A book is a written work of substantial length created by one or more authors. They can be distributed in various forms such as printed books, audiobooks, and electronic books (ebooks). Books are broadly classified into fiction, which contains invented narratives or other imaginary content, and non-fiction, which contains content intended as factual truth.
The term may also refer to the physical or electronic object containing such a work. Modern books are typically printed in a codex format, composed of many pages bound together and protected by a cover. Before the wide adoption of the modern printing press, codices were used to create handwritten manuscripts. Older writing media include scrolls and clay tablets.
The book publishing process is the series of steps involved in its creation and dissemination, often undertaken in modern times by a commercial publishing company. The publishing industry has recently seen major changes due to new technologies, including ebooks and audiobooks (recordings of books read aloud). Awareness of the needs of people with print disabilities has led to a rise in accessible publishing formats such as braille printing and large-print editions. Google Books estimated in 2010 that roughly 130 million total unique books have been published.
Political Animals and Animal Politics is a 2014 edited collection published by Palgrave Macmillan and edited by the greenpolitical theoristsMarcel 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.
The title of the book is drawn from the dissenting opinion by Supreme Court Associate JusticeOliver 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...)
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...)
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...)
All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes, published in 1986, is the fifth book in African-American writer and poet Maya Angelou's seven-volume autobiography series. Set between 1962 and 1965, the book begins when Angelou is 33 years old, and recounts the years she lived in Accra, Ghana. The book, deriving its title from a Negro spiritual, begins where Angelou's previous memoir, The Heart of a Woman, ends — with the traumatic car accident involving her son Guy — and closes with Angelou returning to America.
As she had started to do in her first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and continued throughout her series, Angelou upholds the long tradition of African-American autobiography. At the same time she makes a deliberate attempt to challenge the usual structure of the autobiography by critiquing, changing, and expanding the genre. Angelou had matured as a writer by the time she wrote Traveling Shoes, to the point that she was able to play with the form and structure of the work. As in her previous books, it consists of a series of anecdotes connected by theme. She depicts her struggle with being the mother of a grown son, and with her place in her new home. (Full article...)
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...)
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 published in 1994 and 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...)
The Autobiography of Malcolm X is an autobiography written by Muslim American minister and activist Malcolm X in collaboration with American journalist Alex Haley. It was released posthumously on October 29, 1965, nine months after his assassination. Haley coauthored the book based on a series of in-depth interviews he conducted between 1963 and 1965. The Autobiography is a religious conversion narrative which outlines Malcolm X's philosophy of Black pride, Black nationalism, and pan-Africanism. After Malcolm X was killed, Haley wrote the book's epilogue, which describes their collaborative process and the events at the end of Malcolm's life.
While Malcolm X and scholars contemporary to its publication regarded Haley as the book's ghostwriter, modern scholars tend to regard him as an essential collaborator who intentionally muted his authorial voice in order to create the effect of Malcolm X speaking directly to readers. Haley influenced some of Malcolm X's stylistic choices. For example, Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam during the period when he was working on the book with Haley. Rather than rewriting earlier chapters as a polemic against the Nation, which Malcolm X had rejected, Haley persuaded him to favor a style of "suspense and drama". According to biographer Manning Marable, "Haley was particularly worried about what he viewed as Malcolm X's anti-Semitism" and rewrote material to eliminate it. (Full article...)
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...)
The Halo Graphic Novel is a 2006 graphic novel anthology published by Marvel Comics in partnership with Bungie, set in the universe of the science fiction franchise Halo. The Halo Graphic Novel was the series' first entry into the sequential art medium, and features aspects of the Halo universe which until then had not been discussed or seen in any medium.
The majority of the book is divided into four short stories by different writers and artists from the computer game and comic industries. Each story focuses on different aspects of the Halo universe, revealing stories that are tangential to the main plot of the game. Apart from the stories, the book also contains an extensive art gallery compiled from contributions from Bungie, Marvel and independent sources. (Full article...)
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 illuminatedbook 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 book 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...)
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...)
The Lives formed part of the Cabinet of Biography in the Cabinet Cyclopaedia. Within the set of ten, the three-volume Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of Italy, Spain and Portugal (1835–37) and the two-volume Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of France (1838–39) consist of biographies of important writers and thinkers of the 14th to 18th centuries. Most of them were written by the Romantic writer Mary Shelley. Shelley's biographies reveal her as a professional woman of letters, contracted to produce several volumes of works and paid well to do so. Her extensive knowledge of history and languages, her ability to tell a gripping biographical narrative, and her interest in the burgeoning field of feministhistoriography are reflected in these works. (Full article...)
Louis Riel is a historical biography in comics by Canadian cartoonist Chester Brown, published as a book in 2003 after serialization in 1999–2003. The story deals with Métis rebel leader Louis Riel's antagonistic relationship with the newly established Canadian government. It begins shortly before the 1869 Red River Rebellion, and ends with Riel's 1885 hanging for high treason. The book explores Riel's possible schizophrenia—he believed God had named him Prophet of the New World, destined to lead the Métis people to freedom.
