[{"id":275415,"date":"2026-08-13T04:01:51","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T08:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=275415"},"modified":"2026-08-12T11:30:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T15:30:13","slug":"dino-martins-on-cyclospora-screwworms-and-our-lives-with-parasites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/dino-martins-on-cyclospora-screwworms-and-our-lives-with-parasites\/","title":{"rendered":"Dino Martins on Cyclospora, Screwworms, and Our Lives with Parasites"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Entomologist Dino Martins joins co-host V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to talk about the Cyclospora outbreak that has sickened thousands of people across the U.S., as well as the New World screwworm that has been affecting the cattle population. Martins, the author of a new book called <a href=\"https:\/\/moonpalacebooks.com\/item\/p5lAnqxqGBQ8FSWPssTV6w\"><i>Hidden Creatures: Luscious Leeches, Bashful Botflies, and the Wondrous, History-Shaping World of Parasites<\/i><\/a>, discusses the benefits and dangers of parasites and reflects on his own lifelong interest in bugs, beginning with his childhood in Kenya. He explains how living alongside other animals has taught him to observe the world differently. Martins reads from <i>Hidden Creatures.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"width: 100%; height: 200px; border: 0 none;\" src=\"https:\/\/art19.com\/shows\/9de36b8c-32a9-49c0-9b19-8d98127e539f\/episodes\/763d75be-327d-4366-bc63-23d57bc86f40\/embed\" scrolling=\"no\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-popups allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/fiction.non.fiction.podcast\/\">Fiction\/Non\/Fiction Instagram account<\/a>, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UC07g9fxim0XbDM_LhlnCL0w\/featured?disable_polymer=1\">Fiction\/Non\/Fiction YouTube Channel<\/a>, and our show website: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fnfpodcast.net\/\">https:\/\/www.fnfpodcast.net\/<\/a> This podcast is produced by V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.penguinrandomhouse.com\/authors\/2327354\/dino-martins\/\"><b>Dino Martins<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/moonpalacebooks.com\/item\/p5lAnqxqGBQ8FSWPssTV6w\"><i>Hidden Creatures: Luscious Leeches, Bashful Botflies, and the Wondrous, History-Shaping World of Parasites<\/i><\/a> \u2022\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/moonpalacebooks.com\/item\/udgv2NrRoofDM1pWS69yxg\"><i>Grasses of East Africa<\/i><\/a> \u2022\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.turkanabasin.org\/category\/general\/\">Turkana Basin Institute<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><b>Others<\/b><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/jasmin-graham-on-understanding-sharks\/\">Fiction\/Non\/Fiction Season 7, Episode 45: Jasmin Graham on Understanding Sharks<\/a> \u2022\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/kathryn-nuernberger-on-mutualism-climate-and-finding-family-at-the-end-of-the-world\/\">Fiction\/non\/Fiction Season 9, Episode 7: Kathryn Nuernberger on Mutualism, Climate, and Finding Family at the End of the World<\/a> \u2022\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0078748\/\"><i>Alien<\/i><\/a> (1979) dir. Ridley Scott \u2022\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0091064\/\"><i>The Fly<\/i><\/a> (1986) dir. David Cronenberg \u2022\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0092005\/\"><i>Stand by Me<\/i><\/a> (1986) dir. Rob Reiner<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><b>EXCERPT FROM A CONVERSATION <\/b><b>WITH DINO MARTINS<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>V.V. Ganeshananthan: <\/b>So it&#8217;s funny, we&#8217;ve inadvertently done a series of nature episodes where we say this thing has this myth around it that it&#8217;s scary and terrible, but we&#8217;re going to talk to an expert who&#8217;s going to tell us why that&#8217;s not true. We did this episode on sharks. Your book also provides readers with a long list of supposedly adorable parasites, including fleas\u2014so cute!\u2014ticks, tapeworms, but Cyclospora, which has been grabbing the headlines around here, making us all terrified of our lettuce, etc. is microscopic. What parasite in your book does Cyclospora most resemble? How does it survive and reproduce?<\/p>\n<p><b>Dino Martins: <\/b>Cyclospora is not a big deal in many other parts of the world because we live with many of these things all of the time. They&#8217;re just a backdrop to life. I&#8217;d say it&#8217;s most similar to some of the intestinal worms that live in the intestine and in the stomach of different animals, people included.<\/p>\n<p>Cyclospora is interesting because it&#8217;s this very specialized parasite. It can only complete its life cycle by invading the cells of the intestinal lining. It has to go into a cell in order to complete its life cycle, and it&#8217;s this very large group of apicomplexan, Coxidia protozoans, basically. It&#8217;s related to the parasite that causes malaria, and that&#8217;s getting a lot of attention, as it should. It&#8217;s quite horrific.<\/p>\n<p>Even I would be pressed to call it cute, but it is deserving of our respect because this little spore-forming, minuscule nothingness basically can completely devastate entire populations. One of the messages in my book is how remarkable these organisms are and how impactful they are.<\/p>\n<p><b>Whitney Terrell:<\/b> So my understanding, which is not as good as yours, is that Cyclospora is transmitted mostly through feces-contaminated water. What does that tell us about the safety of our food system? Is this a common thing, or are we going downhill in some way? Has there been some change, or is this just a random outbreak that we can forget about in time?<\/p>\n<p><b>DM: <\/b>With most of these outbreaks today, the real cause of it is what we&#8217;re doing. What we&#8217;re doing to the planet, how we are farming, how we&#8217;re disposing of waste, how we&#8217;re overwhelming the ecological processes that would naturally balance or clean or filter or actually deal with these things, absorb them in a way, if there were, you know, lots of other things in the environment.