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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...)
Featured articles -
Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.-
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...) -
Lemurs of Madagascar is a reference work and field guide for the lemurs of Madagascar with descriptions and biogeographic data for the known species. The primary contributor is Russell Mittermeier, president of Conservation International, and the cover art and illustrations are drawn by Stephen D. Nash. Currently in its fifth edition published in 2023, the book provides details about all known lemur species, general information about lemurs and their history, and tips for identifying species. Four related pocket field guides have also been released, containing color illustrations of each species, miniature range maps, and species checklists.
The first edition was reviewed favorably in the International Journal of Primatology, Conservation Biology, and Lemur News. Reviewers, including Alison Jolly, praised the book for its depth of coverage, illustrations, and discussion of topics including conservation, evolution, and the recently extinct subfossil lemurs. Each agreed that the book was an excellent resource for a wide audience, including ecotourists and lemur researchers. A lengthy review of the second edition was published in the American Journal of Primatology, where it received similar favorable comments. The third edition was reviewed favorably in Lemur News; the reviewer praised the expanded content of the book but was concerned that the edition was not as portable as its predecessors. (Full article...) -
Boenga Roos dari Tjikembang ([buˈŋa ˈrus daˈri tʃiˈkəmbaŋ]; translated to English as The Rose of Cikembang) is a 1927 vernacular Malay-language novel written by Kwee Tek Hoay. The seventeen-chapter book follows a plantation manager, Aij Tjeng, who must leave his beloved njai (concubine) Marsiti so that he can be married. Eighteen years later, after Aij Tjeng's daughter Lily dies, her fiancé Bian Koen discovers that Marsiti had a daughter with Aij Tjeng, Roosminah, who greatly resembles Lily. In the end Bian Koen and Roosminah are married.
Inspired by the lyrics to the song "If Those Lips Could Only Speak" and William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Boenga Roos dari Tjikembang was initially written as an outline for the stage drama troupe Union Dalia. Kwee intermixed several languages other than Malay, particularly Dutch, Sundanese, and English; he included two quotes from English poems and another from an English song. The novel has been interpreted variously as a promotion of theosophy, a treatise on the Buddhist concept of reincarnation, a call for education, an ode to njais, and a condemnation of how such women are treated. (Full article...) -
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...) -
Cover to the first edition of Gods' Man (1929) by American artist Lynd Ward (1905–1985).
Gods' Man is a wordless novel by American artist Lynd Ward (1905–1985) published in 1929. In 139 captionless woodblock prints, it tells the Faustian story of an artist who signs away his soul for a magic paintbrush. Gods' Man was the first American wordless novel, and is considered a precursor of the graphic novel, whose development it influenced.
Ward first encountered the wordless novel with Frans Masereel's The Sun (1919) while studying art in Germany in 1926. He returned to the United States in 1927 and established a career for himself as an illustrator. He found Otto Nückel's wordless novel Destiny (1926) in New York City in 1929, and it inspired him to create such a work of his own. Gods' Man appeared a week before the Wall Street Crash of 1929; it nevertheless enjoyed strong sales and remains the best-selling American wordless novel. Its success inspired other Americans to experiment with the medium, including cartoonist Milt Gross, who parodied Gods' Man in He Done Her Wrong (1930). In the 1970s, Ward's example of wordless novels inspired cartoonists Art Spiegelman and Will Eisner to create their first graphic novels. (Full article...) -
On the Origin of Species (or, more completely, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life) is a work of scientific literature by Charles Darwin that is considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology. It was published on 24 November 1859. Darwin's book introduced the scientific theory that populations evolve over the course of generations through a process of natural selection, although Lamarckism was also included as a mechanism of lesser importance. The book presented a body of evidence that the diversity of life arose by common descent through a branching pattern of evolution. Darwin included evidence that he had collected on the Beagle expedition in the 1830s and his subsequent findings from research, correspondence, and experimentation.
