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In this fascinating biography of the Smithsonian Castle, Castle Curator Rick Stamm delves into over 150 years of stories about the people who worked (and lived) in this iconic building. The book features many photos of the Castle, from its Victorian beginnings to modern day, and gives the reader deep insight into how the Smithsonian Institution was created and how it grew to become the venerable cultural institution that it is today. 

This is a comprehensive work on numerous types of birds, many not normally considered pets or cage-birds. Some also consider it a classic work on canaries. Each author contributed chapters in one of three sections: Blakston wrote about canaries; Swaysland, in his role as an “authority” on the subject, contributed the section on British cage-birds; and Wiener wrote the section on foreign birds. Blakston’s chapters on canaries include more detailed information on breeding, hatching and rearing, exhibiting, and diseases than the other two authors’ sections.

The eponymous “stubborn dirigible,” Zep, goes against orders during a flight in order to save his crew and passengers from a terrible storm in this children's book. In the wake of many zeppelin disasters in the 1930s—both in America and abroad—this book resists disaster and excites the young imaginations who looked to the sky for inspiration and adventure. Published by Rand McNally and Company in 1935, The Stubborn Dirigible was one of many children’s books released by the famous cartographic corporation.

“Civilization Follows the Improved Highway.” That was and still is the motto of the enduring and always alluring travel magazine Arizona Highways.  It was first published in 1925 as an engineering newsletter by the Arizona Highway Department. By the 1930s, it had segued into a magazine documenting the road construction of the expanding highway system throughout Arizona. In the 1940s, the magazine excelled as one of the first color illustrated travel magazines at the forefront of color printing technology.

This 1892 folio reproduction of a Tlaxcala codex was originally developed in the 16th century. The Lienzo de Tlaxcalla uses detailed drawings to depict the time of contact and conflict between Hernando Cortez and various groups of people in and around the Tlaxcala region of Mexico. The Lienzo de Tlaxcalla is comprised of images with accompanying text in Nahuatl. One such stunning image portrays a sumptuous banquet. The 16th century original is now lost, but its imagery is available thanks in part to this recreation by Alfredo Chavero.

Ever since the surviving ship of Magellan's fleet returned to Spain in 1522 with birds of paradise, all specimens known in Europe through the 18th century were prepared and preserved by native collectors with the bones and feet removed. As a result, Linnaeus' Systema Naturae (10th ed., 1758) gave the greater bird-of-paradise the name Paradisaea apoda (= without feet).

René Primevère Lesson, having served as surgeon/pharmacist/naturalist on the round-the-world scientific voyage of the Coquille (1822-1825), subsequently published several works in ornithology and mammalogy. Les Trochilidées is the third and last volume of his classic work on hummingbirds, and its purchase completes the Smithsonian Libraries' set. Beautifully illustrated, the plates are color-printed and finished by hand to accompany the species descriptions and a general natural history of hummingbirds. This copy survives in sheets as issued, folded but un-cut and un-bound.