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, in this case, it looks like it&#8217;s foodborne, but I think the one message I&#8217;d say is that from looking at a range of these parasites, a number of them that we thought we had defeated\u2014we defeated them with antibiotics and with antiparasitic drugs and with pesticides and other chemicals\u2014but they&#8217;re actually making a comeback, and not just making a comeback, making a pretty spectacular comeback. They&#8217;re like, &#8220;Hey, you thought you&#8217;d gotten rid of us, but guess what? We&#8217;re here, and we&#8217;re really coming to get you.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><b>WT: <\/b>That doesn&#8217;t sound very adorable! That sounds aggressive to me.<\/p>\n<p><b>DM: <\/b>It is. Part of nature, I think, is being both adorable and aggressive.<\/p>\n<p><b>VVG: <\/b>So adorable, marvelous&#8230; You have an amazing chapter called &#8220;Marvelous Maggots&#8221; in the book, and the New World Screwworm, which has been infecting cattle in the southern U.S., seems to me like a form of maggot. Am I right about that? Could you tell us about that outbreak?<\/p>\n<p><b>DM:<\/b> Yes, and I absolutely love and loathe the New World screwworm at the same time. You have the New World screwworm, but we have the Old World screwworm, who is just as horrifying as the New World one. Basically, yes, they are maggots. They are the larval form of a fly species that lays its eggs on the animals, typically on a wound or a scratch, although some can actually go into unbroken skin.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike most of the maggots, these ones develop in living flesh. As they feed, scraping away, they create these large open wounds that fester. The amazing thing is some of them release a chemical that&#8217;s not detectable to us, but can attract other flies to come and lay their eggs there as well. They&#8217;re a parasite, yes, absolutely. Terrifying to look at, but they&#8217;re actually quite a widespread parasite.<\/p>\n<p>Now, a tiny bit of history in North America or Central America, as well\u2014this particular parasite was very common. It was causing huge issues, and it was dealt with in the most remarkable way. A scientist and his colleagues developed something called the sterile insect technique, and they sterilized a bunch of male flies, released them in billions, and then the flies would mate, and they wouldn&#8217;t produce any offspring. This beat the fly back, allowing the beef industry and other livestock industries to flourish in Texas, and what we&#8217;re seeing now is this: we beat things back with technology and with culture and with interventions, but we will never beat Mother Nature back entirely, and so you&#8217;re seeing this resurgence. We also have to ask questions about livestock and how dense livestock are, and you know, all these other things that are happening on the planet as well.<\/p>\n<p><b>WT:<\/b> I just want to say, I knew about these screwworm things. I have a neighbor who works for the FDA who told me, \u201call right, this is going to happen,\u201d and then the news story started coming out. My question about this is, if it damages cattle by just giving them these open wounds, is that what makes them die, or does that make them risk infection, or exactly what bad thing does that wound do to the cattle once the screwworm has laid its eggs?<\/p>\n<p><b>DM:<\/b> Yes, I mean the wounds are extremely unpleasant. They are very uncomfortable. They fester. They become infected very quickly. That infection will spread through the animal. The animal becomes weak and listless and dehydrated. When the screwworm was very abundant, there are stories of entire landscapes filled with carcasses of animals with these festering wounds, that deer were almost driven extinct at one point in some parts of North America due to the the screwworm, which you wouldn&#8217;t think of now, given how well deer are doing. Another impact of parasites is that they have these abilities to track and manipulate and actually even suppress the populations of their hosts.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><b><i>Transcribed by Otter.ai. Condensed and edited by Vianna O\u2019Hara. Photograph of Dino Martins by Liam Frederick.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Entomologist Dino Martins joins co-host V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to talk about the Cyclospora outbreak that has sickened thousands of people across the U.S., as well as the New World screwworm that has been affecting the cattle population. Martins,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3671,"featured_media":275635,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43069,6,43112,43072,43110,43070],"tags":[111711,32311,111712,41410,5089],"class_list":["post-275415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-craftandcriticism","category-features","category-fiction-non-fiction-lithubradio","category-in-conversation","category-lithubradio","category-literary-criticism","tag-dino-martins","tag-fictionnonfiction","tag-hidden-creatures-luscious-leeches-bashful-botflies-and-the-wondrous-history-shaping-world-of-parasites","tag-lit-hub-radio","tag-podcasts","story-type-fiction-non-fiction"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-19Eb","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/banner-FNF20.