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We’re building a guide for everyday life, where experts will educate you about our world.
Author Spotlight
Thomas Patteson is a musicologist, writer, and musician whose work explores music technology, electronic music, improvisation, and the history of sound.
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Monica Murphy is a veterinarian and a writer.
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Gary M. Feinman is a MacArthur curator of Mesoamerican, Central American, and East Asian anthropology at the Negaunee Integrative Research Center in Chicago, Illinois.
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Katrina Fischer Kuh is the Haub Distinguished Professor of Environmental Law at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University.
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Andrew McConnell Stott is a professor in the English department at the University of Southern California specializing in British popular culture from the 16th to 19th centuries.
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Elaine Siu is an author, activist, and innovator devoted to shifting the world away from animal agriculture.
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Sarah Parker Ward is an end-of-life strategist and death tech futurist.
Kirsten Tambling is an art historian specializing in 18th-century art.
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Sonja Smith is an award-winning journalist based in Namibia. She is a member of the Center for Collaborative Investigative Journalism and a correspondent for the Associated Press. Smith has worked for various Namibian media outlets, including Confidente, the Windhoek Observer, and the Namibian.
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Claire Preston is a professor of early modern literature at Cambridge, specializing in the intersection of 17th-century science and rhetoric. Renowned for her award-winning work on Sir Thomas Browne and Edmund Spenser, she explores how the “New Science” and the era’s information overload shaped English prose and the cultural history of the natural world.
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Guides
The Observatory’s Guide to Wildlife and Ecosystem Protection explores the interconnected challenges facing wild animals and the habitats they depend on. It examines how human activities—such as deforestation, industrial agriculture, wildlife trade, pollution, and climate change—are driving species decline and ecosystem instability. By highlighting the importance of biodiversity, including the role of apex predators, healthy forests, and intact habitats in maintaining ecological balance, the guide connects conservation science with real-world threats and solutions, offering a clear understanding of how protecting wildlife also safeguards human health, prevents future pandemics, and supports resilient ecosystems.
editorsourceareaThe Guide to Factory-Farmed Animals examines the conditions, systems, and consequences of industrial animal agriculture. It explores how billions of chickens, pigs, and cows are raised in confined environments, often with minimal legal protection and significant welfare concerns. The guide connects animal suffering to broader impacts on human health, labor conditions, and the environment, including pollution and disease risk. It also addresses how cultural narratives and industry practices shape public perception of meat and dairy. By bringing together reporting, analysis, and ethical inquiry, this guide offers a clear, grounded understanding of factory farming and the forces sustaining it.
editorsourceareaThe United States is facing an unprecedented care crisis, with millions of Americans providing essential care to relatives and friends living with chronic conditions, disabilities, mental health challenges, or age-related needs. Despite serving as a lifeline for loved ones, informal caregivers often lack the public support they deserve. As a result, many experience significant emotional, physical, and financial strain. Finding convenient and flexible ways to practice self-care is therefore critical.
editorsourceareaWriting can be one powerful way for caregivers to do this. Through journaling, storytelling, and other forms of writing, caregivers can process difficult emotions, gain new perspectives on their experiences, and explore evolving aspects of their identities. Writing can also connect caregivers with others who share similar challenges.
Beyond personal healing, storytelling can help caregivers build community and advocate for stronger care policies. This guide explores several forms of writing and storytelling that can help caregivers reflect, cope, and heal—while also contributing to a more supportive care system for everyone.Birds are among the most diverse, intelligent, and ecologically important animals on Earth. They pollinate plants, disperse seeds, regulate insect populations, and inspire human cultures through their songs, migrations, and extraordinary adaptations. Yet many bird species also face unprecedented pressures from habitat loss, climate change, invasive species, pollution, and other human activities. This guide explores the science of birds, their relationships with people and ecosystems, and the many ways we can better understand and protect them.
editorsourceareaConscious consumption means recognizing that everyday purchasing decisions shape the well-being of nonhuman animals, ecosystems, and human communities. It includes choosing foods that minimize harm, supporting ethical and sustainable production, avoiding products linked to environmental destruction, and rejecting exploitative labor practices. From humane food labels and plant-based alternatives to shade-grown coffee, eco-friendly wine, and reduced reliance on fast fashion and fossil fuels, each choice carries impact. The Observatory’s Guide to Conscious Consumption brings together practical tools and deeper context to help you make informed decisions that support your health, reduce harm, and contribute to a more just and sustainable world.
