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The Lois McClure is a replica of a 19th-century canal schooner. Ships like her were cargo carriers back then, but these days she hauls a new load — delivering history to ports throughout the Northeast.

Bill Bryson is known for exploring far-flung places, but he found inspiration for his most recent book after a hike through his own old, Victorian house in England. At Home: A Short History of Private Life explores the history of domesticity — from making beds, to the long history of hallways.

For almost every major world event — from the Apollo moon landing to Hurricane Katrina — there's a conspiracy theory to undermine the conventional view of the way things took place. Voodoo Histories, a new book by David Aaronovitch, takes aim at some of the most notorious.

A British publisher launched an unusual book Monday — an authorized history of MI5, the British domestic intelligence agency. It's the first authorized history of any Western intelligence agency, and allowing an academic to write it and comb through the agency's files has raised some questions about why the agency's secrets shouldn't be kept secret.

NPR's Ari Shapiro talks with columnist Michael Paul Williams of the Richmond Times-Dispatch about the city's history and a battle with Confederate monuments.

Many colleges have adopted a "common reads" program, where freshmen read the same book during the summer and then discuss it when they get to campus. Jared Diamond, author of the popular common read Guns, Germs, and Steel, talks about what his book can offer young readers.

The National Museum of Health and Medicine in D.C. is not for the squeamish. Founded in 1862, the museum displays everything from a large human hairball to skull fragments from Abraham Lincoln.

On the Left Bank of the River Seine, directly across from the Louvre museum, a crowded little shop has provided supplies to artists for more than 100 years. Cezanne bought oil paints there. Picasso liked their gray pastels. The shop, Sennelier, is a Paris repository of art history and commerce.

In his book Violent Politics, William Polks uses 11 tales of national turmoil for insight into counter-insurgency efforts. Polk finds echoes of Vietnam and the Soviet debacle in Afghanistan as he weighs U.S. policy in Iraq.

Shanghai was once home to thousands of Jews, serving as a refuge during World War II. Now a new Jewish center has opened, the first in China in 50 years, amid efforts to preserve the city's Jewish history.