At a minimum, it's hard to outgrown a library whose authors range from George Washington to Arthur Miller and John James Audubon to Kurt Vonnegut.

WSJ: The Historian's Stories

John James Audubon begged to differ.

FORBES: Birds Of America... Untamed? J.J. Audubon's Original Watercolors Alight At The New-York Historical Society

The idea of hospitality provides a link, often quite tenuous, between a series of entertaining historical anecdotes, as Mr Browner ranges broadly from Petronius to Adolf Hitler via the court of Louis XIV, the log cabin of John James Audubon and the Paris salon of Gertrude Stein.

ECONOMIST: Hospitality

"It's the Paris-Dakar rally of birding, " says spokesman John Bianchi, of the National Audubon Society, with a straight face.

FORBES: Wings of Desire