned subject of city youth gangs than on the American culture and value systems in which the youth were raised. Nineteen publishers rejected Growing Up Absurd before Norman Podhoretz used selections from the book to relaunch his magazine, Commentary. After Podhoretz encouraged Random House publisher Jason Epstein to reconsider the book, Goodman had a contract the next day. Random House published Growing Up Absurd in 1960 and a Vintage Books paperback edition followed two years later. (Full article...)
    Growing Up Absurd is a 1960 book by Paul Goodman on the relationship between American juvenile delinquency and societal opportunities to fulfill natural needs. Contrary to the then-popular view that juvenile delinquents should be led to respect societal norms, Goodman argued that young American men were justified in their disaffection because their society lacked the preconditions for growing up, such as consideration and self-respect, meaningful work, honorable community, sexual freedom, and spiritual sustenance.

    Goodman's book drew from his prior works, psychotherapy practice, and personal experiences and relations in New York City. The small New York press that originally commissioned the book asked Goodman to return his advance when the resulting book, written in late 1959, focused less on the commissioned subject of city youth gangs than on the American culture and value systems in which the youth were raised. Nineteen publishers rejected Growing Up Absurd before Norman Podhoretz used selections from the book to relaunch his magazine, Commentary. After Podhoretz encouraged Random House publisher Jason Epstein to reconsider the book, Goodman had a contract the next day. Random House published Growing Up Absurd in 1960 and a Vintage Books paperback edition followed two years later. (Full article...)
  • Image 5 What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions is a 2014 non-fiction book by Randall Munroe in which the author answers hypothetical science questions sent to him by readers of his webcomic, xkcd. The book contains a selection of questions and answers originally published on his blog What If?, along with several new ones. The book is divided into several dozen chapters, most of which are devoted to answering a unique question. What If? was released on September 2, 2014, and was received positively by critics. A sequel to the book, titled What If? 2, was released on September 13, 2022. (Full article...)
    What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions is a 2014 non-fiction book by Randall Munroe in which the author answers hypothetical science questions sent to him by readers of his webcomic, xkcd. The book contains a selection of questions and answers originally published on his blog What If?, along with several new ones. The book is divided into several dozen chapters, most of which are devoted to answering a unique question. What If? was released on September 2, 2014, and was received positively by critics. A sequel to the book, titled What If? 2, was released on September 13, 2022. (Full article...)
  • Image 6 A Glimpse of Hell: The Explosion on the USS Iowa and Its Cover-Up is a nonfiction book of investigative journalism, written by Charles C. Thompson II and published in 1999. The book describes the USS Iowa turret explosion that took place on April 19, 1989, and the subsequent investigations that tried to determine the cause. The explosion aboard the United States Navy battleship Iowa killed 47 of the turret's crewmen. Soon after the explosion, Thompson was informed by an Iowa crewman that the Navy was conducting a dishonest investigation into the cause of the tragedy. Thompson, a producer for the television newsmagazine 60 Minutes, later produced several television reports which disputed the Navy's conclusions as to what had caused the explosion. (Full article...)
    A Glimpse of Hell: The Explosion on the USS Iowa and Its Cover-Up is a nonfiction book of investigative journalism, written by Charles C. Thompson II and published in 1999. The book describes the USS Iowa turret explosion that took place on April 19, 1989, and the subsequent investigations that tried to determine the cause. The explosion aboard the United States Navy battleship Iowa killed 47 of the turret's crewmen.

    Soon after the explosion, Thompson was informed by an Iowa crewman that the Navy was conducting a dishonest investigation into the cause of the tragedy. Thompson, a producer for the television newsmagazine 60 Minutes, later produced several television reports which disputed the Navy's conclusions as to what had caused the explosion. (Full article...)
  • Image 7 The title page of a 16th century Ming print of the Zuo Zhuan 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...)