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3671"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":275546,"date":"2026-08-12T06:30:20","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T10:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=275546"},"modified":"2026-08-12T09:09:19","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T13:09:19","slug":"lit-hub-daily-august-12-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/lit-hub-daily-august-12-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Lit Hub Daily: August 12, 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<span class=\"caption\"> TODAY: In 1876, Mary Roberts Rinehart is born. <\/span>\n<ul>\n<li>When a wealthy university donor <a href=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/a-wealthy-donor-to-my-university-just-silenced-one-of-the-worlds-leading-scholars-of-genocide\/\">can silence one of the world&#8217;s leading genocide scholars<\/a>, it exposes the problem with for-profit higher education. | Lit Hub <a href=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/category\/newsandculture\/politics\/\">Politics<\/a><\/li>\n<li>The best way to get people interested in your lit mag? <a href=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/what-happens-when-you-mail-30-writers-free-lit-mags\">Mail them free copies, obviously<\/a>. | Lit Hub <a href=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/category\/craftandcriticism\/craft-and-advice\/\">Advice<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/from-marquis-de-sade-to-grand-theft-auto-a-brief-history-of-depravity\/\">Why the people who fight &#8220;supposedly depraved art&#8221;<\/a> are more dangerous than the art itself. | Lit Hub <a href=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/category\/newsandculture\/art-and-photography\/\">Art<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/as-hitler-loomed-hannah-arendt-undertook-a-deep-analysis-of-german-antisemitism\/\">How Hannah Arendt examined antisemitism<\/a> as Hitler rose to power: &#8220;Hitler\u2019s so-called seizure of power made all Jews indistinguishable; he forced all of them into the same mold, with varying degrees of perceptible consequences.&#8221; | Lit Hub <a href=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/category\/newsandculture\/biography\/\">Biography<\/a><\/li>\n<li>If you still have the Roman Empire on the mind, Michelle Berenfeld thinks <a href=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/eight-books-to-read-if-youre-still-thinking-about-the-roman-empire\/\">you should read these books by John Williams, Ursula K. Le Guin, Robert Graves, and more<\/a>. | Lit Hub <a href=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/category\/readinglists\/\">Reading Lists<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Dave Zirin traces the impact of World War II <a href=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/how-howard-zinns-hard-lessons-in-wwii-shaped-his-view-of-the-world\/\">on Howard Zinn&#8217;s historical perspective<\/a>. | Lit Hub <a href=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/category\/newsandculture\/biography\/\">Biography<\/a><\/li>\n<li>&#8220;When I first met her, I was happier than I\u2019d ever been. I\u2019d finally triumphed over the mother who abandoned me, my whole ugly childhood.&#8221; Read from <a href=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/mia\/\">Leslie Bazzett&#8217;s debut novel, <em>Mia<\/em><\/a><em>.\u00a0<\/em>| Lit Hub <a href=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/category\/fictionandpoetry\/from-the-novel\/\">Fiction<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/08\/10\/arts\/obama-books-podcast.html\">Obama is starting a literary podcast<\/a>. Okay! | The New York Times<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/countercraft.substack.com\/p\/sewing-up-the-creature-or-the-horrors\">Lincoln Michel considers the horrors of revision<\/a> (and offers a few bits of advice). | Counter Craft<\/li>\n<li>Sometimes, \u201cwritten by a human\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.404media.co\/company-offering-100-human-written-never-ai-peer-review-is-entirely-ai\/\">actually means written by AI.<\/a> | 404 Media<\/li>\n<li>Brittany Dennison considers <i>Late Fame<\/i> and <a href=\"https:\/\/thebaffler.com\/latest\/performative-reading-dennison\">the rise of an empty literary aesthetic<\/a>. | The Baffler<\/li>\n<li>Jill Lepore on the technofascists who <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/book-excerpt-rise-and-fall-of-the-artificial-state-jill-lepore-silicon-valley-sci-fi\/\">fundamentally misunderstand classic science fiction<\/a>. | Wired<\/li>\n<li>\u201cThis was among the first books that asked women how they felt about sex, rather than telling them what to feel.\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/aeon.co\/essays\/how-shere-hite-listened-to-womens-sexual-desires-and-dislikes\">Rosa Campbell looks at <i>The Hite Report.<\/i><\/a> | Aeon<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When a wealthy university donor can silence one of the world&#8217;s leading genocide scholars, it exposes the problem with for-profit higher education. | Lit Hub Politics The best way to get people interested in your lit mag? Mail them free<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":275630,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[45236],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-275546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lit-hub-daily"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-19Gi","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Mary-Roberts-Rinehart-.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275546\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":275373,"date":"2026-08-12T05:10:26","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T09:10:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=275373"},"modified":"2026-08-10T21:54:21","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T01:54:21","slug":"from-marquis-de-sade-to-grand-theft-auto-a-brief-history-of-depravity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/from-marquis-de-sade-to-grand-theft-auto-a-brief-history-of-depravity\/","title":{"rendered":"From Marquis de Sade to <em>Grand Theft Auto<\/em>, a Brief History of Depravity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The prisoner\u2019s hand ached. He sat hunched over his desk in a cold tower of the Bastille jail in Paris, writing in tiny letters on a very long roll of paper\u2014nearly 40 feet in total, made from smaller scraps he had glued together. These were not ideal working conditions. But they would do.<\/p>\n<p>The prisoner was not treated badly in jail. He was a nobleman, which meant he was allowed luxuries in his cell: a wardrobe and tapestries, books and perfume, and his very own housekeeper. Yet he was aware that what he was writing might jeopardize these comforts. So, each night he would roll up his scroll, put it in a copper cylinder, and hide it in a gap in his cell wall. He did not want to risk the guards finding it. And with good cause. For his story was a record of his most debauched thoughts and desires.