Library History

On April 15, 1912 an "unsinkable" ship called the Titanic unexpectedly hit an iceberg and sank to the bottom of the North Atlantic. Right? Wrong! Nobody was really talking about the Titanic being unsinkable until after it sank.

Today, Vincent Van Gogh is one of the most famous artists of all time. During his lifetime, he sold just one painting. This misunderstood painter was passionate about his craft and created over 2,100 pieces of art in just over a decade before he passed away at the age of thirty-seven. Bold shades of blue and yellow, dramatically thick paint application, and heavy brush strokes define Vincent's pieces that are now adored by millions of people all over the world.

Bill Littlefield (NPR's Only a Game) presents the second installment in the Library of America series devoted to classic American sportswriters, a definitive collector's edition of the pathbreaking writer who invented the long-form sports story.

Today, nearly one million books are published each year. But is the era of the book as we know it - a codex of bound pages - coming to an end? And if it is, should we celebrate its demise and the creation of a democratic digital future, or mourn an irreplaceable loss?

Eighteen-year-old Claudie Durand's future is planned. She'll take over the family inn, watch her much prettier younger sister, Mathilde, married off to the butcher's son, and live out her days alone, without the hope of finding a love of her own. Her mother ran off to the cloister when she was young, and her gruff, abusive father has deemed her unmarriageable, a nuisance, and only good for hard labor. But outside their small village in Brittany, a revolution is brewing. When the Army of the Republic seizes their town, and Claudie finds herself at the center of the conspiracy.

Her story begins...in Paris. The only daughter of the king's crown jeweler, Juliette marvels at the large, deep blue diamond Louis XIV has commanded her father to make shine like the sun. But Jean Pitau has never cut a diamond quite like this, and shaping it is a risky endeavor. As Jean spirals into depression, Juliette takes it upon herself to cut the stone and with every misstep brings her family closer to ruin.

Janusz Korczak was more than a good doctor. He was a hero. The Dr. Spock of his day, he established orphanages run on his principle of honoring children and shared his ideas with the public in books and on the radio. He famously said that "children are not the people of tomorrow, but people today". Korczak was a man ahead of his time, whose work ultimately became the basis for the UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child.

It's 1986, and Jeff is an average 15-year-old: he thinks a lot about dating and he's trying his hardest to get a car. Conversely, the world around him feels crazy: the United States and the Soviet Union are at glaring odds, with their leaders in a standoff, and that awful word, "nuclear", is on everyone's mind. Then, boom - Jeff learns that he has brain cancer and it's likely terminal. Well, that puts a damper on his summer plans and romantic prospects, doesn't it? Jeff's family rallies around him, but they are fiercely complicated - especially Jeff's father....

SoHo, 1981. Twelve-year-old Olympia is an artist - and in her neighborhood, that's normal. Her dad and his business partner Apollo bring antique paintings back to life, while her mother makes intricate sculptures in a corner of their loft, leaving Ollie to roam the streets of New York with her best friends Richard and Alex, drawing everything that catches her eye. Then everything falls apart. Ollie's dad disappears in the middle of the night, leaving her only a cryptic note and instructions to destroy it. Her mom has gone to bed, and she's not getting up.

Warsaw, Poland. The year is 1940, and Lillia is 15 when her mother, Alenka, disappears and her father flees with Lillia and her younger sister, Naomi, to Shanghai, one of the few places that will accept Jews without visas. There, they struggle to make a life; they have no money, there is little work, no decent place to live, a culture that doesn't understand them. And always the worry about Alenka. How will she find them? Is she still alive?

It's 1817. The happy chaos of the Yuletide season has descended upon the country estate of Shackleford Park in full force, but lady's maid Kate Darby barely has the time to notice. Matt Harlow is also rather busy. Falling in love would be a disaster for either of them. But staving off their feelings for each other becomes the least of their problems when a devious counterfeiting scheme reaches the gates of Shackleford Park, and Kate and Matt are unwittingly swept up in the intrigue.

What's more exciting that spaceships and astronauts? How about a spaceship carrying the first astronauts ever to see the moon first-hand - on Christmas! The year was 1968, and the American people were still reeling from the spacecraft fire that killed the Apollo 1 crew a year earlier. On top of that, there were rumors that the Russian cosmonauts were getting ready to fly around the moon. NASA realized that they needed to take a bold step - and that they needed to take it now.

The last thing Harry Dit Sims expects when Emma Walker comes to town is to become friends. Proper -talking, brainy Emma doesnt play baseball or fi sh too well, but she sure makes Dit think, especially about the differences between black and white. But soon Dit is thinking about a whole lot more when the town barber, who is black, is put on trial for a terrible crime. Together Dit and Emma come up with a daring plan to save him from the unthinkable.

The day Japan bombs Pearl Harbor, four 13-year-olds converge at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where an eccentric curator is seeking four uncommonly brave souls to track down the hidden pages of the Kelmsbury Manuscript, an ancient book of Arthurian legends that lies scattered within the museum's collection and that holds the key to preventing a second attack on American soil.

Eleven-year-old Sallie March is a whip-smart tomboy and voracious reader of Western adventure novels. When she and her sister, Maude, are orphaned for the second time, they decide to escape their new self-serving guardians for the wilds of the frontier and an adventure the likes of which Sallie has only read about. This time, however, the wanted woman isn't a villain out of a dime novel: it's Sallie's very own sister!

Conceived on a May morning, Nell is claimed by the piskies and faeries as a merrybegot, one of their own. She is a wild child: herb gatherer and healer, spell-weaver and midwife...and, some say, a witch.

Nearly 150 years later, the theory of evolution continues to create tension between the scientific and religious communities. Challenges about teaching the theory of evolution in schools occur annually all over the country. This same debate raged within Darwin himself, and played an important part in his marriage: his wife, Emma, was quite religious, and her faith gave Charles a lot to think about as he worked on a theory that continues to spark intense debates.

The girls of Devonairre Street have always been told they're cursed. Any boy they love is certain to die too soon. But this is Brooklyn in 2008, and the curse is less a terror and more a lifestyle accessory - something funky and quaint that makes the girls from the shortest street in Brooklyn special. They wear their hair long and keys around their necks. People give them a second look and whisper "Devonairre" to their friends. But it's not real. It won't affect their futures. Then Jack - their Jack, the one boy everyone loves - dies suddenly and violently.

Welcome to the world of the fabulously wealthy in London, 1909, where dresses and houses are overwhelmingly opulent, social class means everything, and women are taught to be nothing more than wives and mothers. Into this world comes 17-year-old Victoria Darling, who wants only to be an artist - a nearly impossible dream for a girl. After Vicky poses nude for her illicit art class, she is expelled from her French finishing school. Shamed and scandalized, her parents try to marry her off to the wealthy Edmund Carrick-Humphrey. But Vicky has other things on her mind....

Jonah and his younger brother, Simon, are on their own. They set out to find what's left of their family, carrying between them 10 dollars, a backpack full of dirty clothes, a notebook, and a stack of letters from their brother, who is serving a tour in Vietnam. And soon into their journey, they have a ride. With a man and a beautiful girl who may be in love with Jonah. Or Simon. Or both of them.