Various evolutionary ideas had already been proposed to explain new findings in biology. There was growing support for such ideas among dissident anatomists and the general public, but during the first half of the 19th century the English scientific establishment was closely tied to the Church of England, while science was part of natural theology. Ideas about the transmutation of species were controversial as they conflicted with the beliefs that species were unchanging parts of a designed hierarchy and that humans were unique, unrelated to other animals. The political and theological implications were intensely debated, but transmutation was not accepted by the scientific mainstream. (Full article...) -
Office of the Dead, folios 121v–122r; the manuscript's closing leaves
The Black Hours, MS M.493 (or the Morgan Black Hours) is an illuminated book of hours completed in Bruges between 1460 and 1475. It consists of 121 pages (leaves) with Latin text written in Gothic minuscule script. The words are arranged in rows of fourteen lines and follow the Roman version of the texts. The lettering is inscribed in silver and gold and placed within borders ornamented with flowers, foliage and grotesques, on pages dyed a deep blueish black; hence its designation as a Black books of hours. The book contains fourteen full-page miniatures and opens with the months of the liturgical calendar (folios 3 verso – 14 recto), followed by the Hours of the Virgin, and ends with the Office of the Dead (folio 121v).
MS M.493 has been in the collection of the Morgan Library & Museum, New York, since 1912. It is one of seven surviving black books of hours, all originating from Bruges and dated to the mid-to-late 15th century. They are so named for their unusual dark blueish appearance, a colourisation achieved through the expensive process of dyeing the vellum with iron gall ink. This dye is very corrosive and the surviving examples are mostly badly decomposed; MS M.493 is in relatively good condition due to its very thick parchment. (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...) -
Cover of the anonymous play, The True Tragedy of Richard III (1594), which was "to be sold by William Barley, at his shop in Newgate Market"
William Barley (1565?–1614) was an English bookseller and publisher. He completed an apprenticeship as a draper in 1587, but was soon working in the London book trade. As a freeman of the Drapers' Company, he was embroiled in a dispute between it and the Stationers' Company over the rights of drapers to function as publishers and booksellers. He found himself in legal tangles throughout his life.
Barley's role in Elizabethan music publishing has proved to be a contentious issue among scholars. The assessments of him range from "a man of energy, determination, and ambition", to "somewhat remarkable", to "surely to some extent a rather nefarious figure". His contemporaries harshly criticised the quality of two of the first works of music that he published, but he was also influential in his field. (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...) -
An Introduction to Animals and Political Theory is a 2010 textbook by the British political theorist Alasdair Cochrane. It is the first book in the publisher Palgrave Macmillan's Animal Ethics Series, edited by Andrew Linzey and Priscilla Cohn. Cochrane's book examines five schools of political theory—utilitarianism, liberalism, communitarianism, Marxism and feminism—and their respective relationships with questions concerning animal rights and the political status of (non-human) animals. Cochrane concludes that each tradition has something to offer to these issues, but ultimately presents his own account of interest-based animal rights as preferable to any. His account, though drawing from all examined traditions, builds primarily upon liberalism and utilitarianism.
An Introduction was reviewed positively in several academic publications. The political philosopher Steve Cooke said that Cochrane's own approach showed promise, and that the book would have benefited from devoting more space to it. Robert Garner, a political theorist, praised Cochrane's synthesis of such a broad range of literature, but argued that the work was too uncritical of the concept of justice as it might apply to animals. Cochrane's account of interest-based rights for animals was subsequently considered at greater length in his 2012 book Animal Rights Without Liberation, published by Columbia University Press. An Introduction to Animals and Political Theory was one of the first books to explore animals from the perspective of political theory, and became an established part of a literature critical of the topic's traditional neglect. (Full article...) -
Expedition to the Barrier Peaks is a 1980 adventure module for the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game written by Gary Gygax. While Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) is typically a fantasy game, the adventure includes elements of science fiction, and thus belongs to the science fantasy genre. It takes place on a downed spaceship; the ship's crew has died of an unspecified disease, but functioning robots and strange creatures still inhabit the ship. The player characters fight monsters and robots, and gather the futuristic weapons and colored access cards that are necessary for advancing the story.
