Portal:Books

The Books Portal

Johannes Trithemius'Polygraphiae (1518)

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

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

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

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

Featured articles -

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

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  Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry like Christmas is the third book of Maya Angelou's seven-volume autobiography series. Set between 1949 and 1955, the book spans Angelou's early twenties. In this volume, Angelou describes her struggles to support her young son, form meaningful relationships, and forge a successful career in the entertainment world. The work's 1976 publication was the first time an African-American woman had expanded her life story into a third volume. Scholar Dolly McPherson calls the book "a graphic portrait of the adult self in bloom" and critic Lyman B. Hagen calls it "a journey of discovery and rebirth".
  In Singin' and Swingin, Angelou examines many of the same subjects and themes in her previous autobiographies including travel, music, race, conflict, and motherhood. Angelou depicts the conflict she felt as a single mother, despite her success as a performer as she travels Europe with the musical Porgy and Bess. Her depictions of her travels, which take up 40 percent of the book, have roots in the African-American slave narrative. Angelou uses music and musical concepts throughout Singin' and Swingin'; McPherson calls it Angelou's "praisesong" to Porgy and Bess. Angelou's stereotypes about race and race relations are challenged as she interacts more with people of different races. During the course of this narrative, she changes her name from Marguerite Johnson to Maya Angelou for professional reasons. Her young son changes his name as well, from Clyde to Guy, and their relationship is strengthened as the book ends. (Full article...)
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  Cover of the 1940 edition

  
  The Negro Motorist Green Book (also, The Negro Travelers' Green Book, or Green-Book) was a guidebook for African American roadtrippers. It was founded by Victor Hugo Green, an African American, New York City postal worker who published it annually from 1936 to 1966. This was during the era of Jim Crow laws, when open and often legally prescribed discrimination against African Americans especially and other non-whites was widespread. While pervasive racial discrimination and poverty limited black car ownership, the emerging African American middle class bought automobiles as soon as they could but faced a variety of dangers and inconveniences along the road, from refusal of food and lodging to arbitrary arrest. In the South, these dangers were particularly severe, where Black motorists risked harassment, physical violence, or even murder for minor infractions or for being in predominantly white areas. In some cases, African American travelers who got lost or sought lodging off the beaten path were killed, with little to no investigation by local authorities. In response, Green wrote his guide to services and places relatively friendly to African Americans. Eventually, he also founded a travel agency.
  
  Many black Americans took to driving, in part to avoid segregation on public transportation. As the writer George Schuyler put it in 1930, "all Negroes who can do so purchase an automobile as soon as possible in order to be free of discomfort, discrimination, segregation and insult". Black Americans employed as athletes, entertainers, and salesmen also traveled frequently for work purposes using automobiles that they owned personally. (Full article...)
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  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...)
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  Title page from the first edition of Letters (1796)

  
  Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796) is a personal travel narrative by the eighteenth-century British feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft. The twenty-five letters cover a wide range of topics, from sociological reflections on Scandinavia and its peoples to philosophical questions regarding identity. Published by Wollstonecraft's career-long publisher, Joseph Johnson, it was the last work issued during her lifetime.
  
  Wollstonecraft undertook her tour of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark in order to retrieve a stolen treasure ship for her lover, Gilbert Imlay. Believing that the journey would restore their strained relationship, she eagerly set off. However, over the course of the three months she spent in Scandinavia, she realized that Imlay had no intention of renewing the relationship. The letters, which constitute the text, drawn from her journal and from missives she sent to Imlay, reflect her anger and melancholy over his repeated betrayals. Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark is therefore both a travel narrative and an autobiographical memoir. (Full article...)
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  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...)
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  Ravenloft is an adventure module for the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) fantasy role-playing game. The American game publishing company TSR, Inc. released it as a standalone adventure booklet in 1983 for use with the first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game. It was written by Tracy and Laura Hickman, and includes art by Clyde Caldwell with maps by David Sutherland III. The plot of Ravenloft focuses on the villain Strahd von Zarovich, a vampire who pines for his lost love. Various story elements, including Strahd's motivation and the locations of magical weapons, are randomly determined by drawing cards. The player characters attempt to defeat Strahd and, if successful, the adventure ends.
  
