Category: RECOMMENDED READING

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

This week: How to avoid loneliness / Joe Biden in the Trump Era / 60,000 Mexicans ‘disappeared’ / The nuns who sold slaves / Racist tipping

This week: How to avoid loneliness / Joe Biden in the Trump Era / 60,000 Mexicans ‘disappeared’ / The nuns who sold slaves / Racist tipping

Most of these great items come from my social media networks. Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism. Learn more about my academic background here.

1. García Márquez’s Five Favorite Cocktail Stories
By Santiago Mutis Duran, and translated by David Unger | The Paris Review | August 2019
“Santiago Mutis Durán, the son of Márquez’s close friend Álvaro Mutis, gathered together small author-less stories that Márquez had written down or told over the course of his lifetime.”

2. How to avoid the traps that produce loneliness and isolation
By Arthur C. Brooks | The Washington Post | January 2020
“But the real question is why so many people feel isolated, when contact with others should be easier than ever. If we can answer that, we can craft a solution — if not societally, at least personally, to make our lives happier and better.”

3. A Man In Full
By Walter Shapiro | The New Republic | January 2020
“Joe Biden wants to be a normal president in a highly abnormal age.”

4. More than 60,000 Mexicans have been ‘disappeared’ amid drug war, officials say
By Mary Beth Sheridan | The Washington Post | January 2020
“Karla Quintana, head of Mexico’s National Search Commission, which coordinates the effort to find the missing, said at least 61,637 people had been reported disappeared and not been found — what she called ‘data of horror.’ The actual number is thought to be even higher, since many cases are never reported. The numbers confirm that Mexico is suffering one of the worst crises of ‘the disappeared’ in Latin American history.”

5. The Racist History of Tipping
By William J. Barber II | Politico Magazine | July 2019
“Tipping originated in feudal Europe and was imported back to the United States by American travelers eager to seem sophisticated. The practice spread throughout the country after the Civil War as U.S. employers, largely in the hospitality sector, looked for ways to avoid paying formerly enslaved workers.”

6. The Nuns Who Bought and Sold Human Beings
By Rachel L. Swarns | The New York Times | August 2019
“America’s nuns are beginning to confront their ties to slavery, but it’s still a long road to repentance.”

7. The Great Boundary-Breaking Women of Fiction
By Louisa Treger | CrimeReads :: LitHub | August 2019
“Celebrating 10 strong women who refused to conform and who struggled to find their place in the world.”

8. One Year in Washington
By David Freelander | The Cut :: New York Magazine | January 2020
“Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reshaped her party’s agenda, resuscitated Bernie Sanders’s campaign, and hardly has a friend in town.”

9. Violent Policing of the Texas Border
By Augusta Dell’Omo | Not Even Past :: UT Austin Department of History | January 2019
“Between 1910 and 1920, an era of state-sanctioned racial violence descended upon the U.S.-Mexico border. Texas Rangers, local ranchers, and U.S. soldiers terrorized ethnic Mexican communities, under the guise of community policing.”

10. Is your to-do list making you nuts? Start a to-don’t list instead
By Anna Phelan | Ideas :: TED.com | March 2019
“The TED speaker and podcast host shares 4 items from his to-don’t list — stuff he’s shed from his life to make him a happier and more effective human. Read it and learn.”

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

This week: The secrets of Afghanistan / The female gaze on film / 2019’s best books / Loving and hating the New York subway / Boris Johnson and the future

This week: The secrets of Afghanistan / The female gaze on film / 2019’s best books / Loving and hating the New York subway / Boris Johnson and the future

Most of these great items come from my social media networks. Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism. Learn more about my academic background here.

1. The Afghanistan Papers: A secret history of the war
By Craig Whitlock, Leslie Shapiro and Armand Emamdjomeh | The Washington Post | December 2019
“In a cache of previously unpublished interviews and memos, key insiders reveal what went wrong during the longest armed conflict in U.S. history.”

2. ‘Hustler’s’ Greatest Trick Is Its Take on the Female Gaze
By Alison Willmore | Vulture :: New York Magazine | October 2019
“The intention is not to evoke the lust of the money-hurling mass of customers but to show us Ramona the way Destiny sees her, as this powerful, enviable whole.”