Expedition to the Barrier Peaks was first played at the Origins II convention in 1976, where it was used to introduce Dungeons & Dragons players to the science fiction game Metamorphosis Alpha. In 1980, TSR published the adventure, updated for first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules. The adventure was not updated for later rules systems, but a Wizards.com article did provide a conversion to Future Tech. It included a separate booklet of illustrations, in both color and black and white. The adventure is an old-time favorite of many Dungeons & Dragons fans, including Stephen Colbert. It was ranked the fifth-best Dungeons & Dragons adventure of all time by Dungeon magazine in 2004, and received positive reviews from White Dwarf and The Space Gamer magazines. The other adventures in the S series include S1 Tomb of Horrors, S2 White Plume Mountain, and S4 The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. (Full article...) -
Wordless novels flourished in Germany in the 1920s and typically were made using woodcut or similar techniques in an Expressionist style. (Frans Masereel, 25 Images of a Man's Passion, 1918)
The wordless novel is a narrative genre that uses sequences of captionless pictures to tell a story. As artists have often made such books using woodcut and other relief printing techniques, the terms woodcut novel or novel in woodcuts are also used. The genre flourished primarily in the 1920s and 1930s and was most popular in Germany.
The wordless novel has its origin in the German Expressionist movement of the early 20th century. The typically socialist work drew inspiration from medieval woodcuts and used the awkward look of that medium to express angst and frustration at social injustice. The first such book was the Belgian Frans Masereel's 25 Images of a Man's Passion, published in 1918. The German Otto Nückel and other artists followed Masereel's example. Lynd Ward brought the genre to the United States in 1929 when he produced Gods' Man, which inspired other American wordless novels and a parody in 1930 by cartoonist Milt Gross with He Done Her Wrong. Following an early-1930s peak in production and popularity, the genre waned in the face of competition from sound films and anti-socialist censorship in Nazi Germany and the US. (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...) -
The Halo Graphic Novel is a graphic novel anthology published by Marvel Comics in partnership with Bungie, set in the universe of the science fiction franchise Halo. The Halo Graphic Novel was the series' first entry into the sequential art medium, and features aspects of the Halo universe which until then had not been discussed or seen in any medium.
The majority of the book is divided into four short stories by different writers and artists from the computer game and comic industries. Each story focuses on different aspects of the Halo universe, revealing stories that are tangential to the main plot of the game. Apart from the stories, the book also contains an extensive art gallery compiled of contributions from Bungie, Marvel and independent sources. (Full article...)
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Selected picture
Credit: Diliff
A library is a collection of information, sources, resources, and services: it is organized for use and maintained by a public body, an institution, or a private individual. In the more traditional sense, a library is a collection of books.
More Did you know (auto generated)
- ... that the doll company American Girl published The Care and Keeping of You, a book explaining puberty, after receiving thousands of letters from children asking about it?
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- ... that artist Isaac Sailmaker (painting shown) was referred to in contemporary journals and books as "the father of British sea painting"?
- ... that the murder of Wang Lianying was followed by a blitz of newspaper coverage, books, stage performances, a film, and songs (example featured)?
- ... that Sonia Levitin was inspired to write Boom Town after reading about a California girl who baked $11,000 worth of pies during the Gold Rush?
- ... that artist Tove Jansson based the children's book character Snufkin on a political philosopher whom she had dated?