<\/p>\n<p>Over thirty-seven evenings in the autumn of 1785, the prisoner, Donatien Alphonse Fran\u00e7ois, better known to history as the Marquis de Sade, crafted in secret what he called &#8220;the most impure tale that has ever been told since the world began.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Set in a remote medieval castle nestled in the Black Forest in southwest Germany\u2014but based on Sade\u2019s own castle, Ch\u00e2teau de Lacoste\u2014the narrative tells of four wealthy male libertines indulging in a savage 120-day orgy, inspired by the vile tales of middle-aged female brothel keepers. Organized by a strict timetable, the procuresses weave stories of their degeneracy, each one illustrating perversions or &#8220;passions&#8221; ranging from the simple to the murderous. The exploits they arouse in the libertines involve sexually abusing thirty-six abducted victims, mostly children (some the libertines\u2019 own daughters). The children are dismembered and penetrated, flayed alive, disemboweled, and their intestines set alight. There is incest and rape\u2014some victims are as young as three years old. Feces and vomit and human flesh are eagerly consumed. As these atrocities become increasingly extreme, they ultimately result in the victims\u2019 violent deaths, and necrophilia.<\/p>\n<p class=\"pullquote\">Art <i>can <\/i>be dangerous\u2014but the very gatekeepers of supposedly depraved art can also be dangerous.<\/p>\n<p>This is all narrated in stark, dry detail. Sade presents it to us with wry humor, describing it as a sensuous &#8220;banquet.&#8221; The story is known today as <i>The 120 Days of Sodom<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>*<\/p>\n<p>The Marquis de Sade was abandoned by his parents at an early age. Raised by servants and educated by an uncle, Sade was a spoiled child with a temper and a taste for rebellion. He attended the Lyc\u00e9e Louis-le-Grand, one of the most prestigious schools in Paris. There he was routinely beaten, an experience which instilled in him a lifelong fascination with flagellation and pain. After school he fought in the Seven Years War as colonel of a Dragoon regiment. On his return, Sade married Ren\u00e9e-P\u00e9lagie de Montreuil in 1763, a marriage arranged by his father.<\/p>\n<p>For some people, marriage is a settling experience. But for Sade it was the opposite. His notorious sexual indiscretions in Paris led to him being exiled to his castle at Lacoste in 1768\u2014a place that would become a theatre for his wildest fantasies. Together there, Sade and his wife\u2014ever the loyal spouse\u2014pursued an extreme libertine existence. There were orgies, including one during which Sade poisoned two sex workers with the aphrodisiac Spanish Fly. There was also illegal homosexuality: Sade and his manservant Latour were sentenced to death in absentia for sodomy.<\/p>\n<p>Most notorious was the so-called &#8220;Little Girls&#8221; scandal, where Sade abducted five fifteen-year-old girls and sexually abused them in his castle. The abominable crime became a public sensation in Provence, which Sade seemed to relish: &#8220;I pass for the werewolf of these parts,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Poor little chicks with their words of terror!&#8221; Sade evaded French law by taking refuge in Italy. But a few years later, after committing similar crimes there, he was arrested and imprisoned at the Ch\u00e2teau de Vincennes at the king\u2019s orders, under a <i>lettre de cachet <\/i>(signet letter). After Vincennes closed in 1784, Sade was transferred to the Bastille at the age of forty-five.<\/p>\n<p>Four years after Sade began his debauched novel on the long scroll of parchment, he incited a riot among other prisoners at the Bastille by shouting to a gathering outside his window that prison guards were slitting the throats of inmates. Once order had been restored to the prison, he was removed from the Bastille\u2014&#8221;naked as a worm&#8221;\u2014and transferred to an asylum outside of Paris. This sudden removal meant that Sade could not retrieve his novel, which was still hidden in his cell wall. To make matters worse, ten days later, revolutionaries stormed the Bastille. Hearing of the mass lootings, Sade believed his novel had been lost forever. Overwhelmed with grief for his missing masterpiece, he wept &#8220;tears of blood.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But remarkably, his secret scroll was not lost. It had been found and saved just before the storming, by a man called Arnoux de Saint-Maximin. After making its way through the hands of a Proven\u00e7al aristocrat and then a German collector of erotica, the novel was eventually published in 1904 by Iwan Bloch, a Berlin sexologist. Although Bloch was careful to use a pseudonym when he published Sade\u2019s work, he did not regard its wild sexual and violent excess to be inappropriate for public consumption. In fact, Bloch considered <i>The 120 Days of Sodom <\/i>to have great scientific and anthropological importance in its categorization of the most shocking sexual fetishes: &#8220;a similar work will not be found either among the ancients or among the moderns,&#8221; he later wrote.<\/p>\n<p>Bloch was not alone in his admiration of Sade\u2019s art. Throughout the twentieth century the novel was made available via private publications for wealthy patrons, produced pseudonymously or anonymously to evade the authorities. At mid-century a publisher called Jean-Jacques Pauvert put his name on a large print run of a collection of Sade\u2019s works, including <i>The 120 Days of Sodom<\/i>. Like Bloch, Pauvert saw Sade\u2019s novel as a valuable medico-legal document; while his was the first commercial French edition of the text, he claimed that most of his sales were to the medical community.<\/p>\n<p>Artists, philosophers, and historians began to identify aesthetic, cognitive, and political value in Sade\u2019s work. Simone de Beauvoir disagreed with Sade\u2019s cruel ethics, but in 1955 she defended the publication of his literature on the grounds that it explored atheistic existentialist themes and therefore had philosophical importance. In 1957, Georges Bataille praised Sade\u2019s work in its shameless presentation of man\u2019s deepest desires, although he added: &#8220;Nobody, unless he is totally deaf to it, can finish <i>Les Cent Vingt Journ\u00e9es de Sodome <\/i>without feeling sick.