3. How photos taken from the sky are helping farmers
By Andie Corban and Kai Ryssdal | Marketplace | October 2019
“Technology is changing the way most of us work these days, and farming is no exception. There are several new ag-tech companies dedicated solely to making agriculture more efficient.”

4. Our 50 Favorite Books of the Year
LitHub | December 2019
“Highlights From a Year in Reading by the Literary Hub Staff”

5. I Still Kind of Love the New York Subway
By Maeve Higgins | The New York Times | December 2019
“Sometimes I wonder if I can stand many more years of unreliable service. Then something happens that gets me all mushy again.”

6. Could Boris Johnson Be the Last Prime Minister of the U.K. As We Know It?
By Jonah Shepp | Intelligencer :: New York Magazine | December 2019
“British — or rather, English — politicians a generation from now could find themselves in a downsized House of Commons, debating whether breaking up with the European Union was worth breaking up their own union as well.”

7. The worst takes of the 2010s
The Outline | December 2019
“The past decade had a lot of pieces that should have been left unpublished.”

8. How Fiction Can Defeat Fake News
By Amitava Kumar | Columbia Journalism Review | Fall 2019
“There is fiction and then there is fiction — falsities that lead to lynchings and riots. Both rely on storytelling, but that’s like saying soil is used both in gardens and in graves. The way language is used in each case is entirely different, if not opposed.”

9. A Tiny Leak Led to a Massive, Unexpected Collapse at Kilauea Volcano
By Stephanie Pappas | Scientific American | December 2019
“Its caldera’s dramatic, surprisingly slow collapse could point to other risks worldwide.”

10. The War That Continues to Shape Russia, 25 Years Later
By Andrew Higgins | The New York Times | December 2019
“Haunting images show how the first Chechen war humiliated post-Soviet Russia, exposed its weakness, strengthened hard-liners and enabled the rise of Vladimir V. Putin.”

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

This week: Your dog’s mind / John Bercow, the unlikely hero / Baltimore, the fallen city / La Malinche / Slavery in the Pacific

This week: Your dog’s mind / John Bercow, the unlikely hero / Baltimore, the fallen city / La Malinche / Slavery in the Pacific

Most of these great items come from my social media networks. Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism.

1. ‘I shouldn’t really be saying this’: John Bercow on Brexit, backbenchers and why nobody dreams of being speaker
By James Graham | Prospect | April 2019
“The speaker’s chair has become the crucible for the whole Brexit constitutional crisis. And John Bercow is loving it”

2. The Tragedy of Baltimore
By Alec MacGillis | ProPublica | March 2019
“Since Freddie Gray’s death in 2015, violent crime has spiked to levels unseen for a quarter century. How order collapsed in an American city.”

3. Inside the grand and sometimes slimy plan to turn octopuses into lab animals
By Ben Guarino | The Washington Post | March 2019
“In a cavernous laboratory here, scientists are raising thousands of octopuses, cuttlefish and their kin as part of the Cephalopod Program, a three-year-old initiative to transform these sea creatures into the next lab animals. Cephalopods ooze scientific appeal: They have complex bodies, unusual genetics, impressive spatial skills and intelligent minds. Yet the animals can be reluctant to breed, hard to raise and difficult to keep from escaping their tanks.”

4. Let’s Journey Through the Mind of a Dog
By Erica Tennenhouse | The Crux :: Discover | March 2018
“While our grasp of canine cognition may never approach what we know of the human psyche, the latest research has yielded tantalizing nuggets about the inner lives of dogs.”

5. The Democrats’ Dilemma
By Tim Alberta | Politico Magazine | March 2019
“What Ilhan Omar and Dean Phillips tell us about the future of the Democratic Party.”

6. How Regime Change Breeds Demagogues
By Kristen Ghodsee | The New Republic | March 2019
“Economic liberalization can be just as traumatic as military intervention.”

7. Who Was La Malinche?
By Farah Mohammed | JSTOR Daily | March 2019
“La Malinche was a key figure in the conquest of the Aztecs. But was she a heroine or a traitor It depends on whom you ask.”

