TODAY: In 1902, P. G. Wodehouse’s first novel, The Pothunters, is published in London by A & C Black.
- Back to school reading for students of all ages: it’s our fall 2020 book preview! | Lit Hub
- Playwright Dan O’Brien knows that every family is unhappy in its own way: on past traumas and a future for the stage. | Lit Hub Craft
- “The Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones. And the oil age isn’t going to end because we run out of oil: it will be because of technology.” Daniel Yergin on the 21st-century energy economy. | Lit Hub Politics
- Can America’s governors save our system of democracy? Saladin Ambar on Donald Trump and the power of the presidency. | Lit Hub Politics
- “Before, they all wanted to be anonymous, but when I would make it sound fly, they wanted to take credit for their work.” Ibi Zoboi and Liza Jessie Peterson on creating a sense of family in the poetry classroom. | Lit Hub
- “Sex is not always the dividing line that determines whether a relationship is romantic.” Angela Chen on rethinking how we talk about love, intimacy, and the absence of desire. | Lit Hub Science
- “The essay is often a thrillingly interior vehicle, a version of the author’s mulling, meandering mind.” Caryl Pagel on moving through books and books that move us. | Lit Hub
- “The Lüneburger Heide, a nature reserve south of Hamburg, is much of what remains of the vast heaths that once carpeted large parts of north-central Europe.” Robert Michael Pyle on land ethics in the 21st century. | Lit Hub Climate Change
- Aaron J. Leonard on the FBI, the second Red Scare, and the folk singer who cooperated. | Crime Reads
- “Lorde was not constrained by boundaries. She combined the personal and the political, the spiritual and the secular.” Roxane Gay on the legacy of Audre Lorde. | The Paris Review
- “What do Woody Allen, Roger Stone, thimerosal, and adult coloring books have in common?” The answer: Skyhorse publishing. | Vanity Fair
- “Writing definitely needs to get bigger. Twenty-year-olds writing their memoirs about personal neuroses and childhood traumas and sexual idiosyncrasies isn’t going to cut it. Solipsism isn’t going to cut it. We’re living in a potentially proto-totalitarian time.” Read an interview with Steve Erikson. | Alta
- John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan, is leaving the company “after months of turmoil” there. | The New York Times
- The Ohio Literacy Bank, a project to share reading materials with families receiving food aid, is promoting literacy across the state. | Newark Advocate
- Two books in recent years, Maaza Mengiste’s The Shadow King and Aida Edemariam’s The Wife’s Tale, have brought renewed attention to Italy’s colonial wars in Ethiopia. | Jacobin
- Rafael Walker notes similarities between Harriet Beecher Stowe and Robin DiAngelo—and the limitations of social justice. | The Point