The book that changed a museum
The Director of London’s British Museum, Neil MacGregor is to step down from his job at the end of this year. MacGregor has been at the helm of the institution… Read more »
Texas State Board of Education approves social studies textbooks, doesn’t really know what’s in them (but it’s probably stuff about how Moses was awesome)
Let’s begin with a short quiz: Do you like power? Do you also like ignorance? Do you enjoy imposing your arbitrary wishes and paranoid half-opinions on the population of the… Read more »
Spooky tales from a library in Connecticut
Halloween is just around the corner, and while your plans for October 31st might include a haunted house, or even a haunted bookshop, you may want to visit a haunted… Read more »
An attack that “made no sense whatever”: Alexander Cockburn’s fight with a publisher
In the American Prospect, Harold Myerson considers the legacy of Alex Cockburn, who died last Friday at 71, by revisiting his peculiar reaction to the demolition of Pantheon Books in… Read more »
In defense of Stephen Joyce
In an essay at the Smart Set, Jessa Crispin defends James Joyce’s hated literary executor, grandson Stephen Joyce, who has for years complicated scholarly access to papers and permissions to… Read more »
Fifth-graders correct Washington Post book review, editor calls correction “adorable”
Above, Washington Post book reviewer Dennis Drabelle holds a letter from Mrs. Reed’s fifth grade class at Burning Tree Elementary School in Bethesda, Maryland. The letter points to an error in… 2 / Read more »
When did America get its bookstores?
It’s 1931, in a book industry without returns, discounting, superstores, or even paperbacks. Where do you buy a book? As Alexis Madrigal writes in The Atlantic, the answer is not… 1 / Read more »
Operation What? Code names, new and old
Ah, code names! As readers of Trevor Paglen’s I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have To Be Destroyed By Me know, there’s nothing like squirreling around in the… 1 / Read more »
In Texas, you can make history … by changing it
According to a New York Times journalist, America’s school children have been reading textbooks catering mostly to Texan sensibilities for decades. Gail Collins in the New York Review of Books… Read more »
Russian library discovers hidden treasure
In case you missed it, as I did, “A treasure trove of pre-revolutionary books and magazines has been discovered in the archives of the Russian State Polytechnical Museum Library in… 1 / Read more »