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The War Within: A Secret White House History (2006–2008) is a non-fiction book by Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward that was released by publisher Simon & Schuster on September 8, 2008. It is the fifteenth book written by Woodward, the fourth in a series of books about President George W. Bush and his administration's foreign policy including Bush at War, Plan of Attack, and State of Denial. The book discusses the debate within the administration about the controversial Iraq "surge" strategy implemented in 2007. Simon & Schuster editor Alice Mayhew said in an official statement that "There has not been such an authoritative and intimate account of presidential decision making since the Nixon tapes and the Pentagon Papers. This is the declassification of what went on in secret, behind the scenes." (Full article...) -
The Jungle Book is an 1894 collection of stories by the English author Rudyard Kipling. Most of the characters are animals such as Shere Khan the tiger and Baloo the bear, though a principal character is the boy or "man-cub" Mowgli, who is raised in the jungle by wolves. Most stories are set in a forest in India; one place mentioned repeatedly is "Seeonee" (Seoni), in the central
state of Madhya Pradesh.
A major theme in the book is abandonment followed by fostering, as in the life of Mowgli, echoing Kipling's own childhood. The theme is echoed in the triumph of protagonists including Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and The White Seal over their enemies, as well as Mowgli's. Another important theme is of law and freedom; the stories are not about animal behaviour, still less about the Darwinian struggle for survival, but about human archetypes in animal form. They teach respect for authority, obedience, and knowing one's place in society with "the law of the jungle", but the stories also illustrate the freedom to move between different worlds, such as when Mowgli moves between the jungle and the village. Critics have also noted the essential wildness and lawless energies in the stories, reflecting the irresponsible side of human nature. (Full article...) -
Palmetto Leaves is a memoir and travel guide written by Harriet Beecher Stowe about her winters in the town of Mandarin, Florida, published in 1873. Already famous for having written Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Stowe came to Florida after the U.S. Civil War (1861–1865). She purchased a plantation near Jacksonville as a place for her son to recover from the injuries he had received as a Union soldier and to make a new start in life. After visiting him, she became so enamored with the region she purchased a cottage and orange grove for herself and wintered there until 1884, even though the plantation failed within its first year. Parts of Palmetto Leaves appeared in a newspaper published by Stowe's brother, as a series of letters and essays about life in northeast Florida.
Scion of New England clergy, Stowe keenly felt a sense of Christian responsibility that was expressed in her letters. She considered it her duty to help improve the lives of newly emancipated blacks and detailed her efforts to establish a school and church in Mandarin toward these ends. Parts of the book relate the lives of local African-Americans and the customs of their society. Stowe described the charm of the region and its generally moderate climate but warned readers of "excessive" heat in the summer months and occasional cold snaps in winter. Her audience comprises relatives, friends, and strangers in New England who ask her advice about whether or not to move to Florida, which at the time was still mostly wilderness. Although it is a minor work in Stowe's oeuvre, Palmetto Leaves was one of the first travel guides written about Florida and stimulated Florida's first boom of tourism and residential development in the 1880s. (Full article...) -
Hatha Yoga: The Report of a Personal Experience is a 1943 book by Theos Casimir Bernard describing what he learnt of hatha yoga, ostensibly in India. It is one of the first books in English to describe and illustrate a substantial number of yoga poses (asanas); it describes the yoga purifications (shatkarmas), yoga breathing (pranayama), yogic seals (mudras), and meditative union (samadhi) at a comparable level of detail.
The book has been called an important forerunner of the major guides to modern yoga by B. K. S. Iyengar and others. Scholars including Norman Sjoman and Mark Singleton have considered the book a rare example of a complete yoga system actually being followed, and being evaluated at each stage by a practitioner-scholar. However, Bernard's biographer Douglas Veenhof states that Bernard invented the Indian guru whom he had refused to name, as he had instead apparently been taught by his father. (Full article...) -
Covered Bridges Today is a non-fiction book on the architecture of covered bridges in the United States. The book was written by Brenda Krekeler and published by Daring Books in 1989. Covered Bridges Today is a frequently cited source on the topic of covered bridges and serves as a record of numerous covered bridges that have since been dismantled or demolished since the book's publication. Krekeler's text includes 412 covered bridges in fourteen states with a complete record of all 142 covered bridges in Ohio during its writing in 1986 and 1987. The work has been utilized in numerous citations by later publications including Historic American Engineering Record surveys and New England's Covered Bridges: A Complete Guide, Indiana Covered Bridges and Covered Bridges in Virginia. (Full article...)