8. Richmond exhibit seeks to reimagine Confederate statues
By Denise Lavoie | Associated Press | March 2019
“The exhibit grew out of an international design competition that asked architects, planners, designers, and artists to reimagine Monument Avenue, a 5-mile historic urban boulevard where five giant statues of Confederate figures from Virginia stand, including Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, J.E.B. Stuart, Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson and Confederate naval commander Matthew Fontaine Maury.”

9. How the Daughters and Granddaughters of Former Slaves Secured Voting Rights for All
By Martha S. Jones | Smithsonian Magazine | March 2019
“[T]he history of black women and the vote is one about figures who, though subjected to nearly crushing political disabilities, emerged as unparalleled advocates of universal suffrage in its truest sense.”

10. The Trans-Pacific Slave Trade
By Christopher Rose | Not Even Past :: UT Austin Department of History | January 2016
“At the height of the Spanish Empire, the Manila Galleon – an annual flotilla between Manila and Acapulco – was considered the lifeline of Spain’s economy, bringing silver from the mines of New Spain to the markets of Asia. On the reverse trip, the galleons would be loaded with Asian luxury goods, such as spices, silks — and slaves.”

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

This week: The origin of the Moon / Myths of hijab / The Articles of Confederation / Barbie the feminist / Loving or hating AOC

This week: The origin of the Moon / Myths of hijab / The Articles of Confederation / Barbie the feminist / Loving or hating AOC

Most of these great items come from my social media networks. Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism.

1. Where did the Moon come from? A new theory.
By Sarah T. Stewart | TED.com | February 2019
“The Earth and Moon are like identical twins, made up of the exact same materials — which is really strange, since no other celestial bodies we know of share this kind of chemical relationship. What’s responsible for this special connection”

2. Five myths about hijab
By Nadia B. Ahmad and Asifa Quraishi-Landes | The Washington Post | March 2019
“It’s not a headscarf — and it’s not just for women.”

3. The Constitution Most Americans Have Forgotten About
By Peter Feuerherd | JSTOR Daily | March 2017
“The Articles of Confederation set off the long-running feud between states’ rights and Washington, a debate that still rages today.”

4. Five next-gen space rovers
By Imogen Bagnall | The Guardian | February 2019
“The cream of the new breed of craft heading for the moon and beyond”

5. My Life at 47 Is Back to What It Was Like at 27
By Meghan Daum | Medium | February 2019
“Post-divorce, I’ve returned to my old ways.”

6. Barbie, Like her Creator, Is a Feminist
By Susan Shapiro | The Daily Beast | March 2019
“Barbie turns 60 today. When her creator was that age, she launched a business making comfortable prosthetic breasts. On the Dick Cavett Show, she asked the host to feel them.”

7. Hero or villain, Ocasio-Cortez remains a media fixation
By David Bauder | Associated Press | March 2019
“Boldness, youth and an embrace of social media have made AOC — the shorthand is already widely known — a hero to the left, a villain to the right and irresistible to journalists.”

8. With Michael Jackson, It’s Different
By Josephine Livingstone | The New Republic | March 2019
“Why his fall from grace implicates all of us”

9. Wealthy, successful and miserable
By Charles Duhigg | The New York Times Magazine | February 2019
“The upper echelon is hoarding money and privilege to a degree not seen in decades. But that doesn’t make them happy at work.”

10. No Collision
By Bonnie Honig | Boston Review | December 2018
“In the face of climate apocalypse, the rich have been devising escape plans. What happens when they opt out of democratic preparation for emergencies”

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

This week: Transgender troops / Deciding what’s sexy / Explain my shyness / Space in relationships / How to crack a whip

This week: Transgender troops / Deciding what’s sexy / Explain my shyness / Space in relationships / How to crack a whip

Most of these great items come from my social media networks. Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism.

1. Transgender Troops Caught Between a Welcoming Military and a Hostile Government
By Dave Philipps | The New York Times | March 2019
“This has been an uneasy time for transgender troops in the United States military, caught between a commander in chief who wants them out and court injunctions that, at least temporarily, said they could stay.”

2. There are the 20 books travelers are always leaving behind at their hotels
By Andrea Romano | Travel & Leisure | September 2018
“Topping the list is Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel from 1985, ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ which is now a Golden Globe-winning TV series.”