  The Hickmans began work on Ravenloft in the late 1970s, intent on creating a frightening portrait of a vampire in a setting that combined Gothic horror with the D&D game system. They play-tested the adventure with a group of players each Halloween for five years before it was published. Strahd has since appeared in a number of D&D accessories and novels. The module has inspired numerous revisions and adaptations, including a campaign setting of the same name and a sequel. In 1999, on the 25th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons, two commemorative versions of Ravenloft were released. (Full article...)
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  The Halo Graphic Novel is a graphic novel anthology of the military science fiction video game series Halo, published by Marvel Comics in partnership with Bungie. The Halo Graphic Novel was the series' first entry into the sequential art medium, and features aspects of the Halo universe which until then had not been discussed or seen in any medium.
  
  The majority of the book is divided into four short stories by different writers and artists from the computer game and comic industries. Each story focuses on different aspects of the Halo universe, revealing stories that are tangential to the main plot of the game. Apart from the stories, the book also contains an extensive art gallery compiled of contributions from Bungie, Marvel and independent sources. (Full article...)
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  Madman's Drum is a wordless novel by American artist Lynd Ward (1905–1985), published in 1930. It is the second of Ward's six wordless novels. The 118 wood-engraved images of Madman's Drum tell the story of a slave trader who steals a demon-faced drum from an African he murders, and the consequences for him and his family.
  
  Ward's first wordless novel was Gods' Man of 1929. Ward was more ambitious with his second work in the medium: the characters are more nuanced, the plot more developed and complicated, and the outrage at social injustice more explicit. Ward used a wider variety of carving tools to achieve a finer degree of detail in the artwork, and was expressive in his use of symbolism and exaggerated emotional facial expressions. (Full article...)
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  Lemurs of Madagascar is a 2010 reference work and field guide for the lemurs of Madagascar, giving 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 third edition, 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...)
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  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...)
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  First edition cover

  
  The Bread-Winners: A Social Study is an 1883 novel by John Hay, former secretary to Abraham Lincoln who in 1898 became U.S. Secretary of State. The book takes an anti-organized labor stance, and when published anonymously sold well and provoked considerable public interest in determining who the author was.
  
  The plot of the book revolves around former army captain Arthur Farnham, a wealthy resident of Buffland (an analog of Cleveland). He organizes Civil War veterans to keep the peace when the Bread-winners, a group of lazy and malcontented workers, call a violent general strike. He is sought in marriage by the ambitious Maud Matchin, daughter of a carpenter, but instead weds a woman of his own class. (Full article...)
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  First edition title page

  
  A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects (1792), written by British philosopher and women's rights advocate Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797), is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. In it, Wollstonecraft responds to those educational and political theorists of the eighteenth century who did not believe women should receive a rational education. She argues that women ought to have an education commensurate with their position in society, claiming that women are essential to the nation because they educate its children and because they could be "companions" to their husbands, rather than mere wives. Instead of viewing women as ornaments to society or property to be traded in marriage, Wollstonecraft maintains that they are human beings deserving of the same fundamental rights as men.
  
  Wollstonecraft was prompted to write the Rights of Woman after reading Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord's 1791 report to the French National Assembly, which stated that women should only receive domestic education. From her reaction to this specific event, she launched a broad attack against double standards, indicting men for encouraging women to indulge in excessive emotion. Wollstonecraft hurried to complete the work in direct response to ongoing events; she intended to write a more thoughtful second volume but died before completing it. (Full article...)
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  Title page from History of a Six Weeks' Tour (1817), Thomas Hookham, Jr. and Charles and James Ollier, London.

