Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer was the most challenged book in 2022, according to the American Library Association. Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune / Tribune News Service via Getty Images
Maia Kobabe’s graphic novel Gender Queer: A Memoir documents Kobabe’s coming out as nonbinary and asexual.
Since the book’s publication in 2019, readers have been regularly reaching out to Kobabe to express their appreciation for Gender Queer’s heartfelt writing and exploration of gender and sexuality.
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This cross section of a sequoia in Yosemite National Park in California has markers identifying the dates of tree rings. Jared Farmer
What and where are the oldest known trees on the planet?
If you include plants that can regenerate, the upper age limit could be ten thousand years or more. Such superorganisms, including the famous aspen grove nicknamed “Pando,” are made up of genetically identical trunks connected through a single root system that sends up new shoots over time.
These clonal colonies are impossible to date with precision, because the oldest substance long ago decomposed. Many lists of oldest trees stick to single-trunked plants that produce annual growth rings. These kinds of trees are easier to date. Scientists called dendrochronologists focus on assigning calendar years to tree rings and interpreting data within those rings. By using a hand-cranked tool called an increment borer, they extract core samples without depriving the tree of strength and vigor.
This year’s picks include Fresh Banana Leaves, Origin and Starry Messenger. Illustration by Emily Lankiewicz
This year in science was filled with amazing discoveries, sobering stats related to mounting illness and death from viruses, and major technological achievements in space. Researchers discovered lost cities in the Bolivian Amazon after flying over the rainforest. Mpox (formerly known as monkeypox) spread around the United States, while global deaths from Covid-19 topped six million. And the James Webb Space Telescope unfolded to capture breathtaking images of our universe. In between the breaking news stories, we dug into longer works on a variety of fascinating scientific disciplines. From those, our editors and contributors have picked ten favorites that explore our universe through the lens of creatures ranging from a tiny virus to a dedicated anthropologist to extinct dinosaurs. For a deep look into reproductive anatomy or a memoir connecting music to physics, check out some of Smithsonian magazine’s favorite science books of 2022.
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Privately owned for decades, the materials include a short story featuring F. Scott Fitzgerald, personal effects and rough drafts
By Molly Enking, Daily Correspondent, September 26, 2022 3:13 p.m.
Ernest Hemingway and his middle son, Patrick, pose with a record 119.5-pound Atlantic sailfish caught off Key West, Florida, in May 1934. Toby and Betty Bruce Collection of Ernest Hemingway, Eberly Family Special Collections Library, Penn State University Libraries / Penn State. All Rights Reserved.
A veritable treasure trove of papers, artifacts and photos linked to Ernest Hemingway is now accessible to scholars and the public for the first time. As the New York Times’ Robert K. Elder reports, the archive—part of the new Toby and Betty Bruce Collection at Penn State University Libraries—represents “the most significant cache of Hemingway materials uncovered in 60 years.”
Objects featured in the trove include Hemingway’s earliest known short story (written at age 10), hundreds of photographs, four unpublished short stories, manuscript ideas, letters, clothing and personal effects. The writer was a notorious “pack rat,” saving “everything from bullfighting tickets and bar bills to a list of rejected story titles written on a piece of cardboard,” says Sandra Spanier, a literary scholar at Penn State, in a statement.
Hemingway left the materials in storage at one of his favorite bars, Sloppy Joe’s in Key West, Florida, in 1939. They remained there until his death by suicide in 1961.
Forget what you know from the cartoon. The 19th-century story, now in a new translation, was a rallying cry for universal education and Italian nationhood
“Once upon a time, there was a piece of wood.” An Italian tradition, epitomized by the fictional Geppetto, continues at Bartolucci’s shop in Florence. Simona Ghizzoni
The town of Collodi, Italy, about 45 miles west of Florence, is set on a slope behind a fabulous 17th-century villa. The garden, built as a kind of fantasy pleasure park for the Garzoni family and their noble guests, offers terraces, flower beds, grand staircases, splashing fountains and antique marble statues surrounding the Baroque villa.
Walk through the tunnel under the villa and follow the path up the hill, and the stone houses of Collodi speak to a very different reality.
Ascending its precipitously steep cobblestone main street, you come to a small piazza with communal sinks for laundry. The town is older than the villa and was probably originally built on the hilltop for purposes of strategic defense. It is where the working-class people lived, the ones who tended the nobility’s villa and gardens. It’s hard to know what these laborers were thinking as they trudged back up the hill after a long day of working at the villa. It is probably fair to say they were tired.
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Threats like hunting, habitat loss and the pesticide DDT contributed to the bald eagle’s decline. Todd Ryburn Photography via Getty Images
Bald eagles have been removed from Vermont’s list of threatened and endangered species after years of restoration work in the state, per the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department.
“The bald eagle’s de-listing is a milestone for Vermont,” says Wildlife Division Director Mark Scott in a statement. “This reflects more than a decade of dedicated work by Vermont Fish & Wildlife and partners.
It shows that Vermonters have the capacity to restore and protect the species and habitats that we cherish.”
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