3. How I Learned to Embrace Power as a Woman in Washington
By Wendy Sherman | Politico Magazine | September 2018
“It took the better part of a career in Washington, where calcified work structures make it so difficult for women, to learn how to be comfortable owning my own power—a necessary step if you are to wield it successfully.”

4. Who Decides What’s ‘Sexy’ — And Who Pays for It
By Soraya Roberts | The New York Times Magazine | January 2018
“After more than 120 years of use, ‘sexy’ resists overnight reconstruction. We may try to chip away at Venus’s stone curves, but the transformation is slow and complex. Women can lay their claim to it … but a tradition of objectification persists.”

5. Why Am I Shy
CrowdScience :: BBC World Service | March 2019
“Is shyness down to nature or nurture – and how can you overcome it if it’s causing anxiety”

6. A coral reef cemetery is home to life in the afterlife
By Kelli Kennedy | Associated Press | August 2018
“[T]he Neptune Memorial Reef is home to the cremated remains of 1,500 people, and any snorkeler or scuba diver can visit.”

7. How a Uruguayan town revolutionized the way we eat
By Shafik Meghji | BBC Travel | January 2019
“Located on the banks of the Uruguay River and named after a 17th-Century hermit, the sleepy town of Fray Bentos produced one of the most influential food brands of the 20th Century.”

8. People Didn’t Used to Ask for ‘Space’ in Their Relationships
By Julie Beck | The Atlantic | December 2018
“The expression caught on in the 1970s and is now so common as to be a cliché — but it’s still as confusing as ever.”

9. How to declutter your mind
By Ryder Carroll | Ideas :: TED.com | February 2019
“Write down the things that you need to do, the things that you should be doing, and the things that you want to do.”

10. How to Crack a Whip
By Malia Wollan | Tip :: The New York Times Magazine | February 2019
“Bring the whip up to about eye level and then flick your wrist groundward. Repeat until you get a consistent burst of noise.”

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

This week: The Native American Alamo / The depths of personal loneliness / The ultimate guide to presidential impeachment / What obsessed Hitchcock, Welles and Kubrick / Lady Gaga’s tattoos

This week: The Native American Alamo / The depths of personal loneliness / The ultimate guide to presidential impeachment / What obsessed Hitchcock, Welles and Kubrick / Lady Gaga’s tattoos

Most of these great items come from my social media networks. Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism.

1. NASA Captures First Air-to-Air Images of Supersonic Shockwave Interaction in Flight
By Matt Kamlet | NASA | March 2019
“The images were captured during the fourth phase of Air-to-Air Background Oriented Schlieren flights, or AirBOS, which took place at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. ”

2. All Quiet on the Western Front becomes instant bestseller – archive, 1929
By Richard Nelsson | From the Archive :: The Guardian | March 2019
“Ninety years ago, a harrowing account of warfare in the first world war was brought to an international audience by German veteran Erich Maria Remarque”

3. Native Americans want to re-imagine Alamo as a cemetery
By Elaine Ayala | San Antonio Express-News | February 2019
“Long before it was the site of a famous battle, the Alamo was where the city’s earliest citizens lived, worked, died and were buried. They were the city’s first Catholics and helped forge the city and state’s future.”

4. What’s the Loneliest You’ve Ever Felt
By Kristen Radtke | The Atlantic | October 2018
“The author started a project on loneliness by asking this simple question. Many people quickly recounted experiences, often with surprising specificity.”

5. The only impeachment guide you’ll ever need
By Darren Samuelsohn | Politico Magazine | January 2019
“In one sense, Trump is as vulnerable as he’s always been. In another, the risk is huge. The collision of anti-Trump forces with his powerfully loyal base — to say nothing of the president’s own thirst for conflict — would guarantee the most explosive political disruption in generations. If the effort misses, the blowback could easily propel Trump back into office in 2020, with a reinvigorated base bent on revenge.”

6. Netflix Holds the Key to Preserving Film’s Vanishing History
By K. Austin Collins | Vanity Fair | November 2018
“The Other Side of the Wind and Shirkers show how the streaming giant could save historic films — even as past-facing services like FilmStruck prove unsustainable.”

7. The Obsessions of Hitchcock, Welles, and Kubrick
By Jonathan Kirshner | Boston Review | June 2017
“The book concludes with the observation that our heroes shared the ability to ‘triumph’ over ‘the ordinary, the conventional, the banal.’ Certainly they did. But surely there was more.”