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Siddhantasara (pronounced [sɪd'ðantsar]; transl. The Gist of Principles) is a 1889 Gujarati book on the history of philosophy by Indian writer and philosopher Manilal Dwivedi. It is a historical critique of the world's religious philosophies. The book deals with the evolution of religious sentiment and attempts to establish the superiority of the Advaita philosophy over other religious philosophies.
Siddhantasara received positive reviews and became a landmark in the history of Gujarati literature but was also criticised because of the logical lapses and inconsistencies in the author's arguments. Manishankar Bhatt (known as Kavi Kant) published his review as a book titled Siddhantasaranu Avalokan (Analysis of Siddhantasara). Siddhantasara is considered by critics to be Manilal's most important work, and has been seen as a response to the cultural agenda and reform activities of colonial India at the time. (Full article...) -
Kipling in his study in Naulakha ca. 1895
"The Absent-Minded Beggar" is an 1899 poem by Rudyard Kipling, set to music by Sir Arthur Sullivan and often accompanied by an illustration of a wounded but defiant British soldier, "A Gentleman in Kharki", by Richard Caton Woodville Jr. The song was written as part of an appeal by the Daily Mail to raise money for soldiers fighting in the Second Boer War and their families. The fund was the first such charitable effort for a war.
The chorus of the song exhorted its audience to "pass the hat for your credit's sake, and pay– pay– pay!" The patriotic poem and song caused a sensation and were constantly performed throughout the war and beyond. Kipling was offered a knighthood shortly after publication of the poem but declined the honour. Vast numbers of copies of the poem and sheet music were published, and large quantities of related merchandise were sold to aid the charity. The "Absent-Minded Beggar Fund" was an unprecedented success and raised a total of more than £250,000. (Full article...) -
Roots of Yoga is a 2017 book of commentary and translations from over 100 ancient and medieval yoga texts, mainly written in Sanskrit but including several other languages, many not previously published, about the origins of yoga including practices such as āsana, mantra, and meditation, by the scholar-practitioners James Mallinson and Mark Singleton.
Critics unanimously welcomed the book, noting that it was surprising given yoga's popularity that many of its key texts had never before been translated. They described the book as scholarly, unprecedented, and admirably unbiased, making available a wealth of material in far more accessible form than ever before, and revealing yoga to consist of many strands rather than having a single definite philosophy and interpretation. (Full article...) -
Monocrystalline solar cell
The Clean Tech Revolution: The Next Big Growth and Investment Opportunity is a 2007 book by Ron Pernick and Clint Wilder, who say that commercializing clean technologies is a profitable enterprise that is moving steadily into mainstream business. As the world economy faces challenges from energy price spikes, resource shortages, global environmental problems, and security threats, clean technologies are seen to be the next engine of economic growth.
Pernick and Wilder highlight eight major clean technology sectors: solar power, wind power, biofuels, green buildings, personal transportation, the smart grid, mobile applications, and water filtration. Six major forces, which they call the six C's, are pushing clean technology into the mainstream: costs, capital, competition, China, consumers, and climate. Very large corporations such as GE, Toyota and Sharp, and investment firms such as Goldman Sachs are making multibillion-dollar investments in clean technology. (Full article...) -
Title page of De quinque corporibus regularibus
De quinque corporibus regularibus (sometimes called Libellus de quinque corporibus regularibus) is a book on the geometry of polyhedra written in the 1480s or early 1490s by Italian painter and mathematician Piero della Francesca. It is a manuscript, in the Latin language; its title means [the little book] on the five regular solids. It is one of three books known to have been written by della Francesca.