  
  History of a Six Weeks' Tour through a part of France, Switzerland, Germany, and Holland; with Letters Descriptive of a Sail Round the Lake of Geneva and of the Glaciers of Chamouni is a travel narrative by the English Romantic authors Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Published anonymously in 1817, it describes two trips taken by Mary, Percy, and Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont: one across Europe in 1814, and one to Lake Geneva in 1816. Divided into three sections, the text consists of a journal, four letters, and Percy Shelley's poem "Mont Blanc". Apart from the poem, preface, and two letters, the text was primarily written and organised by Mary Shelley. In 1840 she revised the journal and the letters, republishing them in a collection of Percy Shelley's writings.
  
  Part of the new genre of the Romantic travel narrative, History of a Six Weeks' Tour exudes spontaneity and enthusiasm; the authors demonstrate their desire to develop a sense of taste and distinguish themselves from those around them. The romantic elements of the work would have hinted at the text's radical politics to nineteenth-century readers. However, the text's frank discussion of politics, including positive references to the French Revolution and praise of Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, was unusual for a travel narrative at the time, particularly one authored primarily by a woman. (Full article...)
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  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...)
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  First page of the first edition of Thoughts (1787)

  
  
  Thoughts on the education of daughters: with reflections on female conduct, in the more important duties of life is the first published work of the British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. Published in 1787 by her friend Joseph Johnson, Thoughts is a conduct book that offers advice on female education to the emerging British middle class. Although dominated by considerations of morality and etiquette, the text also contains basic child-rearing instructions, such as how to care for an infant.
  
  An early version of the modern self-help book, the 18th-century British conduct book drew on many literary traditions, such as advice manuals and religious narratives. There was an explosion in the number of conduct books published during the second half of the 18th century, and Wollstonecraft took advantage of this burgeoning market when she published Thoughts. However, the book was only moderately successful: it was favourably reviewed, but only by one journal and it was reprinted only once. Although it was excerpted in popular contemporary magazines, it was not republished until the rise of feminist literary criticism in the 1970s. (Full article...)

Selected picture

The La Trobe Reading Room at the State Library of Victoria.

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 Spanish Inquisition sentenced Diego Mateo Zapata to wear the sanbenito, receive 200 lashes, have his 600 books confiscated, and be exiled, despite being acquitted?
• ... that the journalist Wendell Steavenson's book Circling the Square covers the events of the 2011–2013 Egyptian crisis, which were centered around Cairo's Tahrir Square?
• ... that Dark Archives reveals that most books bound in human skin were made by respected doctors?
• ... that the writer of the 2022 comic book miniseries Poison Ivy, starring the eponymous Batman villain, described it as a "love story" that features "plant-based body horror"?
• ... that Leonardo DiCaprio was set to star in the film adaptation of Leonardo da Vinci?
• ... that nine-year-old Muskan Ahirwar started a library for the children in her slum that now contains more than 3,000 books?

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• Bibliophilia
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  Book cover, 1976 ed.

  
  The Book of est is a fictional account of the training created by Werner Erhard, (est), or Erhard Seminars Training, first published in 1976 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. The book was written by est graduate Luke Rhinehart. Rhinehart is the pen name of writer George Cockcroft. The book was endorsed by Erhard, and includes a foreword by him. Its contents attempts to replicate the experience of the est training, with the reader being put in the place of a participant in the course. The end of the book includes a comparison by the author between Erhard's methodologies to Zen, The Teachings of Don Juan by Carlos Castaneda, and to Rhinehart's own views from The Dice Man.
  
  Reception to the book was mixed. There were reviews in Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, and The New York Times Book Review. An article about Erhard and est in the religious journal Quarterly Review placed the book among "the most accessible sources about est". Professor Walter A. Effross of the American University Washington College of Law cites The Book of est in an article in the Buffalo Law Review analyzing the control of new age movements over their intellectual property. (Full article...)
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  Dust jacket, first edition

  
  Theory of Literature is a book on literary scholarship by René Wellek, of the structuralist Prague school, and Austin Warren, a self-described "old New Critic". The two met at the University of Iowa in the late 1930s, and by 1940 had begun writing the book; they wrote collaboratively, in a single voice over a period of three years. Its contents were based on their shared understandings of literature.
  