8. All of Lady Gaga’s tattoos and their meanings
By Melissa Minton | Page Six :: The New York Post | February 2019
“[S]he has called the left half of her body her ‘Iggy Pop’ side, and the tattoo-less right side her ‘Marilyn Monroe.’ ”

9. The dollar is still king. How (in the world) did that happen
By Peter S. Goodman | The New York Times | February 2019
“The enduring potency of the dollar gives force to President Trump’s mode of engagement.”

10. Who Killed Tulum
By Reeves Wiedeman | The Cut :: New York Magazine | February 2019
“Greed, gringos, diesel, drugs, shamans, seaweed, and a disco ball in the jungle.”

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

This week: Peace in Colombia through hip-hop / The peak of intelligence in each of us / The beauty and power of a living wage / Why are psychopaths attractive? / The everlasting power of failure

This week: Peace in Colombia through hip-hop / The peak of intelligence in each of us / The beauty and power of a living wage / Why are psychopaths attractive? / The everlasting power of failure

Most of these great items come from my social media networks. Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism.

1. Colombia’s Hip-Hop Gardener Fuels a Green Resistance
By Jake Kincaid | OZY | March 2019
“Luis ‘AKA’ Ramírez brings young and old together to heal a traumatized slice of Medellín.”

2. TRADOC to take responsibility for Army Center of Military History
By Sean Kimmons | Army News Service | March 2019
“The Army Center of Military History will realign under Army Training and Doctrine Command April 1 to better promote history at schoolhouses across the force. …”

3. When Does Intelligence Peak
By Scott Barry Kaufman | Beautiful Minds :: Scientific American | March 2019
“Maybe that’s not even the right question.”

4. Dollars on the margins
By Matthew Desmond | The New York Times Magazine | February 2019
“A living wage is an antidepressant. It is a sleep aid. A diet. A stress reliever. It is a contraceptive, preventing teenage pregnancy. It prevents premature death. It shields children from neglect.”

5. Are psychopaths attracted to other psychopaths
By Scott Berry Kaufman | Beautiful Minds :: Scientific American | January 2019
“Psychopathic birds of a feather flock together”

6. The Silence of Classical Literature’s Women
By Sophie Gilbert | The Atlantic | September 2018
“Pat Barker’s retelling of The Iliad imagines the Trojan War from the perspective of a female slave fought over by two Greek heroes.”

7. What We Can Learn About Gender From The Matrix
By Andrea Long Chu | Vulture | February 2019
” He is, after all, an abortive man, a beta trapped in an alpha’s body. Those around him assume he is a leader, a provider, a president, but his greatest fear is that they are mistaken.”

8. How to Walk 100,000 Steps in One Day
By David Paul Kirkpatrick | Medium | January 2019
“At 66 years old, I challenged myself to reach a big fitness goal. That meant creating the right mindset as well as increasing my physical endurance.”

9. There’s a surprising power in not winning — here’s how to make it work for you
By Monica Wadhwa | Ideas :: TED.com | February 2019
“When we come this close to triumph, we gain potent energy that we can use to fuel later success”

10. The Insect Apocalypse Is Here
By Brooke Jarvis | The New York Times Magazine | November 2018
“What does it mean for the rest of life on Earth”

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

This week: Gayle King’s R Kelly interview / Mental illness as an evolutionary trait / The world built for men / Are you feeling love or lust? / The reign of komodo dragons

This week: Gayle King’s R Kelly interview / Mental illness as an evolutionary trait / The world built for men / Are you feeling love or lust? / The reign of komodo dragons

Most of these great items come from my social media networks. Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism.

1. The AI-Art Gold Rush Is Here
By Ian Bogost | The Atlantic | March 2019
“An artificial-intelligence “artist” got a solo show at a Chelsea gallery. Will it reinvent art, or destroy it?”

2. Susceptibility to Mental Illness May Have Helped Humans Adapt over the Millennia
By Dana G. Smith | Scientific American | March 2019
“Psychiatrist Randolph Nesse, one of the founders of evolutionary medicine, explains why natural selection did not rid our species of onerous psychiatric disorders”

3. Kelly interview becomes a spotlight moment for Gayle King
By David Bauder | Associated Press | March 2019
“King proved unflappable as a crying Kelly leaped up in anger. … [S]he didn’t flinch from challenging the singer as he denied multiple allegations that he sexually abused underage girls and was controlling in his relationships. She drew praise for her performance.”

