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Since the mid-1700s, researchers have classified life with scientific names. But some of them have problematic histories and connotations. The botanical community is trying to tackle this issue.

From the time of slavery, some light-skinned African-Americans escaped racism by passing as white. The new book, A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life, explores what they lost.

NPR's Scott Detrow talks with Laura Morowitz, art history professor at Wagner College, about the incredible back story behind a Gustav Klimt painting that set a record at auction.

NPR's Scott Detrow talks with Garrett Graff, author of The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 about former Vice President Dick Cheney's role that day, and thereafter.

While some of the first 43 presidents have become larger-than-life figures, others are all but forgotten. In a new collection called Of Great and Mortal Men, songwriters Christian Kiefer, Jefferson Pitcher and Matthew Gerken have composed original songs that span three CDs and more than 220 years of American history.

Petra Rivera-Rideau, co-author of the Bad Bunny Syllabus and the new book P FKN R, says the Puerto Rican artist often wields joy as resistance.

Signs installed earlier in National Parks earlier in June asked for feedback on signs "that are negative about past or living Americans." Comments viewed by NPR didn't provide the requested feedback.

In his new book, the Connecticut Democrat outlines the history of the Second Amendment and gun violence. While solutions are big and comprehensive, Murphy says the U.S. is poised to turn a corner.

"Mudlarks" were the people who made a living picking objects out of the mud along the River Thames. Writer Lara Maiklem follows in their tracks; she chronicles her journeys in a new book, Mudlark.

The prose is gorgeous and the plot is complex. The author of The Only Good Indians returns again with a spellbinding yarn about one of the bloodiest, most significant parts of the nation's history.