Along with the Platonic solids, De quinque corporibus regularibus includes descriptions of five of the thirteen Archimedean solids, and of several other irregular polyhedra coming from architectural applications. It was the first of what would become many books connecting mathematics to art through the construction and perspective drawing of polyhedra, including Luca Pacioli's 1509 Divina proportione (which incorporated without credit an Italian translation of della Francesca's work). (Full article...) -
Occupy is a short study of the Occupy movement written by the American academic and political activist Noam Chomsky. Initially published in the United States by the Zuccotti Park Press as the first title in their Occupied Media Pamphlet Series in 2012, it was subsequently republished in the United Kingdom by Penguin Books later that year.
An academic linguist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Chomsky first achieved fame for his work as a political activist during the 1960s and 1970s. A libertarian socialist, Chomsky is a prominent critic of capitalism, the role of western media and the foreign policy of the U.S. government, dealing with such issues in bestsellers like Manufacturing Consent (1988), Hegemony or Survival (2003) and Failed States (2006). With the birth of the Occupy Movement – devoted to socio-political change – in 2011, Chomsky became a vocal supporter for the protesters, writing articles and giving speeches on their behalf, several of which were collected together and published as Occupy. (Full article...) -
Education and Democracy: The Meaning of Alexander Meiklejohn, 1872–1964 is the first full biography of Alexander Meiklejohn written by Adam R. Nelson and published by the University of Wisconsin Press in 2001. The title is not a complete biography but draws from five archives to show Meiklejohn through his own words. A popular figure in the early 20th century who has since faded, Meiklejohn was a philosopher and university president who championed unified knowledge, idealism, and Great Books curricula. The book is split into five sections based on the locations in which Meiklejohn lived: his undergrad, faculty, and administrative years at Brown University, his presidency of Amherst College, his time with the University of Wisconsin Experimental College, and his experience with adult education and free speech advocacy at Berkeley. Nelson portrays Meiklejohn as "contradictory, paradoxical, and quixotic" as he grapples with how to encourage students to pursue freedom and how a teacher can teach this while respecting student freedom. (Full article...)
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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...) -
Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism (original Spanish title: Facundo: Civilización y Barbarie) is a book written in 1845 by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, a writer and journalist who became the seventh president of Argentina. It is a cornerstone of Latin American literature: a work of creative non-fiction that helped to define the parameters for thinking about the region's development, modernization, power, and culture. Subtitled Civilization and Barbarism, Facundo contrasts civilization and barbarism as seen in early 19th-century Argentina. Literary critic Roberto González Echevarría calls the work "the most important book written by a Latin American in any discipline or genre".
Facundo describes the life of Juan Facundo Quiroga, a caudillo who had terrorized provincial Argentina in the 1820s and 1830s. Kathleen Ross, one of Facundos English translators, points out that the author also published Facundo to "denounce the tyranny of the Argentine dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas". Juan Manuel de Rosas ruled Argentina from 1829 to 1832 and again from 1835 to 1852; it was because of Rosas that Sarmiento was in exile in Chile, where he wrote the book. Sarmiento sees Rosas as heir to Facundo: both are caudillos and representatives of a barbarism that derives from the nature of the Argentine countryside. As Ross explains, Sarmiento's book is therefore engaged in describing the "Argentine national character, explaining the effects of Argentina's geographical conditions on personality, the 'barbaric' nature of the countryside versus the 'civilizing' influence of the city, and the great future awaiting Argentina when it opened its doors wide to European immigration". ('Full article...) -
Sex, Sin, and Blasphemy: A Guide to America's Censorship Wars is a non-fiction book by lawyer and civil libertarian Marjorie Heins that is about freedom of speech and the censorship of works of art in the early 1990s by the U.S. government. The book was published in 1993 by The New Press. Heins provides an overview of the history of censorship, including the 1873 Comstock laws, and then moves on to more topical case studies of attempts at suppression of free expression.