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Around this time, avant-garde artists and writers were harnessing what art historian Alyce Mahon calls the &#8220;Sadean imagination&#8221; to critique socio-political issues from fascism to terrorism, and to subvert traditional gender roles by placing the sexual body at the center of art-making as a form of political resistance.<\/p>\n<p>Eventually, the dam cracked. In a landmark British legal case in 1960, Penguin Books were cleared of any crime for publishing an uncensored version of D. H. Lawrence\u2019s <i>Lady Chatterley\u2019s Lover<\/i>, a novel condemned for its frequent use of the words &#8220;fuck&#8221; and &#8220;cunt.&#8221; While the novel had been published privately in small print runs in Italy and France, the UK trial, bolstered by a similar one in the US a year earlier, resulted in mainstream publishers across the world distributing works that had previously been considered obscene and unpublishable\u2014including those of Sade.<\/p>\n<p>This was hailed by many as an important victory in the struggle for freedom of artistic expression. It heralded a general reassessment of the legitimacy of art with subversive or offensive themes. Today, the original manuscript of <i>The 120 Days of Sodom <\/i>is worth at least \u20ac6 million and is deemed a French national treasure. Some critics have even described Sade as France\u2019s Shakespeare.<\/p>\n<p>*<\/p>\n<p>Since the middle of the twentieth century, societies around the globe have undergone a collective revolution in standards and attitudes towards obscenity and immorality. In the realms of art, literature, film, and television, words and images that would once have been considered indecent, offensive, or immoral are now commonplace, especially in the West. Where several generations ago it would have been difficult to incidentally glimpse explicit depictions of vice, sex, blasphemy, and violent death, today it would be more unusual to go through a single day <i>without <\/i>seeing one or more of these.<\/p>\n<p>For those who actively seek out obscenity, there is a limitless supply. With pornography at our fingertips via laptops and smartphones, we can access images and videos that would have made even Sade blush. While some genres of pornography aim to encourage a more egalitarian erotic taste in consumers (one that is free from patriarchal conditioning and respects consent), other genres relish in portraying pure horror, including real sexual violence and death. Many of the acts Sade described in words are now actually performed in high-production videos, streamable for free.<\/p>\n<p>This transformation in values and accessibility has profoundly affected the story of art. From sexualized horror films like Alfred Hithcock\u2019s <i>Psycho <\/i>(1960) and art performances of masturbation like Vito Acconci\u2019s <i>Seedbed <\/i>(1972), to explicit music videos like Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion\u2019s &#8220;WAP (Wet-Ass Pussy)&#8221; (2020) and dark true-crime TV shows like Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan\u2019s <i>Monster: The Ed Gein Story <\/i>(2025), traditionally &#8220;immoral&#8221; themes and images are now celebrated in art of all kinds. Where medieval Christian art in England was once under threat from the Lollards, who saw image worship itself as heathen idolatry, we now encounter overtly blasphemous art: the figure of Christ submerged in urine; a crucifix penetrating a demon-possessed child; the Virgin Mary painted with elephant dung; and &#8220;JESUS IS A CUNT&#8221; stamped on rock band T-shirts (this piece of merch from metal band Cradle of Filth also features a masturbating nun on the front\u2014throughout the 1990s fans were arrested for wearing it in public).<\/p>\n<p class=\"pullquote\">Depravity does not always appear how we might expect it to. It can hide in plain sight like a wolf in sheep\u2019s clothing.<\/p>\n<p>Some find these works and objects amusing or exciting, but others are deeply troubled by them. Allegedly, so many cinema-goers vomited and fainted during the initial screenings of William Friedkin\u2019s <i>The Exorcist <\/i>(1973) that theatre staff had to hand out smelling salts. And a very small minority resort to extreme violence in response, as with the terrorist attacks on the offices of the French magazine <i>Charlie Hebdo <\/i>in 2011, 2015, and 2020, which were motivated by the magazine\u2019s mocking depictions of the Prophet Muhammad.<\/p>\n<p>Today, violence is mainstream in many art forms, especially in videogames. The <i>Grand Theft Auto <\/i>series is infamous for its portrayal of drugs, sex, and brutality, with one scene inviting the player to perform waterboard torture. And where in the eighteenth century, shunga\u2014Japanese erotic art showing sex between couples\u2014was banned, in 2006 the videogame <i>RapeLay <\/i>was released in Japan. The game centers on a male character stalking and raping a mother and her two young daughters.<\/p>\n<p>As art and its creators have shed their inhibitions in this post-Sadean world, politicians and cultural commentators have reliably lined up to condemn this total freedom of expression as being dangerous to society. In the 1960s, British campaigner and teacher Mary Whitehouse launched her crusade against this ever-growing &#8220;permissive society.&#8221; While Whitehouse\u2014often seen as a Christian prude\u2014should be criticized for her organizing against sex education in schools, and condemned for her homophobia, some critics now think she was ahead of her time. Her lobbying resulted in legislation which surely was good for society\u2014for instance, the 1978 Protection of Children Act, which criminalized child pornography.<\/p>\n<p>Whitehouse\u2019s views culminated in the so-called &#8220;porn wars&#8221; of the 1970s-80s. While radical feminist Andrea Dworkin argued that pornography dehumanized women and caused gender-based violence, others like the novelist Angela Carter considered some pornography\u2014including Sade\u2019s literary art\u2014to offer a progressive utopian reality where women have autonomy and sexual freedom.