NPR
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The History of Whiskey
NPR reviews Noah Rothbaum’s new book, The Art of American Whiskey, and takes a closer look at the evolution of whiskey labels.
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Librarians in Wartime
Over the holiday weekend, Linton Weeks wrote for NPR’s History Dept. on the critical role of librarians in World Wars I and II. Weeks spoke to Cara Bertram, an archivist for the American Library Association: The books that did make…
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25 Years of Drawn and Quarterly
Over at NPR, Glen Weldon looks at a new anthology of Drawn and Quarterly that collects the Canadian comic publisher’s first 25 years.
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A Prayer from Flannery
Please help me dear God to be a good writer and to get something else accepted. Juan Vidal examines how T.S. Eliot, Flannery O’Connor, and Madeleine L’Engle approach prayer, and how prayer helps one derive meaning in a creative life.
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The Precarious State of the New York Public Library
In part, the crisis of The New York Public Library stems from the fact that it’s a weird entity. It’s not a state or city agency; instead, the library was founded as a private, nonprofit institution. It has always been…
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Why Muslims Felt Excluded in India
Part of [Gandhi’s] genius was he was able to broaden out the appeal of the independence movement…But the way he did it was by using Hindu iconography and stories, mythology…He was personally very unprejudiced about this..But for Muslims, ordinary Muslims,…
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Roxane Gay on NYT’s Alabaster Summer Reading List
“Another day, another all-white list of recommended reading.” So begins a piece on NPR from Roxane Gay on the New York Times’s newly released summer reading list, which features zero authors of color. Gay argues that national outlets with wide-ranging audiences,…
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A Century of Saul Bellow
I think of myself as a working stiff. If I got up in the morning, and say to myself ‘Well, great writer, what are you going to do today?’ I’d be paralyzed. To celebrate his 100th birthday, NPR takes a…
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Censorship Taints Publishing Bonanza
China represents a huge marketplace for any product, and book publishers have finally caught on. More than 10,000 Chinese books were available at the Book Expo America. But as publishers race to embrace the Chinese market and bring Chinese authors to…
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The World’s Oldest Book on Tea
Tea has a myriad of shapes. If I may speak vulgarly and rashly, tea may shrink and crinkle like a Mongol’s boots. Or it may look like the dewlap of a wild ox, some sharp, some curling as the eaves…
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Weekly Geekery
Your new lesson plan: Be smarter than a computer. John Henry. But instead of a railroad, it’s a computer. And instead of John Henry, it’s NPR’s Scott Horsley. Your stories may not persuade like you thought they did. The charming tale of…
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Prose Ceremony
The funny thing is it’s hard to explain, because it has nothing to do with The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. It has everything to do with The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. Chris Harrison, host of The Bachelor/Bachelorette, has written a…