Watch, Read, Listen

If you missed David Hall's standing-room-only lecture last month about witches, you can now download it from The Huntington's site on iTunes U. Hall's talk was titled "Witch-Hunting and the Sadness of Everyday Life: An Alternative Perspective on Early New England."

The Huntington Digital Library just launched a new collection—the United States Civil War. It features more than 2,000 images from our impressive holdings of Civil War materials, many of which are being displayed

Halloween is but one of the many holidays that triggers childhood memories. For college student Galia Bar-Sever, a Halloween memory marks the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship with a place she loves.

The Southland Orchid Show is coming! In an attempt to educate the public on the strange and mysterious side of orchids, the Southland Orchid Show committee has named this year's show "Orchid Mystique."

The BBC reported earlier today that Hilary Mantel has won the Man Booker Prize for her novel Bring Up the Bodies. The book is a sequel to Wolf Hall, which won the Man Booker Prize in 2009. Mantel's papers are housed at The Huntington.

The Huntington is abuzz with the Civil War this fall. Manuscript exhibition "A Just Cause: Voices of the American Civil War," curated by Olga Tsapina, opened just a few weeks ago in the West Hall of the Library and gives its visitors an opportunity to try to make sense of that war through letters, diaries, and rare printed material from the time.

Last weekend, Huntington President Steve Koblik was among the 220 honorees who were inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The ceremony, held in Cambridge, Mass., continued a tradition dating back to 1780

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.