2011
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With Every New Edition, A New Schema of Labeling
With the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) due for publication in May 2013, the classification of mental disorders and the categorization of psychiatric definitions is yet again being reviewed, revised,…
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“Famous for the Wrong Book”
Oftentimes an author’s most popular work is not actually his or her best, qualitatively speaking. What about those other under-the-radar books that don’t seem to get to get credit where credit’s due? Joseph Heller wrote other books beside Catch-22, right?…
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A FAN’S NOTES, The Rumpus Sports Column #39: It Gets Better
In late June, several days before Derek Jeter went yard with his milestone 3,000th hit as a Yankee, something even more incredible happened in the State of New York: the State Senate passed a bill legalizing same-sex marriage.
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Poetry Series Suspended
UC California Press is facing cutbacks, and their New California Poetry series is taking the hit. The series, because each title sells only around 1,000 copies, has been suspended. Even after the semi-recent publication of The Autobiography of Mark Twain,…
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Open Knowledge vs. US Government
Aaron Swartz, former Demand Progress Executive Director, political activist and Cambridge Web Entrepreneur, was arrested for illegally downloading over 4 million articles from the nonprofit subscription-based internet archive, JSTOR. Swartz’s activism is directed towards the “free flow of information,” and…
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Even More Taboo Than Love
C. Dale Young uses this third book to address injustices, the divisions caused by pain, prejudice, and a fractured spirit.
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Authors on Promotional Book Tours
This is what it’s like on the other side of the promotional book tour. As readers are amused by succumbing to the hype, skimming the interviews, gazing at the pictures and mentioning to their literary peers the impending release of…
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A Scary Movie Retrospective
Do you know about New Horror, the genre that rendered horror movies into “high art”? Horror movies, the classics and how their subsequent cinematic transformation, are the subject of Shock Value, Jason Zinoman’s new book. There’s an excerpt and review…
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Dan Weiss’s Morning Coffee
Another day, another set of abandoned power plant photos. We all need Soviet kids books sometimes. Long story short: snakes and possums hate each other. Update from yesterday: volcanoes! My city has some great shut down movie theaters (also did…