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Publishers Should Start Using Birth Control
We're (still) publishing a city's worth of books each year. Twelve is a book publisher, established in 2005, with a smart, small...
Read & DiscussRead This First, Then Get Brisket
The Passover Haggadah beyond Maxwell House This Wednesday and Thursday night, Jews all over the world will sit down to dinner and read,...
Read & DiscussThe Return of Riches to Rags Tales
Some of our best stories are about hubris, aiming too high, and falling from spectacular heights. The morning headlines read like teensy plot...
Read & DiscussOur "Dead Pledge" Crisis
Exploring the (Latin) Roots of Our Mortgage Problems I am a national statistic. Three years ago, I decided to move. I found a new house,...
Read & DiscussCriminal Advances in Book Publishing
Let's boycott books by Blagojevich, Condi, and other non-writers Earlier this month, Rod Blagojevich received a six-figure book...
Read & DiscussWho's Your Momma? Probably Not a Famous Author.
Why are there so few mothers among our favorite writers? The numbers are not good. The bylines, by far, go to the men, as do the literary...
Read & DiscussWhat Is a Book?
From incunabula, codices, and scrolls, to books and beyond-a brief history of how humans have been doing their reading. The debate about the...
Read & DiscussThis Is Also What Foreclosure Looks Like
Some good news from Cleveland The best photo of 2008 showed an eviction in Cleveland and the media enjoys stories about the devastation in my...
Read & DiscussFifty Lines to Woo Your Lover
A cheat sheet of Valentine's Day poetry Valentine's Day is nigh. If you do not have time to hit Victoria's Secret, are broke, or eschew...
Read & DiscussThey Might Have Been Giants
Three lost classics that should have made it into the literary canon The snow is ascending up the wall, threatening to hit my kitchen...
Read & DiscussEnding the Tyranny of Expensive Textbooks
BookSwim gives students a Netflix-style alternative to buying exorbitant textbooks A few weeks ago I put in book orders for my Spring semester...
Read & DiscussThe Art of the Status Update
Facebook's Status Update as 21st-century literary form About a year ago, my undergraduates had to explain to me what they meant by "Facebook...
Read & DiscussWhy We Need to Paint Books Now
Richard Baker's books portraits When I first saw Richard Baker's portraits of books in the current issue of Poets & Writers magazine, I smiled,...
Read & DiscussThe Adventures of Jeff Smith
An old-fashioned epic becomes a new model for cartoonists. 2008 seems to be the breakout year for graphic novels, which have been slowly...
Read & DiscussTurning the Page
Thoughts about reading circa 2008 and the death of David Foster Wallace Is the surfeit of lists touting the "best books of 2008" leaving you...
Read & DiscussBooks Are the New Cars
Major publishing houses follow American automakers into financial abyss One would think that when those catchwords of the season, "massive...
Read & DiscussJudge a Book by Its Cover
Publishers should think artistically when packaging novels I am a book snob. Not your standard, "I won't read trashy chick lit" snob-I weep...
Read & DiscussThe Brilliance of Breakdowns
Art Spiegelman and the coming of age of comics Comic strips are clambering up the hierarchical ladder of art. This surge comes after decades of...
Read & DiscussBarack's Barren Night Table
Where are fiction's black presidents? Is there a book or two you wish you could put on Barack Obama's night table? What would make a good read...
Read & DiscussSinging the Body Electric
Barack Obama as Walt Whitman, incarnate "I am an acme of things accomplished, and I am encloser of things to be." -- Walt Whitman, "Song of...
Read & Discuss