LeVar Burton, fresh from a hosting "Jeopardy," turns his attention to hosting a special edition of the Library's 2021 National Book Festival, a one-hour special on PBS that is studded with some of the world's brightest literary stars.
Sybille Jagusch, chief of the Library's Literature Center, has just published "Japan and American Children's Books," a gorgeously illustrated volume that details how Japan and Japanese culture has been portrayed in American children's books over the past two centuries.
Russell Lee, the most prolific of the Farm Security Administration photographers who documented the nation in the 1930s and 1940s, is the subject of a new book co-published by the Library. Lee's 19,000 photographs for the FSA are preserved at the Library.
The Library recently acquired courtroom artist Mary Chaney's sketches from the trials of Rodney King in Los Angeles from 1992-1994. The Black motorist was beaten viciously by white police officers after a high-speed chase in 1991. The acquittal of the officers in state court set off days of deadly riots and became a touchstone in American society.
The Library today announced a new, multiyear initiative to connect more deeply with Black, Hispanic, Indigenous and other minority communities by expanding its collections, using technology to enable storytelling and offering more internship and fellowship opportunities, supported by a $15 million investment from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
In a National Book Festival Presents conversation that premieres tonight (June 5), Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden and Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution Lonnie Bunch discuss the national protests that have roiled the nation after the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.
Garth Brooks, winner of the 2020 Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, will be in conversation with his wife, fellow country-music star Trisha Yearwood, and Librarian Carla Hayden at the Library's Coolidge Auditorium on March 2, 2020.
This week the Library is launching the Constitution Annotated, a website that provides online access to a massive Senate document that has served for more than a century as the official record of the U.S. Constitution.