4. The deadly truth about a world built for men — from stab vests to car crashes
By Caroline Criado-Perez | The Guardian | February 2019
“Crash-test dummies based on the ‘average’ male are just one example of design that forgets about women — and puts lives at risk”

5. A Message in a Bottle Washed Up on Padre Island — 57 Years Later
By Dan Solomon | Texas Monthly | February 2019
“The missive was part of a 1962 study that attempted to track the flow of ocean currents.”

6. How Does Spotify Know You So Well
By Sophia Ciocca | Medium | October 2017
“A software engineer explains the science behind personalized music recommendations”

7. Is it lust or is it love How to tell — and how you can have both at once
By Terri Orbuch | Ideas: TED Talks | February 2018
“I’ve studied the romances and relationship patterns of thousands of people for three decades, and I’ve heard many of them talk about that wild, out-of-control feeling at the beginning of a new relationship. …”

8. Why do zebras have stripes Perhaps to dazzle away flies
By Danica Kirka | Associated Press | February 2019
“The researchers found that fewer horseflies landed on the cloaked horses than on the ones without striped coats, suggesting that zebra stripes may offer protection from blood-sucking insects that can spread disease.”

9. Former deputy chief inspector for NYPD dies at 104 years old
By Larry Celona and Ben Feuerherd | The New York Post | February 2019
“Former NYPD Deputy Chief Inspector John Downer, who joined the force in 1941 and served more than 30 years, died …”

10. Why Komodo Dragons Haven’t Conquered the World
By Veronique Greenwood | The New York Times | November 2018
“The razor-toothed predators are fierce, but scientists found that they’re real homebodies. “

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

This week: Garcia Marquez loved being a journalist / The way we remember George H.W. Bush / Loving midday naps / Why is an octopus smart? / The rhetoric that leads us to civil war

This week: Garcia Marquez loved being a journalist / The way we remember George H.W. Bush / Loving midday naps / Why is an octopus smart? / The rhetoric that leads us to civil war

Most of these great items come from my social media networks. Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism.

1. Want a Green New Deal? Here’s a better one.
The Washington Post | February 2019
“It relies both on smart government intervention — and on transforming the relentless power of the market from an obstacle to a centerpiece of the solution.”

2. Is History Being Too Kind to George H.W. Bush?
By David Greenberg | Politico Magazine | December 2018
“The 41st president put self-interest over principle time and time again.”
Also see: The Economy and ‘Read My Lips,’ Not Ross Perot, Cost President Bush His 1992 Re-Election
Also see: Don’t Overlook George H.W. Bush’s Domestic Legacy

3. A midday nap is American ingenuity at its best
By Carolyn Hax | The Washington Post | March 2019
“Keep up the naps, books and bubble baths, by all means … at your usual pace except for one day a week. With that one exception, dedicate your time to a cause that’s meaningful to you.”

4. Yes, the Octopus Is Smart as Heck. But Why?
By Carl Zimmer | The New York Times | November 2018
“It has eight arms, three hearts — and a plan. Scientists aren’t sure how the cephalopods got to be so intelligent.”

5. Gabriel García Márquez, The Art of Fiction No. 69
By Peter H. Stone | The Paris Review | Winter 1981
“I’ve always been convinced that my true profession is that of a journalist. What I didn’t like about journalism before were the working conditions. Besides, I had to condition my thoughts and ideas to the interests of the newspaper. Now, after having worked as a novelist, and having achieved financial independence as a novelist, I can really choose the themes that interest me and correspond to my ideas.”

6. Battle Lines
By Gordon S. Wood | The New Republic | November 2018
“Recovering the profound divisions that led to the Civil War”

7. Roots of Spain’s Crisis: One Word Fought Over at Birth of Constitution
By Patrick Kingsley | The New York Times | March 2019
“The final text spoke not of nations — but of regions and nationalities.”

8. The Missing Malcolm X
By Garrett Felber | Boston Review | November 2018
“Our understanding of Malcolm X is inextricably linked to his autobiography, but newly discovered materials force us to reexamine his legacy.”