    The title page of a 16th century Ming print of the Zuo Zhuan

    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...)
  • Image 8 Songs by George Harrison is a book of song lyrics and commentary by English musician George Harrison, with illustrations by New Zealand artist Keith West. It was published in February 1988, in a limited run of 2500 copies, by Genesis Publications, and included an EP of rare or previously unreleased Harrison recordings. Intended as a luxury item, each copy was hand-bound and boxed, and available only by direct order through Genesis in England. The book contains the lyrics to 60 Harrison compositions, the themes of which West represents visually with watercolour paintings. Starting in 1985, Harrison and West worked on the project for two years, during which Harrison returned to music-making with his album Cloud Nine, after focusing on film production for much of the early 1980s. The book includes a foreword by his Cloud Nine co-producer, Jeff Lynne, and a written contribution from Elton John. The musical disc contains three songs that Warner Bros. Records had rejected in 1980 for inclusion on Harrison's album Somewhere in England, together with a live version of his Beatles track "For You Blue". This last song was recorded during Harrison's controversial 1974 North American tour, when his singing was marred by the effects of laryngitis; it remains the only vocal performance from that tour to have been made available outside of concert bootlegs. While "Lay His Head" was issued as the B-side to his 1987 single "Got My Mind Set on You", the Songs by George Harrison EP remains the sole official release for this live version of "For You Blue" and for the studio tracks "Sat Singing" and "Flying Hour". (Full article...)
    Songs by George Harrison is a book of song lyrics and commentary by English musician George Harrison, with illustrations by New Zealand artist Keith West. It was published in February 1988, in a limited run of 2500 copies, by Genesis Publications, and included an EP of rare or previously unreleased Harrison recordings. Intended as a luxury item, each copy was hand-bound and boxed, and available only by direct order through Genesis in England. The book contains the lyrics to 60 Harrison compositions, the themes of which West represents visually with watercolour paintings. Starting in 1985, Harrison and West worked on the project for two years, during which Harrison returned to music-making with his album Cloud Nine, after focusing on film production for much of the early 1980s. The book includes a foreword by his Cloud Nine co-producer, Jeff Lynne, and a written contribution from Elton John.

    The musical disc contains three songs that Warner Bros. Records had rejected in 1980 for inclusion on Harrison's album Somewhere in England, together with a live version of his Beatles track "For You Blue". This last song was recorded during Harrison's controversial 1974 North American tour, when his singing was marred by the effects of laryngitis; it remains the only vocal performance from that tour to have been made available outside of concert bootlegs. While "Lay His Head" was issued as the B-side to his 1987 single "Got My Mind Set on You", the Songs by George Harrison EP remains the sole official release for this live version of "For You Blue" and for the studio tracks "Sat Singing" and "Flying Hour". (Full article...)
  • Image 9 A Community of Witches: Contemporary Neo-Paganism and Witchcraft in the United States is a sociological study of the Wiccan and wider Pagan community in the Northeastern United States. It was written by American sociologist Helen A. Berger of the West Chester University of Pennsylvania and first published in 1999 by the University of South Carolina Press. It was released as a part of a series of academic books entitled Studies in Comparative Religion, edited by Frederick M. Denny, a religious studies scholar at the University of Chicago. Berger became interested in studying the Wiccan and Pagan movement in 1986, when she presented a lecture on the subject at the Boston Public Library. Subsequently, becoming acquainted with members of the New England Pagan community, she undertook fieldwork in both a local Wiccan coven, the Circle of Light, and a wider Pagan organisation, the EarthSpirit Community (ESC). In total, Berger underwent 11 years of fieldwork among the Pagan community. Along with ESC founder Andras Corban Arthen, Berger also undertook a "Pagan Census" survey of the U.S. in the mid-1990s to obtain more data on the country's Pagan community. (Full article...)
    A Community of Witches: Contemporary Neo-Paganism and Witchcraft in the United States is a sociological study of the Wiccan and wider Pagan community in the Northeastern United States. It was written by American sociologist Helen A. Berger of the West Chester University of Pennsylvania and first published in 1999 by the University of South Carolina Press. It was released as a part of a series of academic books entitled Studies in Comparative Religion, edited by Frederick M. Denny, a religious studies scholar at the University of Chicago.

