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Glenn Miller's "In the Mood," Edward R. Murrow's wartime broadcasts from London and Public Enemy's influential hip-hop album Fear of a Black Planet are among the recordings added to the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry.

Migrant workers came from around the world to build Panama's transportation systems. They brought, among other things, music with them. Dozens of bands that came to be known collectively as Combos Nacionales married musical styles as distinct and distant as New York boogaloo, Cuban descarga and Trinidadian Calypso. Panama: Latin, Calypso and Funk at the Isthmus charts this uniquely Panamanian hybrid.

The new revival of the 1988 series works because it reclaims Black people's part in history.

Laura Hillenbrand — the award-winning author of Seabiscuit — has returned in fighting form with her latest nonfiction biography, Unbroken. The story of a pilot who survived a crash against all odds speaks to the indefatigable human spirit and our collective will to overcome.

A wise spiritual teacher (who also happens to be a bear) stars in Jon J. Muth's vibrantly illustrated picture books. Zen Ghosts combines the simplicity and elegance of a Zen teaching with the mystery and magic of a full-moon, Halloween ghost story.

See and hear examples of politically dogmatic — but extravagantly assembled — operas and ballets born during the Cultural Revolution. Glamorous photo stills by Zhang Yaxin of works like Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy were recently shown in Canada.

This summer has seen plenty of worthwhile jazz, including a pianist who's been around since the '50s, a Caribbean jazzman, a band of deliberate melody, and a cover from The Jungle Book. Sample recordings from Harold Mabern, Etienne Charles, the band Black Host and Lauren Desberg.

An action thriller of a symphony, Mahler's First is piled high with ambition, self-reflection and fear. Conductor Marin Alsop shares her approach to Mahler's multilayered music.

These days in jazz, great records are being made by hot new trumpeters, steel-lunged veterans, New Orleans stars and an "orchestra" of young French musicians. Preview new releases by Ambrose Akinmusire, The Cookers, Rebirth Brass Band and France's ONJ.

Classical Greeks and Romans dreamed up some fantastic inventions — including an analog computer to track the sun, and amphitheater surround sound (of sorts). Historian Vicki Leon discusses these innovations and more in her new book, How to Mellify a Corpse: And Other Human Stories of Ancient Science & Superstition.