editorsourceareaThe Guide to Changing How We Relate to Animals explores how human perceptions, language, and belief systems shape our treatment of nonhuman life. It examines growing scientific understanding of animal intelligence, emotion, and social complexity, alongside philosophical and cultural frameworks that influence moral consideration. By questioning long-held assumptions about hierarchy, consciousness, and value, the guide highlights how attitudes toward animals are evolving. It also considers how shifts in awareness can lead to changes in behavior, policy, and everyday interactions. Together, these perspectives invite a more expansive, reflective, and ethically grounded relationship with the living world.
editorsourceareaWhy do some authors pretend to be someone they are not? Why do they claim experiences that they don’t have? What drives them to create texts and claim that they are ancient? By examining some examples of literary fraud from the modern era, we can gain insight not only into a fraudulent writer’s perspective, but also into readers’ expectations, publishing practices, and what kind of story a culture values.
editorsourceareaThe Observatory’s Guide to Companion Animals and Human Responsibility explores the complex relationships between humans and the animals who live alongside us. It examines how pet ownership, breeding, and the global pet industry affect animal welfare, biodiversity, and ecosystem balance. From the ecological impact of free-roaming cats to ethical questions about domestication and dependency, the guide highlights both care and consequence. It also considers how human choices—from feeding practices to habitat encroachment—shape the lives of companion animals and wildlife alike. By bringing these perspectives together, the guide encourages more responsible, informed, and compassionate relationships with animals in human care.
editorsourceareaThe Observatory’s Guide to Animals in Science and Research examines the role of nonhuman animals in scientific experimentation and biomedical development. It explores the ethical, regulatory, and scientific debates surrounding animal testing, including concerns about welfare, transparency, and the limits of animal models in predicting human outcomes. The guide highlights practices involving primates and laboratory animals, as well as growing calls for reform, improved oversight, and the development of alternative research methods. By connecting policy, science, and ethics, it offers a clearer understanding of how animals are used in research—and what a more humane and effective system might look like.
editorsourceareaThis guide explores the promise and perils of renewable energy. Can renewable energy achieve the emissions cuts we need to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis? Can we avoid an energy crisis if we abandon fossil fuels? What is the dark truth behind bioenergy? Is hydropower a real or false solution? Is the renewable energy transition succeeding or failing?
editorsourceareaNew Additions
As keyboards and touchscreens replace pens and pencils, the decline of handwriting raises questions about cognition, culture, and creativity.
By: Danica Tomber
A 19th-century hyperpolyglot reported to have known up to 72 languages, the biography of Cardinal Giuseppe Mezzofanti explores the boundaries of how we characterize multilingualism.
By: Michael Erard
Before Freudian psychoanalysis became the dominant approach to psychotherapy, physician Morton Prince pioneered influential ideas about dissociation, hypnosis, habit formation, and talk therapy that helped shape the early development of American psychotherapy.
By: George Prochnik
Humanitarian organizations invest in education to promote safety, resilience, and social cohesion, but researchers continue to debate its long-term impact on conflict and human well-being.
By: Chloe Bruce
Buraq, the winged steed associated with the Prophet Muhammad’s Night Journey, evolved from a briefly described figure into a richly imagined symbol through Islamic literature, visual art, philosophy, and centuries of religious and cultural interpretation.
By: Yasmine Seale
Was it their mastery of the horse and chariot, or a revolutionary social structure that allowed them to absorb their neighbors so effectively?
By analyzing the landscape where the Onon and Kherlen rivers form, we are hunting for the site which was allegedly altered to hide the Mongol Emperor forever.
Was Alexander the Great swallowed by the rising tides of the Mediterranean, or perhaps hidden by a populace protecting their god-king from religious fervor?
Classics
A survivor’s perspective on what it was like to be on the Titanic as it sank, with detailed accountings of his and other passengers’ accounts.
From Wikisource:
- “Ten Days in a Mad-House is a book written by newspaper reporter Nellie Bly and published by Norman Munro in New York City in 1887. The book comprised Blyʼs reportage for the New York World while on an undercover assignment in which she feigned insanity to investigate reports of brutality and neglect at the Womenʼs Lunatic Asylum on Blackwellʼs Island.”
By: Nellie Bly
The famous novel about government and business corruption in the early 20th century by muckraker author Upton Sinclair.
From Wikisource:
- “The Jungle is a 1906 novel written by author and socialist journalist Upton Sinclair. It was written about the corruption of the American meatpacking industry during the early 20th century. The novel depicts in harsh tones the poverty, absence of social programs, unpleasant living and working conditions, and hopelessness prevalent among the ‘have-nots,’ which is contrasted with the deeply rooted corruption on the part of the ‘haves.’”
By: Upton Sinclair
From Wikipedia:
- “Woman in the Nineteenth Century is a book by American journalist, editor, and women’s rights advocate Margaret Fuller. Originally published in July 1843 in The Dial magazine as ‘The Great Lawsuit. Man versus Men. Woman versus Women,’ it was later expanded and republished in book form in 1845.”