  Originally consisting of twenty chapters – one was cut in later editions – Theory of Literature describes various aspects of literary theory, criticism, and history. After defining various aspects and relationships of literature in general, Wellek and Warren divide analysis of literature based on two approaches: extrinsic, relating to factors outside a work such as the author and society, and intrinsic, relating to factors within such as rhythm and meter. They stress the need to focus on the intrinsic elements of a work as the best way to truly understand it. In doing so they adapt the phenomenology used by Roman Ingarden. (Full article...)
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  The Path of Modern Yoga: The History of an Embodied Spiritual Practice is a 2016 history of the modern practice of postural yoga by the yoga scholar Elliott Goldberg. It focuses in detail on eleven pioneering figures of the transformation of yoga in the 20th century, including Yogendra, Kuvalayananda, Pant Pratinidhi, Krishnamacharya, B. K. S. Iyengar and Indra Devi.
  
  The book's thesis is that modern yoga progressed in three stages from its pre-1900 state to what is observed today. Before 1900, haṭha yoga was the despised religious practice of a small minority on the fringes of Indian society. In the first stage, pioneers such as Yogendra and Kuvalayananda treated yoga as the subject of medical inquiry, making it both secular and socially acceptable. Next, advocates of exercise brought standing poses from gymnastics into yoga: Pant Pratinidhi advocated Surya Namaskar (the sun salutation), a jumped sequence of poses, as daily exercise, while Krishnamacharya incorporated those poses and others as standing asanas in his yoga, along with the jumped transitions (vinyasas) between them, making yoga dynamic. Finally, two pupils of Krishnamacharya, Iyengar (Full article...)
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  Wild Pilgrimage is the third wordless novel of American artist Lynd Ward (1905–1985), published in 1932. It was executed in 108 monochromatic wood engravings, printed alternately in black ink when representing reality and orange to represent the protagonist's fantasies. The story tells of a factory worker who abandons his workplace to seek a free life; on his travels he witnesses a lynching, assaults a farmer's wife, educates himself with a hermit, and upon returning to the factory leads an unsuccessful workers' revolt. The protagonist finds himself battling opposing dualities such as freedom versus responsibility, the individual versus society, and love versus death.
  
  Ward simplified his approach after the more complex, novelistic story of his previous book, Madman's Drum (1930), returning to the simplicity of his first, Gods' Man (1929). Wild Pilgrimage achieves more fluid pacing and varied imagery than the first two books, incorporating the influence of art movements such as American Regionalism and Futurism. (Full article...)
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  The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II is a bestselling 1997 non-fiction book written by Iris Chang about the 1937–1938 Nanjing Massacre—the mass murder and mass rape of Chinese civilians committed by the Imperial Japanese Army in Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China, immediately after the Battle of Nanjing during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It describes the events leading up to the Nanjing Massacre, provides a graphic detail of the war crimes and atrocities committed by Japanese troops, and lambasts the Japanese government for its refusal to rectify the atrocities. It also criticizes the Japanese people for their ignorance about the massacre. It is one of the first major English-language books to introduce the Nanjing Massacre to Western and Eastern readers alike, and has been translated into several languages. The book significantly renewed public interest in Japanese wartime conduct in China, Korea, Southeast Asia (including the Philippines) and the Pacific.
  
  The book received both acclaim and criticism by the public and by academics. It has been praised as a work that "shows more clearly than any previous account" the extent and brutality of the episode, while elements of Chang's analysis of the motivations for the events, Japanese culture, and her calculation of the total numbers killed and raped were criticized as inaccurate because of her lack of training as a historian. Chang's research on the book was credited with the finding of the diaries of John Rabe and Minnie Vautrin, both of whom played important roles in the Nanking Safety Zone, a designated area in Nanjing that protected Chinese civilians during the Nanjing Massacre. (Full article...)
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  Ethical Oil: The Case for Canada's Oil Sands is a book written by Canadian talk-show host and political activist Ezra Levant, which makes a case for exploiting the Athabasca oil sands and its sister projects in Alberta. Published in 2010 by McClelland & Stewart in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, the book became a non-fiction best seller and won the National Business Book Award for 2011.
  
