Al Gore

Writer, analyst, and eloquent opinionator Gore Vidal died today. He was 86. The LA Times reports that he died Tuesday in his Hollywood Hills home, from complications related to pneumonia.

In his lifetime, Vidal received the National Book Award, wrote many novels, short stories, plays and essays.

Interactive books for kids hit the App Store every week, but mature readers have fewer options as most turn to iBooks and eBooks. But, that doesn’t mean a few gems that use digitization well without compromising content emerge every year. This sector is grossly under-reviewed and the offerings can be very pricey making it hard for readers to decide which book-apps are right for them. These are the best of the lot from 2011, which, if you read them all, should keep you busy well into the New Year.

Want some sass with that app? You should, if you want to get noticed in the increasingly crowded app marketplace, where your app needs to be clever, engaging and useful to pique a potential user's interest. Book Business toiled away in the app mines and unearthed these gems in which publishers do creative, fun or powerful things with book apps to really hook audiences.

Tyson Miller has edited a new book (due out in October) called 'Dream of a Nation: Inspiring Ideas for a Better America.'

On the morning of January 27th—an aeon ago, in tech time—Steve Jobs was to appear at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, in downtown San Francisco, to unveil Apple’s new device, the iPad. Although speculation about the device had been intense, few in the audience knew yet what it was called or exactly what it would do, and there was a feeling of expectation in the room worthy of the line outside the grotto at Lourdes. Hundreds of journalists and invited guests, including Al Gore, Yo-Yo Ma, and Robert Iger, the C.E.O. of Disney, milled around the theatre, waiting for Jobs to appear. The sound system had been playing a medley of Bob Dylan songs; it went quiet as the lights came up onstage and Jobs walked out, to the crowd’s applause.

According to one of the better-known accounts in the compendium of humankind’s greatest achievements, it was in the year 105 that a Chinese man named Ts’ai Lun invented paper, mashing up wood from a mulberry tree with fiber from bamboo. Thus was born a technology that would literally change the world, making possible artistic, scientific and religious revolutions, democratizing literacy and learning, and ushering humanity into the modern age. In recent times, paper production has played a role in changing the world in other ways. The book industry alone required 3 million to 4 million tons of paper over just the last three years,