<\/p>\n<p>The debate rages on. People still butt heads over &#8220;WAP&#8221; and its accompanying music video. Is it a feminist masterpiece celebrating women\u2019s sexual empowerment? A step back in women\u2019s progress? Or is it just simply &#8220;really, really, really, vulgar,&#8221; as right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro puts it? Republican politician James Bradley, who claims to have heard the song by accident, echoes Shapiro\u2019s disquiet: according to him, &#8220;WAP&#8221; is &#8220;what happens when children are raised without God.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Often these kinds of criticisms can be dismissed as a matter of taste, not to mention prejudice. But where they carry real weight is when artworks can be linked to harm caused in the real world. Many worry that the free and easy availability of pornography and the sexualization of popular culture has affected young men and women\u2019s expectations of real sex; that the celebration of graphic violence and criminality in videogames, films, and music videos glamorizes such behavior to the extent that it inspires copycats. And many twenty-first-century civil rights activists argue that the celebration and glorification of historical imperialists, slave traders, or racist leaders by public statues and paintings perpetuates inequality in the modern world\u2014causing concrete damage to the oppressed groups implicitly targeted by these artworks.<\/p>\n<p>Then there are more specific cases. In the 1980s and 1990s, several white supremacists cited William Luther Pierce\u2019s <i>Turner Diaries <\/i>(1978), a racist and antisemitic novel, as influencing their hate crimes and acts of terrorism. The novel tells the story of a violent revolution in the US which leads to a race war, and it has since been credited with shaping white nationalism in the US, the UK, and Germany. And after the disturbed American James Holmes murdered twelve people in a cinema in Aurora, Colorado, in 2012 during a screening of the Batman film <i>The Dark Knight Rises<\/i>, persistent rumors and newspaper reports suggested he was dressed as (and influenced by) the character of the Joker from the previous <i>The Dark Knight<\/i>. The fact that this was untrue\u2014Holmes had dyed his hair red, but not for that reason\u2014did little to dispel the rumor, which seemed to fit the popular belief that violent, dystopian art has the power to induce some viewers to commit terrible crimes.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes we\u2019ve got it wrong. Our views on morality and indecency are rife with inconsistency and hypocrisy. As recently as the 1990s, while sexually explicit images of women were plastered over so-called &#8220;lad mags&#8221; targeted at heterosexual boys and men, artists like Robert Mapplethorpe were censored for their explicit homosexual art. Mapplethorpe was called a &#8220;human cockroach&#8221; by Republican senator Jesse Helms, who blamed the LGBTQIA+ community for the seeming decay of culture. And while museums are bursting at the seams with paintings of naked women, real women are thrown out of museums for wearing too little (a low-cut dress) or too much (a niqab).<\/p>\n<p>Taken together, these cases and others like them suggest a thorny and complex narrative about the philosophy and history of art. The general movement towards unbounded freedom of expression in liberal societies still meets legal, cultural, or social restrictions on the morality of artworks. Art <i>can <\/i>be dangerous\u2014but the very gatekeepers of supposedly depraved art can also be dangerous. What we deem morally acceptable is itself fraught with issues; depravity does not always appear how we might expect it to. It can hide in plain sight like a wolf in sheep\u2019s clothing.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">___________________________<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"275374\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/from-marquis-de-sade-to-grand-theft-auto-a-brief-history-of-depravity\/depraved\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/depraved.jpeg\" data-orig-size=\"298,450\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"depraved\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/depraved.jpeg\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-275374\" src=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/depraved-199x300.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"199\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/depraved-199x300.jpeg 199w, https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/depraved-40x60.jpeg 40w, https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/depraved-33x50.jpeg 33w, https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/depraved.jpeg 298w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 199px) 100vw, 199px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>From<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/132\/9798217061846\">Depraved: The Story of Dangerous Art<\/a> <em>by Daisy Dixon. Published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright \u00a9 2026 by Daisy Dixon.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The prisoner\u2019s hand ached. He sat hunched over his desk in a cold tower of the Bastille jail in Paris, writing in tiny letters on a very long roll of paper\u2014nearly 40 feet in total, made from smaller scraps he<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31538,"featured_media":275523,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43096,6,43101,43092],"tags":[71934,4352,111616,111617,7679,5413,39238,16228,5357,8680],"class_list":["post-275373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-and-photography","category-features","category-history","category-newsandculture","tag-book-bans","tag-censorship","tag-daisy-dixon","tag-depraved-the-story-of-dangerous-art","tag-free-speech","tag-marquis-de-sade","tag-penguin-publishing-group","tag-penguin-random-house","tag-pornography","tag-viking","story-type-censorship"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-19Dv","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/grand-theft-auto.