  In the 261 page book, Ezra Levant makes the case that in terms of four criteria (the environment, conflict, economic and social justice and freedom from oppression) the Canadian petroleum industry is "heads above other crude producers like Saudi Arabia, Libya, Nigeria and Venezuela". Highlighting perceived hypocrisy from Western progressive and environmental movements, the author confronts what he sees as unfair and excessive criticism of oil sands, stating that the "oil sands are not perfect, and criticizing them is fair game. But why has criticism of the oil sands been so disproportionately loud compared to criticism of other, larger, more disturbing sources of oil?". (Full article...)
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  Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II is a book by American writer Douglas A. Blackmon, published by Anchor Books in 2008. It explores the forced labor of prisoners, overwhelmingly African American men, through the convict lease system used by states, local governments, white farmers, and corporations after the American Civil War until World War II in the southern United States. Blackmon argues that slavery in the United States did not end with the Civil War, but instead persisted well into the 20th century. It depicts the subjugation of convict leasing, sharecropping and peonage and tells the fate of the former but not of the latter two.
  
  Slavery by Another Name began as an article which Blackmon wrote for The Wall Street Journal detailing the use of black forced labor by U.S. Steel Corporation. Seeing the popular response to the article, he began conducting research for a more comprehensive exploration of the topic. The resulting book was well received by critics and became a New York Times Best Seller. In 2009, it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. In 2012, it was adapted into a documentary film of the same name for PBS. (Full article...)
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  Libris Mortis: The Book of Undead is a book which is an official supplement for the 3.5 edition of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. The book covers the fictional undead within the D&D universe and comprises seven chapters, introducing new content for Dungeon Masters and players, as well as providing general information about undead.
  
  It was received positively by reviewers, with praise for its material for Dungeon Masters and its illustrations, but received criticism for its weak player-oriented content. The book was the second in the series of books about specific monster types, the first being Draconomicon. Similar books published since include Lords of Madness. Libris Mortis included content from older books, such as Tome and Blood and the Book of Vile Darkness, that had been reworked. (Full article...)
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  No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith is a 1945 book by Fawn M. Brodie that was one of the first significant non-hagiographic biographies of Joseph Smith, the progenitor of the Latter Day Saint movement. No Man Knows My History was influential in the development of Mormon history as a scholarly field.
  
  No Man Knows My History has never been out of print, and 60 years after its first publication, its publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, continues to sell about a thousand copies annually. For a revised edition released in 1971, Brodie added a supplement incorporating psychohistorical commentary. In 1995, Utah State University (USU) marked the 50th anniversary of the book's first publication by hosting a symposium to re-examine the book, its author, and her methods, and in 1996 USU published the symposium papers as a book of essays. (Full article...)
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  Kafka's Prayer is a 1947 book-length analysis of the novelist Franz Kafka and his works by Paul Goodman. Using Freudian and Reichian psychoanalysis, Goodman assesses the philosophical and religious significance of Kafka's aphoristic statements and three novels. He levels an anarchist societal critique against social institutions borne from neuroticism. Goodman used the book, published by Vanguard Press, to grapple with the religious implications of psychoanalysis and transition from a career writing on Jewish concerns to a period that would culminate in his collaboration on the founding work of the gestalt therapy movement.
  
