Posts tagged with politics
Doesn't he have a real job?
Boris Johnson has apparently signed a hefty deal with HarperCollins to write a memoir about his time as Prime Minister of the UK. According to a friend of Johnson, the book will be "an important exercise in rescuing his reputation", so I'm interpreting that to mean it will be...
One of the giants speaks
According to the Guardian, comics legend Art Spiegelman is claiming that he was asked to remove a criticism of Donald Trump from an introduction he wrote for Marvel. (It was really more of an implied criticism—he mentioned something about how "the Orange Skull haunts America".) The official reason...
This is the world we live in now
If you're suddenly more interested in presidential candidate Marianne Williamson, Entertainment Weekly has helpfully rounded up a list of her many books, ranked from "mild to wild". I can't believe we have a presidential candidate who has written an off-brand take on The Secret and...
Weekly Book Giveaway: The Quiet American, by Graham Greene
After seeing it mentioned in several news articles about Mayor Pete Buttigieg, I decided it was time to re-read Graham Greene's The Quiet American. A full review will follow shortly, but here's a spoiler for you: nearly every speaking character in this novel is totally awful. This giveaway will run through 8/15/19...
What a charmer
Okay, this is definitely one of those "laugh so you don't start crying" things, but if you're looking for a (possibly microscopic) silver lining to Boris Johnson becoming the British Prime Minister, at least we're getting to enjoy this delightfully scathing review of Johnson's "novel" Seventy-Two Virgins...
A+++ choice
According to Publishers Weekly, the American Library Association has convinced former First Lady Michelle Obama to keynote the opening general session of their 2018 annual conference in New Orleans...
To be expected
I missed this news last month (and I was definitely happier for it): according to Publishers Weekly, the Trump administration has once again proposed "the permanent elimination of the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities, as...
Weekend plans
For the second week in a row, we are ending our news coverage with a story I personally find hilarious: after receiving a cease-and-desist order from President Donald Trump’s lawyers, publisher Henry Holt & Co. has actually moved up their publication date of...
Terrifying but handy?
For those of us who are obsessing over President Trump's tweets about North Korea, Politico recently posted an article about T. R. Fehrenbach’s 1963 book This Kind of War. Apparently, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is a big fan of the book, and has been relying upon it to develop the US's military strategy...
New heights
There is a fascinating article in the current issue of Vanity Fair about the ongoing battle between The New York Times and the Washington Post. The venerable papers have taken the election of President Trump as a opportunity to continuously out-scoop one another, producing a steady stream of stories...
The thinnest of skin
Aww: Donald Trump has blocked Stephen King on Twitter! Luckily(?) for King, J.K. Rowling has offered to DM him the tweets (until Trump gets around to blocking her, too)...
More Mindy
According to Deadline, Mindy Kaling has optioned the TV rights to Who Thought This Was a Good Idea? And Other Questions You Should Have Answers to When You Work in the White House, the memoir by Alyssa Mastromonaco, Barack Obama's former White House deputy chief of staff for operations...
Good deal
According to Entertainment Weekly, Barack and Michelle Obama have both signed deals to publish books with Crown Publishing Group. Crown has already published books by both Obamas: the former President’s 1995 memoir...
Image Comics [hearts] Planned Parenthood
This is cool: Image Comics will be releasing 11 "variant covers" in celebration of Women's History Month. The covers will acknowledge "the careers of women in comics, the strides made throughout comics history made by the women’s movement...
All too timely
Check out this video of Ian McKellen reading a speech from an Elizabethan play titled Sir Thomas More, which scholars think contains Shakespeare's handwriting. Regardless of the play's progenitor, however, the featured speech...
Apropos
I've been seeing a number of people linking to this 2015 Washington Post article about Anne Frank and her family being denied entry as refugees into the U.S. in 1941. It's a long (and terribly depressing) read, but...
Maybe there are CliffsNotes?
According to Quartz, Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism is now sold out on Amazon. I've read The Origins of Totalitarianism, and all I can say is: if people are buying it in hopes of a quick, comprehensible explanation of Trump's rise to power...
Dark Money, by Jane Mayer
On August 30, 2010, Janet Mayer published an article in the New Yorker called 'Covert Operations', an in-depth look at the political influence of Charles and David Koch, two American billionaire brothers who have devoted over a hundred million dollars to promoting libertarian causes. Over the next few years Mayer deepened and expanded her research on the subject, transforming her article into...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Dark Money, by Jane Mayer
This week's Book Giveaway is Jane Mayer's Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, which I read and enjoyed during my recent vacation. (There's nothing to beguile away a three-hour-long ferry ride like reading about the political fixations of creepy billionaires, in my opinion.) A full review will follow shortly...
Bad idea
According to the Tennessean, Tennessee librarians are urging Gov. Bill Haslam to veto a measure that would designate the Bible as the official book of Tennessee. I can think of a number of excellent reasons why they might want to choose another text, but Susan L. Jennings, president of the Tennessee Library Association, came up with...
Gross, creepy, no thank you.
This is... discomfiting. Newsweek informs me that the College Board has bowed to conservative political pressure, and is revising their A.P. U.S. History standards to "emphasize American Exceptionalism"...
Jail time for assigning Beloved?
Oh, this is great news: not content with good old-fashioned censorship, the Kansas Senate has passed a bill "making it easier to prosecute teachers and school administrators for distributing materials deemed harmful to minors". Apparently, supporters say the bill is necessary to ensure that kids are protected from teachers distributing pornography at school. Because... that's a thing that happens a lot? Or something?
Ridiculous, but kinda funny.
I was totally oblivious to the kerfuffle over Dinesh D'Souza's accusations that Costco and Google where somehow trying to depress the success of his recent movie and book America (due to their liberal political leanings, I guess) until I read this Seattle Times article. D'Souza's suggestions sound pretty flimsy...
So ridiculous
Publishers Weekly has posted an update on the decision by the South Carolina House of Representatives to cut the College of Charleston's funding by $52,000 and University of South Carolina-Upstate's funding by $17,142...
Hee. (Also, gross.)
Tréy Sager’s ebook Fires of Siberia is apparently a real—and mind-blowing—thing*: an "old-fashioned bodice ripper romance" inspired by the life of Tea Party leader and Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann. Here's the official plot summary...
Mixed company
If you're in the market for a thematically-appropriate pair of bookends to contain your collection of nonfiction books on the American electoral process (and who isn't?), look no further than these "Left and Right" bookends from CB2. Apart from that $40 price tag, they're pretty cute, huh?
At least it's a catchier title
The trailer's out for The Ides of March, the latest film from writer/director/star George Clooney. The movie is an adaptation of Beau Willimon's 2008 play Farragut North, which is loosely based o...
Inauguration Day Reading, Part II
Publishers have plenty of (unsolicited, but cute!) advice for Barack Obama, too:McSweeney's has published Thanks and Have Fun Running the Country: Kids' Letters to President Obama. This title, whi...
Inauguration Day Reading, Part I
Can't get enough inauguration news?Check out Go, Tell Michelle: African American Women Write to the New First Lady. This book of poetry, advice, and letters to the brand-spanking-new First Lady (...