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31538"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":275317,"date":"2026-08-12T05:10:24","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T09:10:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=275317"},"modified":"2026-08-12T07:24:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T11:24:08","slug":"how-howard-zinns-hard-lessons-in-wwii-shaped-his-view-of-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/how-howard-zinns-hard-lessons-in-wwii-shaped-his-view-of-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"How Howard Zinn\u2019s Hard Lessons in WWII Shaped His View of the World"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Royan is a resort town in the southwest of France right on the Atlantic Ocean. Home to twenty thousand residents, a vibrant fishing community, and five beaches, it transforms over the summer when ninety thousand tourists swarm onto the scene. Most are there for the sunshine and advertised topless beaches. But Royan also attracts people interested in the unique ways that the town\u2019s homes and buildings were built in the modernist style of the 1950s. Given that Royan was settled twenty-five hundred years ago, the architecture begs the question of why, instead of being an archaeological site, the town is studied for its total 1950s style. That\u2019s because this onetime refuge of Pablo Picasso was bombed to hell less than three weeks before the official end of the Second World War. France had already been liberated, but Royan was said to be the site of a smattering of Third Reich dead-enders. They were the holdouts, remnants of the times when Nazi generals prioritized operations in Royan because of its coastal military value.<\/p>\n<p>What could have been a police action was instead a full-scale bombing raid that killed three thousand civilians and just twenty-three German soldiers. Howard Zinn was one of the airmen who rained death on Royan. The bombs that Zinn and other US and British soldiers used also marked a new era of barbarism during wartime. These missions constituted the first time an army dropped massive canisters containing what Zinn heard officers call \u201cjellied gasoline.\u201d This jellied gasoline would stick to skin and burn it to the bone. Its stickiness meant that no amount of water could stop a body from feeling as if on fire. Zinn did not make the connection until years later during America\u2019s war in Vietnam, but he had been dropping what became popularly known as \u201cnapalm.\u201d In his book <i>The Politics of History<\/i>, he wrote: \u201cAt the time, it seemed just another bombing, with a slightly different target and a slightly different cargo of bomb&#8230;I remember distinctly seeing, from our great height, the bombs explode in the town, flaring like matches struck in a fog. I was completely unaware of the human chaos below.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"pullquote\">Zinn in the years to come was vexed both morally and politically by the impersonality of the killing as a bombardier.<\/p>\n<p>Zinn wrestled with what he did in Royan, how his superiors could order the bombing and why he obeyed, for the rest of his life. While Zinn left the service in a state of personal moral crisis, he entered an eager enlistee who immediately disavowed the get-out-of-the-war-free pass he had been given.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI could have remained in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where I had been working for three years, and where our building of battleships and landing ships kept us exempt from military service,\u201d he recalled. \u201cBut I could not bear to stay out of a war against fascism. I saw the war as a noble crusade against racial superiority, militarism, fanatic nationalism, expansionism.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Without the knowledge of his parents, Zinn signed with the air corps. He preferred fighting the Nazis to fighting his parents, who, even though they supported the war against fascism and even though their own lives had taught them the dangers of leaving a deranged, authoritarian bully unchecked, already had one son, Bernie, overseas. As a result, Zinn couldn\u2019t bear doubling their stress load, both by his being in harm\u2019s way and their taking a financial hit by losing his dependable shipyard check. But Zinn wanted to stop the spread of fascism and would not be deterred. Upon receiving his letter of induction, he chose to walk it to his local draft board in Brooklyn instead of going to the post office.<\/p>\n<p>Getting into the air corps was a snap for Zinn. The written exams were a breeze, and hard work in the shipyard, not to mention the union basketball team, had kept him in good enough shape to pass the physical fitness tests. Zinn at the time was well over six feet tall and just a hundred fifty-five pounds. \u201cI was skinny,\u201d he recalled, \u201cbut the military seemed not to mind.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Zinn was assigned to be a bombardier and took to it quickly, graduating from flight school as a second lieutenant with gold bars on his lapels.<\/p>\n<p>The bombardier is a cultural archetype: the daring airman risking life and limb to fight the war in the skies. Zinn saw that when he looked in the mirror: a human arsenal against fascism. However, in the future Zinn would feel an affinity for a different kind of bombardier. Save for Snoopy, the military airman in literature is perhaps most famously personified by John Yossarian in Joseph Heller\u2019s <i>Catch\u201122<\/i>, a book Zinn would someday count among his favorites. Yossarian is considered a classic antihero who detests war and believes words like \u201ccourage\u201d and \u201chonor\u201d are ridiculous abstractions that will most likely get his fellow airmen killed. He, with an uncaring shrug, refers to himself as a \u201ccoward.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>By the book\u2019s end Yossarian finds his heroism, but not through embracing the war. Instead, he refuses to take a deal from his superiors: an honorable discharge and return home if he will become a spokesperson for the greatness of the military. Instead, he goes AWOL to search for a fellow bombardier and friend who was shot down, but whose body was never recovered. Zinn also lived through some of the absurdities that Yossarian encountered. One of Zinn\u2019s teaching assistants at Boston University in the 1970s, Cheyney Ryan, told me that Zinn shared with him that \u201cif you were a bombardier, you were responsible for your own bombing equipment, so you had to make sure that it was in good working order. They would then line you up in the morning and say, \u2018Alright, who wants to volunteer to go?