- “The basis for Fuller’s essay is the idea that man will rightfully inherit the earth when he becomes an elevated being, understanding of divine love. There have been periods in time when the world was more awake to this love, but people are sleeping now; however, everyone has the power to become enlightened. Man cannot now find perfection because he is still burdened with selfish desires, but Fuller is optimistic and says that we are on the verge of a new awakening. She claims that in the past man, like Orpheus for Eurydice, has always called out for woman, but soon will come the time when women will call for men, when they will be equals and share divine love.”
From Wikipedia:
- “A Voice from the South: By a Black Woman of the South is the first book by American author, educator, and activist Anna J. Cooper. First published in 1892, the book is widely viewed as one of the first articulations of Black feminism. The book is divided into two parts, ‘Soprano Obligato’ and ‘Tutti Ad Libitum.’ Each section contains four individual essays. This book led to the term ‘Cooperian’ being coined when speaking about Anna J. Cooper. It is considered one of the first, full-length Black feminist texts.”
- Overview
- “A Voice from the South compiles a series of essays that touched on a variety of topics, such as race and racism, gender, the socioeconomic realities of Black families, and the administration of the Episcopal Church.”
- “The book advanced a vision of self-determination through education and social uplift for African-American women. Its central thesis was that the educational, moral, and spiritual progress of Black women would improve the general standing of the entire African-American community. She says that the violent natures of men often run counter to the goals of higher education, so it is important to foster more female intellectuals because they will bring more elegance to education. She noted Black women whose accomplishments could rival those of men, including Phillis Wheatley, Sojourner Truth, Fanny Jackson Coppin, and Edmonia Lewis. Cooper advanced the view that it was the duty of educated and successful Black women to support their underprivileged peers in achieving their goals. Through this view Cooper’s style was deemed ‘Cooperian,’ as a direct comparison to other male canonical theorists. …”
- “A Voice from the South was published during a period that saw a burst of intellectual publications by Black women. Cooper’s book was published the same year as Lucy Delaney’s From the Darkness Cometh the Light; or, Struggles for Freedom, Ida B. Wells’s Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases, and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Iola Leroy; or, Shadows Uplifted.”
By: Anna J. Cooper
This two-volume book is an “exposé about the Standard Oil Company, run at the time by oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, the richest figure in American history.” More from Wikipedia:
“Originally serialized in nineteen parts in McClure’s magazine, the book is a seminal example of muckraking, and inspired many other journalists to write about trusts, large businesses that (in the absence of strong antitrust laws in the 19th century) attempted to gain monopolies in various industries.”
“The History of the Standard Oil Company is credited with hastening the breakup of Standard Oil, which came about in 1911, when the Supreme Court of the United States found the company to be violating the Sherman Antitrust Act.”
“The original book was a two-volume hardcover set. An abridged paperback edition was released later.”
By: Ida M. Tarbell
This is a speech by Frederick Douglass given on Monday, July 5, 1852, in Rochester, New York. The oration was published as a pamphlet the same year. Annotations were provided by the Wikisource community.
This 1847 memoir was written by prominent activist and writer William Wells Brown to support the abolitionist movement. It chronicles Brown’s cruel treatment as an enslaved man, the horrors that he witnessed, and his multiple escape attempts for freedom.
Note: This book is part of a historical collection and may include offensive language.
This article on the German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte (associated with the movement of German idealism) appeared in the Philosophical Review, Volume 16, pp. 488-505, in 1907.
Ellen Bliss Talbot was a professor of philosophy at Mount Holyoke College from 1898 to 1932. From Wikisource:
“According to Dorothy Rogers and Therese B. Dykeman… ‘[Talbot] had a successful academic career, chairing Mount Holyoke’s philosophy department for thirty-two years and teaching part-time for several years after retirement. She published just three books, all on Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1898, 1899, 1906), in addition to her considerable number of articles in the Philosophical Review, Mind, and the American Journal of Psychology. Her commitment to women’s education at Mount Holyoke was unwavering, helping to ensure that the philosophy curriculum met the expectations of her fellow academicians as philosophy established itself as a profession.’ From ‘Introduction: Women in the American Philosophical Tradition 1800–1930,’ in Hypatia 19:2 (Spring 2004): viii-xxxiv.”
“The Shame of the Cities is a book written by American author Lincoln Steffens. Published in 1904, it is a collection of articles which Steffens had written for McClure’s Magazine. It reports on the workings of corrupt political machines in several major cities in the United States, along with a few efforts to combat them. It is considered one of several early major pieces of muckraking journalism, but Steffens later claimed that the work made him ‘the first muckraker.’” (Source: Wikipedia)
By: Lincoln Steffens
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