    Berger became interested in studying the Wiccan and Pagan movement in 1986, when she presented a lecture on the subject at the Boston Public Library. Subsequently, becoming acquainted with members of the New England Pagan community, she undertook fieldwork in both a local Wiccan coven, the Circle of Light, and a wider Pagan organisation, the EarthSpirit Community (ESC). In total, Berger underwent 11 years of fieldwork among the Pagan community. Along with ESC founder Andras Corban Arthen, Berger also undertook a "Pagan Census" survey of the U.S. in the mid-1990s to obtain more data on the country's Pagan community. (Full article...)
  • Image 10 The Diamond Smugglers is a non-fiction book by Ian Fleming that was first published in the United Kingdom by Jonathan Cape on 29 November 1957. The book is based on two weeks of interviews Fleming undertook with John Collard, a member of the International Diamond Security Organisation (IDSO) and a former member of MI5; the IDSO was headed by Sir Percy Sillitoe, the ex-head of MI5 who worked for the diamond company De Beers. The IDSO was formed by Sillitoe to combat the smuggling of diamonds from Africa, where it was estimated that £10 million worth of gems were being smuggled every year out of South Africa alone. The book expands upon a series of articles Fleming wrote for The Sunday Times in 1957. (Full article...)
    The Diamond Smugglers is a non-fiction book by Ian Fleming that was first published in the United Kingdom by Jonathan Cape on 29 November 1957. The book is based on two weeks of interviews Fleming undertook with John Collard, a member of the International Diamond Security Organisation (IDSO) and a former member of MI5; the IDSO was headed by Sir Percy Sillitoe, the ex-head of MI5 who worked for the diamond company De Beers.

    The IDSO was formed by Sillitoe to combat the smuggling of diamonds from Africa, where it was estimated that £10 million worth of gems were being smuggled every year out of South Africa alone. The book expands upon a series of articles Fleming wrote for The Sunday Times in 1957. (Full article...)
  • Image 11 Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients is a book by the British physician and academic Ben Goldacre about the pharmaceutical industry, its relationship with the medical profession, and the extent to which it controls academic research into its own products. It was published in the UK in September 2012 by the Fourth Estate imprint of HarperCollins, and in the United States in February 2013 by Faber and Faber. Goldacre argues in the book that "the whole edifice of medicine is broken", because the evidence on which it is based is systematically distorted by the pharmaceutical industry. He writes that the industry finances most of the clinical trials into its own products and much of doctors' continuing education, that clinical trials are often conducted on small groups of unrepresentative subjects and negative data is routinely withheld, and that apparently independent academic papers may be planned and even ghostwritten by pharmaceutical companies or their contractors, without disclosure. Describing the situation as a "murderous disaster", he makes suggestions for action by patients' groups, physicians, academics and the industry itself. (Full article...)
    Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients is a book by the British physician and academic Ben Goldacre about the pharmaceutical industry, its relationship with the medical profession, and the extent to which it controls academic research into its own products. It was published in the UK in September 2012 by the Fourth Estate imprint of HarperCollins, and in the United States in February 2013 by Faber and Faber.

    Goldacre argues in the book that "the whole edifice of medicine is broken", because the evidence on which it is based is systematically distorted by the pharmaceutical industry. He writes that the industry finances most of the clinical trials into its own products and much of doctors' continuing education, that clinical trials are often conducted on small groups of unrepresentative subjects and negative data is routinely withheld, and that apparently independent academic papers may be planned and even ghostwritten by pharmaceutical companies or their contractors, without disclosure. Describing the situation as a "murderous disaster", he makes suggestions for action by patients' groups, physicians, academics and the industry itself. (Full article...)
  • Image 12 "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" was a 1936 lecture given by J. R. R. Tolkien on literary criticism on the Old English heroic epic poem Beowulf. It was first published as a paper in the Proceedings of the British Academy, and has since been reprinted in many collections. Tolkien argues that the original poem has almost been lost under the weight of the scholarship on it; that Beowulf must be seen as a poem, not just as a historical document; and that the quality of its verse and its structure give it a powerful effect. He rebuts suggestions that the poem is an epic or exciting narrative, likening it instead to a strong masonry structure built of blocks that fit together. He points out that the poem's theme is a serious one, mortality, and that the poem is in two parts: the first on Beowulf as a young man, defeating Grendel and his mother; the second on Beowulf in old age, going to his death fighting the dragon. (Full article...)
    "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" was a 1936 lecture given by J. R. R. Tolkien on literary criticism on the Old English heroic epic poem Beowulf. It was first published as a paper in the Proceedings of the British Academy, and has since been reprinted in many collections.

    Tolkien argues that the original poem has almost been lost under the weight of the scholarship on it; that Beowulf must be seen as a poem, not just as a historical document; and that the quality of its verse and its structure give it a powerful effect. He rebuts suggestions that the poem is an epic or exciting narrative, likening it instead to a strong masonry structure built of blocks that fit together. He points out that the poem's theme is a serious one, mortality, and that the poem is in two parts: the first on Beowulf as a young man, defeating Grendel and his mother; the second on Beowulf in old age, going to his death fighting the dragon. (Full article...)
  • Image 13 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...)