  Many reviewers and commentators felt that Goodman overanalyzed Kafka and overextended specific symbolism, with farfetched or reductive speculation and obscure personal referents. Goodman's monograph was the first on Kafka in the English language and holds an idiosyncratic place in Kafka studies. (Full article...)
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  Book cover

  
  The Anarchist Cookbook, first published in 1971, is a book containing instructions for the manufacture of explosives, rudimentary telecommunications phreaking devices, and related weapons, as well as instructions for the home manufacture of illicit drugs, including LSD. It was written by William Powell at the apex of the counterculture era to protest against United States' involvement in the Vietnam War. Powell converted to Anglicanism in 1976 and later attempted to have the book removed from circulation. However, the copyright belonged to the publisher, who continued circulation until the company was acquired in 1991. Its legality has been questioned in several jurisdictions. (Full article...)
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  Cover of Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie

  
  Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971) is the first collection of poems by African-American writer and poet Maya Angelou. Many of the poems in Diiie were originally song lyrics, written during Angelou's career as a night club performer, and recorded on two albums before the publication of Angelou's first autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969). Angelou considered herself a poet and a playwright, but is best known for her seven autobiographies. Early in her writing career she began a practice of alternating the publication of an autobiography and a volume of poetry. Although her poetry collections have been best-sellers, they have not received serious critical attention and are more interesting when read aloud.
  
  Diiie is made up of two sections of 38 poems. The 20 poems in the first section, "Where Love is a Scream of Anguish", center on love. Many of the poems in this section and the next are structured like blues and jazz music, and have universal themes of love and loss. The eighteen poems in the second section, "Just Before the World Ends", focus on the experience of the survival of African Americans despite living in a society dominated by whites. (Full article...)
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  Yoga Makaranda (Sanskrit: योग मकरन्द​), meaning "Essence of Yoga", is a 1934 book on hatha yoga by the influential pioneer of yoga as exercise, Tirumalai Krishnamacharya. Most of the text is a description of 42 asanas accompanied by 95 photographs of Krishnamacharya and his students executing the poses. There is a brief account of practices other than asanas, which form just one of the eight limbs of classical yoga, that Krishnamacharya "did not instruct his students to practice".
  
  The yoga scholar Mark Singleton notes that the book is almost legendary among Pattabhi Jois's students, though "very few have actually seen it". Singleton notes, too, that the book was "experimental". The yoga scholar Norman Sjoman criticises the book's "padded academic bibliography" full of irrelevant works, and the perfunctory and ill-informed coverage of yoga practices other than asanas, while another yoga scholar, Elliott Goldberg, comments that the photographs serve to demystify the asanas of their spiritual content, and that Krishnamacharya was falsely claiming an ancient origin for his dynamic vinyasa system of yoga. (Full article...)
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  Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass is a collection of essays written by British writer, doctor and psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple and published in book form by Ivan R. Dee in 2001. In 1994, the Manhattan Institute started publishing the contents of these essays in the City Journal magazine. They are about personal responsibility, the mentality of society as a whole and the troubles of the underclass. Dalrymple had problems in finding a British publisher to help him turn his individual essays into a collection, so he eventually turned to American companies for publication.
  
  The main themes expressed in the collection include how an individual's worldview affects their actions and the attitudes of those around them, the philosophy of social determinism and why a lack of personal responsibility for one's actions results from an individual's beliefs in determinism. The writing style that Dalrymple explains these in was praised by reviewers for its clear, witty prose and for going immediately to the heart of the matter that is being discussed. (Full article...)
• 
  Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now, published in 1993, is African-American writer and poet Maya Angelou's first book of essays. It was published shortly after she recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at President Bill Clinton's 1993 inauguration. Journey consists of a series of short essays, often autobiographical, along with two poems, and has been called one of Angelou's "wisdom books". It is titled after a lyric in the African American spiritual, "On My Journey Now." At the time of its publication, Angelou was already well respected and popular as a writer and poet. Like her previous works, Journey received generally positive reviews. (Full article...)

Selected quote

“ I cannot live without books. ” — Thomas Jefferson

Did you know

• ...that A Christmas Carol sold over six thousand copies in one week?(Pictured)
• ...that the Book of Revelation 21:21 describes the city of New Jerusalem as having streets "made of pure gold, clear as crystal" ?
• ...that the early nineteenth century, books were hand-bound using heavy materials such as wood, leather, gold, silver and jewels?

