Watch, Read, Listen

When I was working on my recent book about Robert Ridgway, the Smithsonian's first curator of birds, I got to thinking about the large sets of stuffed birds, or "study skins," that he and his fellow bird professionals kept in drawers and cabinets in natural history museums.

John Trager and Karen Zimmerman labor quietly throughout the year propagating plants for The Huntington's International Succulents Introductions (ISI) program. Described as "a shopper's paradise and a unique conservation program" in the spring/summer 2006 issue of Huntington Frontiers

Lost in sesquicentennial commemorations of various Civil War anniversaries is the fact that we are in the thick of the bicentennial year of one of America's other Civil Wars—the War of 1812. Or at least that's how Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Alan Taylor sees it.

The Huntington's Botanical Gardens have long been a spectacular locale for strolling among diverse arrays of trees and plants. Less known to everyday visitors is the fact that the gardens also have long served as a lab of sorts for botanists

Eight million manuscripts. Seven miles of shelving. A third of a million items used by scholars in a 12-month period. A snapshot of the scale of the task faced every day by stacks staff of the manuscripts department.

Check out what's coming up in the way of conferences and lectures this fall at The Huntington. Many visitors might not know about the array of offerings, but every year, as the academic year gets under way

Tuesday night, PBS will premiere "Death and the Civil War," an installment of "American Experience" produced by Ric Burns and inspired by the 2008 book This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, by Drew Gilpin Faust.

Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies has made the short list for the 2012 Man Booker Prize, the most prestigious literary award for books written in English by authors from the Commonwealth of Nations, the Republic of Ireland, or Zimbabwe. Mantel's papers are housed at The Huntington.