One of the world's most famous paintings is "Whistler's Mother" by James McNeill Whistler, except that it isn't, even though she is.

Shortly after the time of Marco Polo, another traveler from Morocco set out on the Hajj to Mecca and ended up traveling to many more places.

Some lives can't be squeezed into a single book, so it's nice to find a biography that focuses on an aspect of a life.

Most Americans get through the year without reading a single poem, even though millions of them were raised on the work of America's most successful poet.

Every American schoolchild could tell you that Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, but he did so much more.

Solomon Northup was a free man in New York who was kidnapped, sold, and resold as a slave for 12 years in the plantations near New Orleans.

Amelia Earhardt wrote only one book about herself and the flight that made her famous.

Voltaire was born on the brink of the Age of Enlightenment and became the star of that era.

Over 1,000 years ago there lived an English king who was not supposed to be king, but he turned out to be perhaps the most important ruler in British history.

Before the FBI, the first organized crime syndicate in America was confronted by an inspector for the US Post Office.