The book argues that artists have been scapegoated by those advocating censorship, as a method of deflecting debate away from the suppression of human rights. The author asserts that censorship of works deemed obscene has been used as a tactic throughout history to suppress women's rights. Heins argues that even if the perceived negative impacts of pornography, hip hop music, and violent films were factually accurate (and she asserts they are not), the ends would not justify the means of degrading the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. She emphasizes that education should be used to help guard against potentially dangerous notions, instead of censorship and suppression of dissent. (Full article...)
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Selected quote
| “ | A book is a garden you can carry in your pocket. | ” |
| — Arabian proverb | ||
Did you know
- ...that in English language works the table of contents is at the beginning of a book, but in French and Spanish ones it is at the back, by the index?
- ...that print space determines the effective area on the paper of a book, journal or other press work, and is limited by the surrounding borders?
- ...that the craft of bookbinding may have originated around the 1st century A.D.?
General images
The following are images from various book-related articles on Wikipedia.
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Hardbound book spine stitching (from Bookbinding) -
European output of printed books c. 1450–1800 (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 paperback spines (from Bookbinding) -
Scheme of common book design(from Bookbinding)- Belly band
- Flap
- Endpaper
- Book cover
- Head
- Fore edge
- Tail
- Right page, recto
- Left page, verso
- Gutter
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Example of blind tooling a book binding with exquisite detail (from Bookbinding) -
A 15th-century Incunable. Notice the blind-tooled cover, corner bosses, and clasps. (from History of books) -
Chinese Bookseller, illustration, c. 1824 (from History of books) -
Woman holding wax tablets in the form of the codex. Wall painting from Pompeii, before 79 CE. (from History of books) -
Bookbinder's type holder (from Bookbinding) -
Hardbound book with half leather binding (spine and corners) and marbled boards (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 -
Photograph of a printing press in Egypt, c. 1922 (from History of books) -
Three books with different titling orientations:
ascending (left); descending (middle); upright (right) (from Bookbinding) -
A twentieth-century copyright imprint from McLoughlin Bros that features three rams and the copyright year, 1903 (from History of books) -
12-metre-high (40 ft) sculpture of a stack of books at the Berlin Walk of Ideas, commemorating the invention of modern book printing (from History of books) -
Folio from the Shah Jahan Album, c. 1620, depicting the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan (from History of books) -
Book conservators at the State Library of New South Wales, 1943 (from Bookbinding) -
Page spread with J. A. van de Graaf's construction of classical text area (print space) and margin proportions (from Book design) -
Sammelband of three alchemical treatises, bound in Strasbourg by Samuel Emmel c. 1568, showing metal clasps and leather covering of boards (from Bookbinding) -
Cloth book cover with attached paper panel, mimicking half leather binding (from Bookbinding) -
Early medieval bookcase containing about ten codices depicted in the Codex Amiatinus (c. 700) (from Bookbinding) -
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) -
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A Chinese bamboo book, The Art of War, commissioned by the Qianlong Emperor in 18th-century China (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) -
Rebacking saving original spine, showing one volume finished and one untouched (from Bookbinding) -
The intricate frontispiece of the Diamond Sutra from Tang dynasty China, i.e. 868 CE, the oldest known dated printed book in the world (British Library) (from History of books) -
European output of books 500–1800 (from History of books) -
Traditionally sewn book opened flat (from Bookbinding) -
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) -
Page 49 of the Dresden Codex (from History of books) -
Illustration from the Codex Manesse, a German book from the Middle Ages (from History of books) -
Design by Hans Holbein the Younger for a metalwork book cover (or treasure binding) (from Book design) -
Page from a Jain manuscript depicting the birth of Mahavira, c. 1400 (from History of books) -
Decorative binding with figurehead of the 12th century manuscript Liber Landavensis (from Bookbinding) -
A traditional bookbinder at work (from Bookbinding) -
Modern book spine designs (from Bookbinding)
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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) -
Marbled book board from a book published in London in 1872 (from Bookbinding) -
European output of manuscripts 500–1500 (from History of books) -
9th-century Qur'an in Reza Abbasi Museum (from Bookbinding)
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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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