World Digital Library Home
Free ebooks - Project Gutenberg
Free for All: NYPL Enhances Public Domain Collections For Sharing and Reuse
Today we are proud to announce that out-of-copyright materials in NYPL Digital Collections are now available as high-resolution downloads. No permission required, no hoops to jump through: just go forth and reuse! The release of more than 180,000 digitized items represents both a simplification and an enhancement of digital access to a trove of unique and rare materials: a removal of administration fees and processes from public domain content, and also improvements to interfaces — popular and technical — to the digital assets themselves. Online users of the NYPL Digital Collections website will find more prominent download links and filters highlighting restriction-free content; while more technically inclined users will also benefit from updates to the Digital Collections API enabling bulk use and analysis, as well as data exports and utilities posted to NYPL's GitHub account. We've made it easier than ever to search, browse, and download public domain items in Digital Collections.
The Deep State: How Camouflage Became Chic in Beltwayland - BillMoyers.com
National Guard troops line Pennsylvania Avenue during an inaugural parade rehearsal January 16, 2005 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Matthew Cavanaugh/Getty Images) This post is an excerpt from The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government. Camouflage Chic Viking Press, January 2016 As the seat of government and location of the headquarters of the armed forces, Washington has always had a large military contingent. However that may be, it is an inescapable fact that Washington is unique among capital cities of the so-called free world in the ubiquity of its military presence. The growing militarization of Beltwayland has yet to end. Beginning in the 1990s, an increasing number of defense contractors, many of whom had been situated in Southern California, began to relocate their headquarters to Washington, D.C., and its suburbs so as to be closer to the political action. Pentagon Metro, Arlington County, Virginia. The Merchants of Death Go Madison Avenue
The 100 Best Children's Books of All Time
We’re living in a golden age of young-adult literature, when books ostensibly written for teens are equally adored by readers of every generation. In the… We’re living in a golden age of young-adult literature, when books ostensibly written for teens are equally adored by readers of every generation. In the likes of Harry Potter and Katniss Everdeen, they’ve produced characters and conceits that have become the currency of our pop-culture discourse—and inspired some of our best writers to contribute to the genre. To honor the best books for young adults and children, TIME compiled this survey in consultation with respected peers such as U.S. The List: 100 Best Children's Books of All Time HarperCollins Where the Wild Things Are (Buy here) By Maurice Sendak. See 17 authors’ favorite books for young readers. Read about how author Meg Wolitzer was inspired by Sylvia Plath’s Bell Jar. By the editors of TIME, with reporting by Daniel D’Addario, Giri Nathan and Noah Rayman.
These are the books students at the top US colleges are required to read
A boom in cheap fashion is coming. And unless we change the way we produce and sell clothes, it’s going to put massive strain on the environment and the people who make them. The conclusion comes from new research by McKinsey & Co., which looked at the way we currently consume fashion as well as the amplifying effect emerging markets could have as their growing middle classes buy more clothes. McKinsey found that a culture of disposable fashion is proliferating in which retailers keep putting out greater volumes of inexpensive clothing. The report warns: “Without improvements in how clothing is made, these issues will grow proportionally as more clothes are produced.” In all likelihood, more clothes will be produced. This clothing boom is set to continue as growing middle classes in populous developing economies spend their rising incomes on clothes. And it’s only getting easier to do that. What’s to be done? These are known problems, however. Clearly, something needs to change.
What Kurt Vonnegut Meant to Me Growing Up
Do you remember where you were on April 11, 2007? I was in the dorm room of a friend, in the middle of my sophomore year of college. They were telling me to sit down, very serious looks of concern on their faces. “Kurt Vonnegut is dead,” one of my friends said. So it goes. I was a nerdy 15-year-old girl when I first was introduced to the works of Kurt Vonnegut, and “nerdy” doesn’t even begin to describe it. That is, until my brother had to read The Sirens of Titan for his senior year English class. And oh, what a book it was. Not to be stopped, I immediately began a mission to buy and read every single book he had ever put out, and dedicated an entire shelf of my bookcase to this endeavor. His ideas became a part of me. When I graduated high school, my senior quote was from The Sirens of Titan: “The purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.” Then came April 11, 2007, and whatever could have happened never would. Image: Harald/Flickr
Top 10 first lines in children's and teen books | Children's books
The boy and the old man arrived at the port at night. That's the first line in my debut novel, Close to the Wind, and I'm rather proud of it. The line doesn't shout out at you, but it does a lot of work establishing the tone of the book and giving you the setting and characters without any fuss. It's always difficult to know how to begin a book. Originally, I had a much bolder first line but during an editorial meeting it was suggested I lose it and start with the second line in. Of course, I objected. An opening sentence should draw the reader from their own head and take them somewhere completely different. It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried out bed of the old North Sea. 1. Is this the best ever opening line from a children's book? The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don't got nothing much to say. 2. A great book that's all about the voice and he nails it in the first line.
Behind Our Favorite Children's Books, a Woman Who Championed Imagination
Transcript Maria Popova: Hardly anyone has raised more conscientious imaginative children than the legendary mid century children's book editor Ursula Nordstrom, who brought to life such multi generational classics as Margaret Wise Brown's Goodnight Moon, E.B. White's Charlottes Web, Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree and Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. During her long tenure at Harper and Row, Nordstrom was not just an editor to her authors and her artist but their friend, their confident, their therapist, their greatest champion always. She stood up against censorship and constantly bolstered the creative confidence of these young writers and artists. She was especially instrumental in the life of Maurice Sendak, who might not to be we know him as today without her. And so she wrote to him and said, "You may not be Tolstoy but Tolstoy wasn't Sendak either.
