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Today's selection -- from Word by Word by Kory Stamper. For at least two hundred years, there have been some speakers of English who have been concerned with non-standard usage of the language, and, concerned with its...

Today's selection -- from Basquiat: Boom for Real edited by Dieter Buchhart and Eleanor Nairne with Lotte Johnson. Renowned artist Jean-Michel Basquiat was born in New York in 1960. His father was born in Haiti and his...

Today's selection -- from Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Contrary to what people commonly assume, space is far from empty:

Today's selection -- from Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, PhD. Genetics predetermine your

Today's selection -- from Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, PhD. The profound harm of too little sleep:

In today's encore selection -- from Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography by David Michaelis. In December 1965 came A Charlie Brown Christmas, the most successful special in television history. In a simple story...

Today's selection -- from A History of Algeria by James McDougall. Locust plagues or

Today's selection -- from Shopping, Seduction & Mr. Selfridge by Lindy Woodhead. By 1941, Harry Selfridge, once the wealthy and proud head of his namesake retailing empire, had lost his fortune and was ousted by his...

Today's encore selection -- from Television: A Biography by David Thomson. Her movie career fading, Lucille Ball took the risk of crossing over to television, a medium shunned by established movie stars. She succeeded...

Today's selection -- from The Human Age by Diane Ackerman. In the year 100 C.E., we humans and our domestic animals were only two percent of the mammal biomass on Earth. We are now 90 percent of all the mammal biomass on...

Today's selection -- from Divided Highways by Tom Lewis. The America of the 1800s was exploding in size and wealth but lacked the trained engineers to keep this momentum. The federal government came to the rescue with...

Today's selection -- from The Unexpected President by Scott S. Greenberger. A mere seven decadesafter the United States gained independence, New York City had already ascended to become the marvel of the world. But half...

Today's encore selection -- from Jim Henson: The Biography by Brian Jay Jones. The invention of the television:

Today's selection -- from Fantasyland by Kurt Andersen. From the earliest days, and continuing for decades and even centuries, promoters of the New World enticed colonizers with the promise of riches, causing the...

Today's selection -- from the Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant. In 1845, the U.S. annexed the Republic of Texas. Mexico considered the land at the southern edge of Texas, the land between the Rio Grande River and the...