The work is noted for its emotional disengagement, its intentionally flat dialogue, and a minimalist drawing style inspired by that of Harold Gray's comic strip Little Orphan Annie. Unusual for comics of the time, it includes a full scholarly apparatus: a foreword, index, bibliography, and end notes. The lengthy, hand-lettered appendix provides insight into Brown's creative process and biases and highlights where he changed historical facts to create a more engaging story, such as incorporating a conspiracy theory not widely accepted by historians. Brown became interested in the issue of property rights while researching the book, which led to a public change in his politics from anarchism to libertarianism. (Full article...)
First page of the only surviving manuscript, c. 14th century
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a Middle English late 14th-century chivalric romance in alliterative verse. The author is unknown; the title was given centuries later. It is one of the best-known Arthurian stories, with its plot combining two types of folk motifs: the beheading game and the exchange of winnings. Written in stanzas of alliterative verse, each of which ends in a rhyming bob and wheel, it draws on Welsh, Irish, and English stories, as well as the French chivalric tradition. It is an important example of a chivalric romance, which typically involves a hero who goes on a quest that tests his prowess. It remains popular in modern English renderings from J. R. R. Tolkien, Simon Armitage, and others, as well as through film and stage adaptations.
The story describes how Sir Gawain accepts a challenge from a mysterious "Green Knight" who dares any man to strike him with his axe if he will take a return blow in a year and a day. Gawain accepts and beheads him, after which the Green Knight stands, picks up his head, and reminds Gawain of the appointed time. In his struggles to keep his bargain, Gawain demonstrates chivalry and loyalty until his honour is called into question by a test involving the lord and the lady of the castle at which he is a guest. The poem survives in one manuscript, Cotton Nero A.x., which also includes three religious narrative poems: Pearl, Cleanness, and Patience. All four are written in a North / West Midlands dialect of Middle English, and are thought to be by the same author, dubbed the "Pearl Poet" or "Gawain Poet". (Full article...)
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.
... that Karen Tei Yamashita realized the structure of her novel, I Hotel, by cutting, folding, and writing on ten cardboard cubes, each representing a year in the book?
... that the 1918 book A Garden Flora was published posthumously?
... that Indonesian legislator Alifuddin pushed for the passage of an anti-LGBT "Family Resilience" law in response to the publicization of an incest-fantasy Facebook group?
... that one of the first known books by an Aboriginal Australian author, written by David Unaipon, was not printed under his name for more than 70 years?
... that Crossing a Line compares Palestinian political expression on either side of the Green Line between Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories?
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...)
Dwellers of the Forbidden City is an adventure module, or pre-packaged adventure booklet, ready for use by Dungeon Masters in the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) fantasyrole-playing game. The adventure was first used as a module for tournament play at the 1980 Origins Game Fair, and was later published by TSR in 1981 for use with the first editionAdvanced Dungeons & Dragons rules. The module was written by game designer David "Zeb" Cook, who partly ascribes his hiring by TSR to his work on this module. In the adventure, the characters are hired to recover a stolen object from a hidden oriental-style city ruled by a snake-worshipping cult of yuan-ti and their mongrelmen and tasloi servants.
The module was ranked as the 13th greatest Dungeons & Dragons adventure of all time by Dungeon magazine for the 30th anniversary of the Dungeons & Dragons game in 2004. (Full article...)
The book sets forth several original theories, which can be applied to the practices of filmmaking, the arts, and beyond. Of these the theory of literature as "humanics" and the "seed theory" are the most important ones. Humanics centers on the question of a good and worthy life. In art, it emphasizes truly independent individuals who are capable of transforming society. The seed theory has become essential to North Korean film theory. It seeks to direct all artistic creation through a single ideological foundation, or "seed". In an individual work, the seed is the synthesis of its subject matter and idea and the basis of its propaganda message. These ideas complement the themes of nationalistic form and socialist content of films. Many ideas presented in the book are justifications for the creation of propaganda supporting the Workers' Party of Korea's policies. (Full article...)
Usman began writing the book in 2017 after meeting Dutt to talk about the latter's life and career. He spent eighteen months interviewing people who were close to him, including several of his school friends and teachers at The Lawrence School, Sanawar, police officers and co-inmates when he was jailed, as well as politicians, filmmakers, and co-stars. He also watched all of Dutt's films, and collected books, magazines, journals and interviews with him. (Full article...)
Traister began writing about the presidential election while working as a political columnist for Salon; her coverage for Salon provided much of the book's content. Traister aimed to write an account of the election through a feminist perspective, centred on the events that she felt were otherwise underreported in the media. The book was generally well received by critics. (Full article...)
The book is an extensive work of investigative journalism, written in the form of an encompassing time line; the events that shaped the epidemic are presented as sequential matter-of-fact summaries. Shilts describes the impact and the politics involved in battling the disease on particular individuals in the gay, medical, and political communities. Shilts begins his discussion in 1977 with the first confirmed case of AIDS, that of Grethe Rask, a Danish doctor working in Africa. He ends with the announcement by actor Rock Hudson in 1985 that he was dying of AIDS, when international attention on the disease exploded. (Full article...)