9. The Kilogram Is Dead. Long Live the Kilogram!
By Xiao Zhi Lim | The New York Times | November 2018
“After a vote (and a century of research), the standard measure for mass is redefined, and the long reign of Le Grand K is ended.”

10. Sweden ranks third in gender equality. Here’s what growing up there is like.
Masuma Ahuja | Girlhood Around the World :: The Lily | November 2018
“In her diary entries, Miriam writes about looking at a new school in Stockholm, her mental health, and an all-consuming crush on a girl.”

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

This week: Texans we need to know about / The value of literary glory / Gender stereotypes endure / Trump’s 547 Twitter insults / Hunting the world’s most dangerous terrorist

This week: Texans we need to know about / The value of literary glory / Gender stereotypes endure / Trump’s 547 Twitter insults / Hunting the world’s most dangerous terrorist

Most of these great items come from my social media networks. Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism.

1. 31 Texans Taking Charge
Texas Monthly | December 2018
“From gymnast Simone Biles and Houston mayor Sylvester Turner to political megadonor Tim Dunn, here are 31 Texans who are changing the way we think about politics, education, food, philanthropy, and, well, pretty much everything else.”

2. How a future Trump Cabinet member gave a serial sex abuser the deal of a lifetime
By Emily Michot and Julie K. Brown | Miami Herald | November 2018
“Palm Beach multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein is a free man, despite sexually abusing dozens of underage girls according to police and prosecutors. His victims have never had a voice, until now.”

3. Is Literary Glory Worth Chasing?
By Tim Parks | NYR Daily :: The New York Review of Books | November 2018
“Is writing worth it? Does it make any sense at all to pursue literary glory? Are the writers we praise really the best anyway?”

4. Outdated Gender Stereotypes Are ‘Very Much Alive’
Home School :: The Atlantic | November 2018
“[P]arents shouldn’t dictate gender roles to their children.”

5. The 547 People, Places and Things Donald Trump Has Insulted on Twitter: A Complete List
By Jasmine C. Lee and Kevin Quealy | The Upshot :: The New York Times | (As of November 21)
You can organize it alphabetically or chronologically.

6. Inside the Hunt for the World’s Most Dangerous Terrorist
By John P. Carlin | Politico Magazine | November 2018
“How a British hacker joined ISIS’s top ranks and launched a deadly global cyber plot.”

7. In the Era of #MeToo, Men Don’t ‘Know’ About Predatory Men — but Women Do
By Libby Lenkinski | Los Angeles Review of Books | November 2018
“One of the revelations of the #MeToo moment is the broad understanding that every woman in our society has endured sexual violence in one way or another and all of us carry the effects of those traumas with us in various ways in our lives. This is compounded by the intersectional realities of our identities — women of color face a different layer of discrimination than white women, as do Native women, fat women, Latina women, Jewish women, Muslim women, trans women.”

8. The Pugnacious Outlaw Women Behind My Protagonist
By Katrina Carrasco | LitHub | November 2018
“From Hellcat Maggie to the Great Sandwina, eight women who defied their era”

9. Standish Meacham and Multiculturalism in the Public University
By Carson Wright | Not Even Past :: Department of History, UT Austin | November 2018
“In both facets of his academic life, Dr. Meacham was devoted to the building up of marginalized groups. An academic background in the humanities — in History — shaped Dr. Meacham’s view in a way that drove him to make a positive impact at the University of Texas.”

10. 16 in a refugee camp: Here’s what her days are like
By Masuma Ahuja | Girlhood Around the World :: The Lily | October 2018
“Her teenage years are unfolding in the limbo of a refugee camp — a settlement that is inherently meant to be an in-between place, not one where you can expect to build a life or a future — and in the backdrop of a conflict that forced her family to flee from Syria.”

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North River Notes

Observations on the Hudson River as it passes through New York City. The section of the Hudson which passes through New York is historically known as the North River, called this by the Dutch to distinguish it from the Delaware River, which they knew as the South River. This stretch of the Hudson is still often referred to as the North River by local mariners today. All photos copyright Daniel Katzive unless otherwise attributed. For more frequent updates, please follow northriverblog on Facebook or Instagram.