July 6, 2026 \u2022 Divorce is a tool, not a weapon, says Karen McNenny, author of a new book on the subject. Swan’s new book, written with Maggie Haberman, is Regime Change. July 15, 2026 \u2022 The New York Times journalist Jonathan Swan says the president is fixated on becoming a “great man of history” during his second term. She is also the author of the bestselling thriller The Perfect Nanny. Classicist and translator Emily Wilson published a critical review of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey in the London Review of Books. November 24, 2025 \u2022 Our annual reading guide returns with 380+ new titles handpicked by NPR staff and trusted critics.<\/p>\n

Before the invention of the printing press in the 15th century, each text was a unique, handcrafted, valuable article, personalized through the design features incorporated by the scribe, owner, bookbinder, and illustrator. Pictographic writing was widespread, and the Maya developed a phonetic syllabary. The vast majority of surviving Christian texts from before the 5th century AD (158 of 172 documents as of 2002) are codices. The codex format was possibly developed from the Roman custom of binding wax tablets (wooden boards containing wax for writing temporary notes with a stylus) together.
\nThe rise of universities in the 13th century led to an increased demand for books, and a faster system appeared in which unbound leaves, called pecia, were lent to different copyists. Manuscripts, handwritten and hand-copied documents, were the dominant form of writing before the invention and widespread adoption of print. They wrote manuscripts onto long folded strips of either fig bark (amatl) or plant fibers and bound them between wooden planks, although only a few have survived. The first written mention of the codex as a form of book is from Martial, in his Apophoreta CLXXXIV at the end of the first century AD, where he praises its compactness.
\nSome objects broadly described as “books” are left empty for personal use, such as notebooks, diaries, sketchbooks, account books, and autograph books. Books are sometimes contrasted with periodical literature, such as newspapers or magazines, for which new editions are published according to a regular schedule. The reception of books has led to several social consequences, including censorship. Books are sold at general retail stores and specialized bookstores, as well as online, and can be borrowed from libraries or public bookcases. Google Books estimated in 2010 that roughly 130 million total unique books have been published. The term may also refer to the physical or electronic object containing such a work.
\nBook design is the art of incorporating the content, style, format, design, and sequence of the various elements of a book into a coherent unit. This is in contrast to self-publishing, where an author pays for the production and distribution of their own work and manages some or all steps of the publishing process. Presently, books are typically produced by a publishing company in order to be put on the market by distributors and bookstores. Alternative formats that have been developed to aid different readers include varieties of larger fonts, specialized fonts for certain kinds of reading disabilities, braille, automated audiobooks, and DAISY digital talking books. Accessible publishing is an approach by which books are made available in alternative formats designed to aid or replace the traditional reading process. Audiobooks saw early adoption among visually impaired readers in the United States and Britain, and the market exploded in popularity with digital distribution in the 21st century.
\nEnglish playwright who wrote Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and dozens of other plays. Nabokov wrote Lolita, Pale Fire, and dozens of other works in both Russian and English. English novelist who transformed how stories are told. His stories are both grand in scale and deeply human. French literary giant who wrote Les Mis\u00e9rables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. His novels explore the tension between art and life, reason and decay, with remarkable depth.<\/p>\n

Ebooks<\/h2>\n

Steam-powered printing presses could print 1,100 sheets per hour and became popular in the early 19th century. The earliest printed books created before 1501 in Europe are known as incunables or incunabula. After massive fires reduced the available wood in Korea, metal type was invented in the thirteenth century and used alongside woodblock printing. Their creation remained a time-consuming process; a page or illustration was drawn, which was then typically hand carved by a formschneider, or wood-block carving specialist. The practice of hand-copying Buddhist prayers transitioned to printing them from carved blocks, and print runs were done into the tens of thousands during the eighth century. In woodblock printing (called woodcut when used in art), a relief image of an entire page is carved into blocks of wood, inked, and used to print copies of that page.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Cherry Orchard, The Seagull, and dozens of stories that say more in a few pages than most novels. Book burning can be an act of contempt for the book’s contents or author, intended to draw wider public attention to this opposition, or conceal the information contained in the text from being made public, such […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1530814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-casino"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldquestmediagroup.com\/softsop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1530814"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldquestmediagroup.com\/softsop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldquestmediagroup.com\/softsop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldquestmediagroup.com\/softsop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldquestmediagroup.com\/softsop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1530814"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldquestmediagroup.com\/softsop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1530814\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1530815,"href":"https:\/\/worldquestmediagroup.com\/softsop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1530814\/revisions\/1530815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldquestmediagroup.com\/softsop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1530814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldquestmediagroup.com\/softsop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1530814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldquestmediagroup.com\/softsop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1530814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}