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Find a list of the best 20th-century novels, and you’re likely to find both George Orwell’s 1984 and his Animal Farm. The former, published in 1949, is such a classic of dystopian literature that it’s hit the top of Amazon’s bestseller lists twice in the last four years. Yet his first tale of dictatorships, Animal […]
Oxford University’s Bodleian Library is one of Europe’s oldest libraries and one of the world’s eminent research libraries. Yet, some of its books carry a taint of unscrupulousness given the time of its founding. One of its founding collections is plunder from Portugal in 1596.
Between 1584 and 1604, Protestant England and Catholic Spain fought […]
In 1800, the seat of the U.S. government relocated to the District of Columbia. Among final preparations for the move, in April 1800, Congress appropriated funds for what would become the Library of Congress. With the U.S. Capitol as its home, the library’s first books arrived the following year. But in August 1814, the library […]
Where and when the phrase “You’ll eat those words,” the standard idiom to suggest something said or written will be retracted, originated is unknown. As far back as the Book of Revelation, John of Patmos must eat a book held by an angel. A book of proverbs printed at Cambridge University in 1670 contained the […]
For years, this blog’s had a page for what I call my Desert Island Books. It’s a take-off on BBC radio’s “Desert Island Discs,” where guests pick the eight recordings they’d want with them if stranded on a desert island.
I’m well aware of how opinions of books can vary. You know, one person’s treasure […]
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