Posts by author
M. Rebekah Otto
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The (Old) New Leader
In January 2006, The New Leader stopped print publication, an early omen to The Christian Science Monitor. But this eighty-five-year old magazine continues to publish bimonthly in the form of PDF on their website. In its heyday, The New Leader…
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Font Factor
Helvetica, a 2007 film, looks at the history of this now-ubiquitous font, from its classical modernist roots in 1957 Switzerland to contemporary American billboards. Originally designed to be neutral, fonts have taken on new weight. New designers follow font trends,…
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People Reading
This blog captures People Reading as an on-going testament to the fact that people still read. They read Focault, Michael Crichton, Emily Dickinson; they read in Spanish and in Russian; they read on the BART platform, at the laundromat, and…
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Jonny Olsen: Laotian Pop Star
When Jonny Olsen, from Southern California, first went to Thailand, he stumbled on a plastic toy khaen, the native instrument that sounds like part harmonica, part reedy accordion. Well, the rest is pop music history… Read about his incredible (ridiculous?)…
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Skateboarding Writers
McSweeney’s interviews skateboarding pro turned writer, Bret Anthony Johnston, who has written about skateboarding and school for The New York Times. He is now the director of the creative writing program at Harvard, and he writes regularly for All Things…
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Things I’ve Been Silent About
Azar Nafisi‘s first book, Reading Lolita in Tehran, chronicles an underground book club reading Western Classics under the oppressive Islamic government of Tehran (it subsequently became a favorite book-club book State-side as it climbed The New York Times Bestseller List).…
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John Updike
In literature there are many figures but few icons. John Updike published over 50 books which dug through the depths of suburban American lives, particularly our sex lives, once comparing a vagina to a ballet slipper. He contributed both fiction…