This week: Take a reading vacation / Why is Buc-ees thriving? / How to heal from burnout / Tony Blair returns to the Middle East’s political battlefields / Trump’s war on the Library of Congress is not new
Most of these items come from my social media networks. Follow me on BlueSky, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism. Learn more about my academic background here and about me here.
1. Business is booming for the Beaver – but why?
By David Brown and Kaye Knoll | Texas Standard | October 2025
“A YouTuber investigates Buc-ee’s, the travel stop staple, and what makes it so successful.”
2. My First Murder
By Skip Hollandsworth | Texas Monthly | October 2025
“A legendary true crime writer revisits the case that launched his lifelong obsession.”
3. What the O.J. Verdict & Its Aftermath Revealed About Race in America
By Patrice Taddonio | Frontline :: PBS | October 2025
“Millions of households across the U.S. had tuned in to wall-to-wall coverage of onetime American icon O.J. Simpson’s trial for the brutal double murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman. Then, on Oct. 3, 1995, came a televised verdict, watched by more than 150 million people, that shook the country along racial lines — sparking both consternation and celebration, and raising profound questions about the criminal justice system, fairness and America’s racial divide.”
4. Trump Is Waging a Culture War on the Library of Congress. It’s Been Done Before.
By Rebecca Brenner Graham | Politico Magazine | May 2025
“Thomas Jefferson wanted to donate his personal collection of books to the Library of Congress. But critics thought those books were un-American.”
5. Fool me once: the magical origin of the word ‘hoax’
By Scott Neuman | NPR | October 2025
“How did hocus pocus transform from the stage name of a magician … to a byword for the entire craft?”
6. Trump’s welcome message to new citizens isn’t very welcoming
By Chauncey DeVega | Salon | September 2025
“His message to naturalized citizens is part of an effort to redefine American identity and patriotism”
7. Tony Blair’s long experience in the Middle East is both his strength and his weakness
By Jill Lawless and Danica Kirka | Associated Press | September 2025
“Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has returned to the forefront of Middle East peace efforts after a U.S. peace plan on ending the Israel-Hamas war cast him in a leading role in overseeing the post-war administration and reconstruction of the Gaza Strip. It’s familiar territory for Blair, who spent eight years working to promote peace between Israel and the Palestinians as the international community’s envoy to the Middle East.”
8. I’m exhausted but am surviving. How can I heal from burnout without expensive time off?
By Eleanor Gordon-Smith | Leading Questions :: The Guardian | September 2025
“So many burnout books and blogs seem to assume a second income is present to take care of all the stuff that will still need doing if I take a break, but it’s just me. How do I take an actual break?”
9. The Graduate: Intimations of a Revolution
By Frank Rich | The Criterion Collection | February 2016
“[I]t straddles both the old and the new. It survives not just as a peerless Hollywood entertainment but as a one-of-a-kind cinematic portrait of America when it, like Benjamin Braddock at the edge of his parents swimming pool, teetered on the brink.”
10. How artists and musicians are responding to Trump’s 2nd term
By Jeffrey Brown | PBS News Hour | September 2025
“Rock legend Bruce Springsteen publicly blasted President Trump and his policies, saying ‘we’re living through particularly dangerous times.’ As Trump increasingly targets the arts, artists are faced with the question of whether to speak out or keep their heads down.”
11. Something Very Tiny Is Following Earth Around the Sun
By Robin George Andrews | The New York Times | September 2025
“The object, the latest ‘quasi-moon’ detected by astronomers, could be with us for almost another 60 years.”
12. The Borderlands War, 1915-20
By Christopher Rose, Joan Neuberger and Henry Wiencek | 15 Minute History :: UT Department of History | 2014-2020
Also see: The Rise and Fall of the Latvian National Communists | Slavery and Abolition in Iran | The Amateur Photography Movement in the Soviet Union | The Russian Empire on the Eve of World War 1
13. Beyond the beach read: The new wave of bookish travel
By Lizzie Enfield | BBC News | September 2025
“Forget the solo beach paperback: travellers are now joining structured reading retreats that mix books, place and community.”
14. How to Build a Dictionary: On the Hard Art of Popular Lexicography
By Ilan Stavans | LitHub | September 2025
“This conversation concentrates on the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) as a Platonic model not only within the English language but in countless other linguistic ecosystems. It looks at Samuel Johnson as the cathartic figure whose lexicographic work shaped modern English dictionaries. And it ponders the sprawling OED products and compares the enterprise to its American counterpart, Merriam-Webster.”
15. What Teen Novels Are Capable Of
By Isabel Fattal | The Atlantic | September 2025
“These books can help young people come to terms with the thoughts that feel too scary to say out loud.”
16. ‘Warrior ethos’ mistakes military might for true security – and ignores the wisdom of Eisenhower
By Monica Duffy Toft | The Conversation | September 2025
“In the aftermath of World War II, U.S. leaders wanted to emphasize a defensive rather than aggressive military posture as they entered the Cold War, a decades-long standoff between the United States and Soviet Union defined by a nuclear arms race, ideological rivalry and proxy wars short of direct great-power conflict.”
17. The parlance of pilots
By Mark Vanhoenacker | Aeon | September 2025
“High above London, Tokyo and Cairo, the language of the cockpit is technical, obscure, geeky – and irresistibly romantic”
18. The night the skies over Baghdad were illuminated, the 24-hour news cycle took over
By Tom Jones | The Poynter 50 | March 2025
“CNN’s live coverage of Operation Desert Storm launched a new era in television news”
19. Should College Get Harder?
By Joshua Rothman | The New Yorker | September 2025
“A.I. is coming for knowledge work, and yet college seems to be getting easier. Does something need to change?”
20. Persepolis
By Melvyn Bragg | In Our Time :: BBC 4 | 2015-2018
Also see: The California Gold Rush | Sappho | The Earth’s Core | The Science of Glass
Tell your friends!
Stillness of Heart 