General images

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

• 
  Scheme of common book design

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

  (from Bookbinding)
• 
  European output of manuscripts 500–1500 (from History of books)
• 
  The Codex Manesse, a German book from the Middle Ages (from History of books)
• 
  Page from a Jain manuscript depicting the birth of Mahavira, c. 1400 (from History of books)
• 
  European output of printed books c. 1450–1800 (from History of books)
• 
  The scene in Botticelli's Madonna of the Book (1480) reflects the presence of books in the houses of richer people in his time. (from History of books)
• 
  Traditionally sewn book opened flat (from Bookbinding)
• 
  Initial on the opening page of a book printed by the Kelmscott Press (from Book design)
• 
  Early medieval bookcase containing about ten codices depicted in the Codex Amiatinus (c. 700) (from Bookbinding)
• 
  European output of books 500–1800 (from History of books)
• 
  A Chinese bamboo book (from History of books)
• 
  Page spread with J. A. van de Graaf's construction of classical text area (print space) and margin proportions (from Book design)
• 
  Folio from a manuscript of the Shanamah (Book of Kings) (from History of books)
• 
  A twentieth-century copyright imprint from McLoughlin Bros that features three rams and the copyright year, 1903 (from History of books)
• 
  Photograph of a printing press in Egypt, c. 1922 (from History of books)
• 
  Modern book spine designs (from Bookbinding)
• 
  A traditional bookbinder at work (from Bookbinding)
• 
  Marbled book board from a book published in London in 1872 (from Bookbinding)
• 
  The Book of the Dead of Hunefer, c. 1275 BCE, ink and pigments on papyrus, in the British Museum (London) (from History of books)
• 
  9th-century Qur'an in Reza Abbasi Museum (from Bookbinding)
• 
  Decorative binding with figurehead of the 12th century manuscript Liber Landavensis (from Bookbinding)
• 
  Woman holding wax tablets in the form of the codex. Wall painting from Pompeii, before 79 CE. (from History of books)
• 
  Design by Hans Holbein the Younger for a metalwork book cover (or treasure binding) (from Book design)
• 
  Three books with different titling orientations:
  (left) ascending
  (middle) descending
  (right) upright (from Bookbinding)
• 
  12-metre-high (40 ft) sculpture of a stack of books at the Berlin Walk of Ideas, commemorating the invention of modern book printing (from History of books)
• 
  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)
• 
  Page from the Blue Quran manuscript, ca. 9th or 10th century CE (from History of books)
• 
  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)
• 
  Bookbinder's type holder (from Bookbinding)
• 
  Book conservators at the State Library of New South Wales, 1943 (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)
• 
  Hardbound book spine stitching (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
• 
  Modern paperback spines (from Bookbinding)
• 
  A 15th-century Incunable. Notice the blind-tooled cover, corner bosses, and clasps. (from History of books)
• 
  Sammelband of three alchemical treatises, bound in Strasbourg by Samuel Emmel c. 1568, showing metal clasps and leather covering of boards (from Bookbinding)
• 
  Cloth book cover with attached paper panel, mimicking half leather binding (from Bookbinding)
• 
  Hardbound book with half leather binding (spine and corners) and marbled boards (from Bookbinding)
• 
  Example of blind tooling a book binding with exquisite detail (from Bookbinding)
• 
  Dresden Codex (page 49) (from History of books)
• 
  Folio from the Shah Jahan Album, c. 1620, depicting the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan (from History of books)
• 
  Rebacking saving original spine, showing one volume finished and one untouched (from Bookbinding)
• 
  Chinese Bookseller, illustration, c. 1824 (from History of books)

Books lists

• Lists of books
• Lists of novels
• Lists of controversial books
• List of banned books
• List of books by genre or type
• List of book titles taken from literature

More list articles

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• Find news articles regarding notable books and add them to the "In the news" section.
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• Create new articles: Lists of books provides a comprehensive list of notable books, many of which have no articles.
• Add references: List of CEO books, List of anonymously published works
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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

please add more!

Associated Wikimedia

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