Giovanni da Verrazano The Cèllere Codex (officially, Del Viaggio del Verrazzano Nobile Fiorentino al Servizio di Francesco I, Ri de Francia, fatto nel 1524 all'America Settentrionale, alsoMorgan MS. MA. 776) is one of three surviving copies of a manuscript letter sent by Giovanni da Verrazzano (1481–1528) in 1524 to King Francis I of France describing the former's navigation of the East Coast of the United States. It is nowadays preserved at the Morgan Library of New York.
Verrazzano was an Italian who lived in France, and he undertook his voyage in Francis' service. The King, prompted by the French mercantile community, charged Verrazzano to discover whether there was a direct passage from the Atlantic to China and Japan. (Full article...)
The New Dinosaurs is Dixon's second work on speculative evolution, following After Man (1981). Like After Man, The New Dinosaurs uses its own fictional setting and hypothetical wildlife to explain natural processes with fictitious examples, in this case the concept of zoogeography and biogeographic realms. It was followed by another speculative evolution work by Dixon in 1990, Man After Man. (Full article...)
The book's general method is to present a wide range of examples from across the animal kingdom of each type of coloration, including marine invertebrates and fishes as well as terrestrial insects, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. The examples are supported by many of Cott's own drawings, diagrams, and photographs. This essentially descriptive natural history treatment is supplemented with accounts of experiments by Cott and others. The book had few precedents, but to some extent follows (and criticises) Abbott Handerson Thayer's 1909 Concealing-Coloration in the Animal Kingdom. (Full article...)
Written in vernacularItalian, the Summa is the first printed work on algebra, and it contains the first published description of the double-entry bookkeeping system, which had been invented in the 13th century but was not yet widely known. It set a new standard for writing and argumentation about algebra, and its impact upon the subsequent development and standardization of professional accounting methods was so great that Pacioli is sometimes referred to as the "father of accounting". (Full article...)
A harsh critique of Chinese society and culture, Ways That Are Dark was written at a time when China was in the grip of considerable civil strife. Townsend claimed that the source of China's problems lay in fundamental defects in the ethnic characteristics of the Chinese people. Although the book was a bestseller in the United States, it met with highly polarized reactions from its supporters and detractors. Though praised by some periodicals, it was denounced by missionaries and sinologists, including Owen Lattimore who condemned it as "a general indictment of a whole race". It was banned by the government of China. (Full article...)
After Man: A Zoology of the Future is a 1981 speculative evolution book written by Scottish geologist and paleontologist Dougal Dixon and illustrated by several illustrators including Diz Wallis, John Butler, Brian McIntyre, Philip Hood, Roy Woodard and Gary Marsh. The book features a foreword by Desmond Morris. After Man explores a hypothetical future set 50 million years after extinction of humanity, a time period Dixon dubs the "Posthomic", which is inhabited by animals that have evolved from survivors of a mass extinction succeeding our own time.
After Man used a fictional setting and hypothetical animals to explain the natural processes behind evolution and natural selection. In total, over a hundred different invented animal species are featured in the book, described as part of fleshed-out fictional future ecosystems. Reviews for After Man were highly positive and its success spawned two follow-up speculative evolution books which used new fictional settings and creatures to explain other natural processes: The New Dinosaurs (1988) and Man After Man (1990). (Full article...)
Targeted Killing in International Law is a book about the legality of targeted killing, written by Nils Melzer. It was first published by Oxford University Press in May 2008. The book explores the history of targeted killing, as a government strategy by multiple countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, Switzerland and Germany; for both military and law enforcement purposes. Melzer argues that directly after the September 11 attacks in the United States, perceptions of the tactic became more positive.
Agrippa (A Book of the Dead) is a work of art created by science fiction novelist William Gibson, artist Dennis Ashbaugh and publisher Kevin Begos Jr. in 1992. The work consists of a 300-line semi-autobiographical electronic poem by Gibson, embedded in an artist's book by Ashbaugh. Gibson's text focused on the ethereal, human-owed nature of memories retained over the passage of time (the title referred to a Kodak photo album from which the text's memories are taken). Its principal notoriety arose from the fact that the poem, stored on a 3.5" floppy disk, was programmed to encrypt itself after a single use; similarly, the pages of the artist's book were treated with photosensitive chemicals, effecting the gradual fading of the words and images from the book's first exposure to light. The work is recognised as an early example of electronic literature. (Full article...)
Among the challenges to the translator of Beowulf are whether to attempt a verse or prose rendering; how closely to stick to the original; whether to make the language archaic or to use distinctly modern phraseology; whether to domesticate or foreignize the text; to what extent to imitate the original's laconic style and understatement; and its use of intentionally poetic language to represent the heroic from what was already an ancient time when the poem was composed. (Full article...)
... 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.?
Image 13The 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)
Image 24Jikji, 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)
Image 28Sammelband of three alchemical treatises, bound in Strasbourg by Samuel Emmel c. 1568, showing metal clasps and leather covering of boards (from Bookbinding)
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