    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...)
  • Image 14 Madonna: An Intimate Biography is a book by American author J. Randy Taraborrelli, chronicling the life of American singer Madonna. The book was released in April 2001 by Sidgwick & Jackson in the United Kingdom, and in the United States by Simon & Schuster in August 2001. Taraborrelli first considered writing the book in 1990, but, realizing the project might be premature in respect to Madonna's fledgling career, set it aside. He began writing the book in 1996, when Madonna gave birth to her daughter Lourdes. Other books about Madonna's life and career had been based on previously published material, but Taraborrelli's biography was the result of research spanning a decade and includes exclusive interviews with Madonna's close friends, business associates, family members, and her father, Tony Ciccone. These interviews were conducted by the author himself, as well as his team of private investigators. Taraborrelli also interviewed Madonna over the course of years, and often drew from his first-hand experiences while writing the book. Madonna: An Intimate Biography received a mixed response from critics. Some considered it a compelling piece on Madonna's life, while others thought Taraborrelli's writing was unprofessional. (Full article...)
    Madonna: An Intimate Biography is a book by American author J. Randy Taraborrelli, chronicling the life of American singer Madonna. The book was released in April 2001 by Sidgwick & Jackson in the United Kingdom, and in the United States by Simon & Schuster in August 2001. Taraborrelli first considered writing the book in 1990, but, realizing the project might be premature in respect to Madonna's fledgling career, set it aside. He began writing the book in 1996, when Madonna gave birth to her daughter Lourdes.

    Other books about Madonna's life and career had been based on previously published material, but Taraborrelli's biography was the result of research spanning a decade and includes exclusive interviews with Madonna's close friends, business associates, family members, and her father, Tony Ciccone. These interviews were conducted by the author himself, as well as his team of private investigators. Taraborrelli also interviewed Madonna over the course of years, and often drew from his first-hand experiences while writing the book. Madonna: An Intimate Biography received a mixed response from critics. Some considered it a compelling piece on Madonna's life, while others thought Taraborrelli's writing was unprofessional. (Full article...)
  • Image 15 Title page of the 10th volume, 1763 The Histoire Naturelle, générale et particulière, avec la description du Cabinet du Roi (French: [istwaʁ natyʁɛl]; English: Natural History, General and Particular, with a Description of the King's Cabinet) is an encyclopaedic collection of 36 large (quarto) volumes written between 1749–1804, initially by the Comte de Buffon, and continued in eight more volumes after his death (in 1788) by his colleagues, led by Bernard Germain de Lacépède. The books cover what was known of the "natural sciences" at the time, including what would now be called material science, physics, chemistry and technology as well as the natural history of animals. The early volumes (IV to XV) are on quadrupeds. The next group (XVI to XXIV) are on birds, followed by a group on minerals (XXV to XXIX). There followed a group of supplements on geology and related subjects, with additional quadrupeds (XXX to XXXVI). Further supplements covered the reptiles (XXXVII to XXXVIII) and fishes (XXXIX to XXXXIII). Finally there was a volume on cetaceans (XXXXIV). The work was republished in various editions in France, and was translated into languages including English, German, Swedish, Italian, and Russian. (Full article...)

    Title page of the 10th volume, 1763

    The Histoire Naturelle, générale et particulière, avec la description du Cabinet du Roi (French: [istwaʁ natyʁɛl]; English: Natural History, General and Particular, with a Description of the King's Cabinet) is an encyclopaedic collection of 36 large (quarto) volumes written between 1749–1804, initially by the Comte de Buffon, and continued in eight more volumes after his death (in 1788) by his colleagues, led by Bernard Germain de Lacépède. The books cover what was known of the "natural sciences" at the time, including what would now be called material science, physics, chemistry and technology as well as the natural history of animals.

    The early volumes (IV to XV) are on quadrupeds. The next group (XVI to XXIV) are on birds, followed by a group on minerals (XXV to XXIX). There followed a group of supplements on geology and related subjects, with additional quadrupeds (XXX to XXXVI). Further supplements covered the reptiles (XXXVII to XXXVIII) and fishes (XXXIX to XXXXIII). Finally there was a volume on cetaceans (XXXXIV). The work was republished in various editions in France, and was translated into languages including English, German, Swedish, Italian, and Russian. (Full article...)
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