\u2019 And you had spent so much time doing this shit that you thought, \u2018I might as well volunteer. I don\u2019t want to go through the hell of getting ready again.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A bombardier protagonist fit Heller\u2019s argument because it\u2019s a statement about how bizarre it is\u2014whether in fiction or nonfiction\u2014that we crown bombers as being the apex of war heroism. These are not the grunts in the mud. Their killing is from thousands of feet in the sky as they rain death with consequences they will neither see nor experience. Zinn in the years to come was vexed both morally and politically by the impersonality of the killing as a bombardier. He spoke in 2005 with significant insight into the minds of the military drone operators in places like Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, dropping bombs on both military and civilian targets in the Middle East. He knew that being a distant deliverer of death came with its own cost. Sure enough, in the coming years, suicide rates among drone pilots spiraled.<\/p>\n<p>Whether war was ever justified or whether there could ever be a \u201cgood\u201d war was not the only new idea bouncing around Zinn\u2019s head when he was between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-three. While he had had some Black coworkers in the informally segregated Brooklyn shipyard, he had never thought much about racism beyond the stories of Richard Wright. At first Zinn, in a manner he once described as \u201cso typical of whites in this country,\u201d did not notice the separate and unequal treatment of Black soldiers precisely because in the segregated basic training at Jefferson Barracks in Lemay, Missouri, they were largely out of sight and out of mind. This was the case until one day when Zinn took a long walk around the fifteen-hundred-acre base and looked up from daydreaming to see he was the only white person among a company of soldiers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSuddenly I looked around and there were black people!\u201d he wrote. \u201cI was astonished! I wasn\u2019t aware of their existence [on the base]. It was America; it was really America where here are the blacks and there are the whites in a white neighborhood and they\u2019re not even aware of blacks living twelve blocks away.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In a practice he\u2019d repeat during the Civil Rights Movement, Zinn observed a scene of Black fellowship in silence and it became etched in his mind.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat I remember most vividly is a squad of black soldiers taking a break on the grass near me, singing, \u2018Ain\u2019t Gonna Study War No More!\u2019 I was startled. I had never heard white troops sing that.\u201d This was a eureka insight from Zinn, that parts of America lived in a distinct world from the \u201cAmerica\u201d he knew. Then, once overseas, packed together with white and black troops, Zinn saw what systemic racism looked like up close, and he was irrevocably changed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was with thousands of other soldiers on the <i>Queen Mary<\/i>, an enormous luxury passenger liner converted for troop use. There were sixteen thousand men who went across [a quarter of whom were Black]. We were all on the ship according to our race; the blacks were in the hold of the ship next to the engine room and the whites were above them. The officers were on the highest deck.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Not only did the Black soldiers sleep adjacent to the cacophonous engine room, but they were also the last to eat, meaning they served themselves the coldest and most crusted over of the already unpalatable Army food. For the first time in his young life, Zinn practiced what would become known as \u201callyship.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn the dining hall, there were four shifts for eating for sixteen thousand men,\u201d he recalled. \u201cImagine the huge dining hall that seats four thousand. It\u2019s hard to imagine, right? Three shifts were white and the fourth shift was black. Each shift had to wait until the previous shift was finished. But one day the black shift came down before the third white shift had finished.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As potential intermingling threatened this segregation, a white sergeant started berating the Black troops who already had their trays, shouting at them to dump their food and clear the room. Zinn confronted him in front of the Black troops. Lieutenant Zinn informed the sergeant that he could stay and finish his meal or throw it out and leave. At one point, Zinn recalled angrily shouting, \u201cWhat in the hell is this war all about, Sergeant?\u201d It was a sign that for Zinn, his belief as to what this war was in fact all about differed from that of the government and the armed forces. Zinn\u2014and he was hardly alone\u2014saw a war against fascism as one against racism and anti-Semitism, a war to put a stake in the heart of white supremacy. For many, this belief in the war\u2019s aims would be shattered.<\/p>\n<p>The young Zinn wore blinders in regard to the injustices the USA was perpetrating during the \u201cGood War,\u201d wrongdoings he would later write about in detail, such as the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans and the refusal of the United States to give safe harbor to the many Jews fleeing the Nazi Holocaust. He has described being \u201cwar-crazed, wanting to rack up more missions, not seeming to understand that the more missions we flew the more likely we were to die.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>These bombing missions were immersive. A crew would have to wake up before the crack of dawn in order to have five hours of meetings before daybreak. The planes were dangerously cold, so the men had to wear electrically heated suits along with flak vests, which Zinn described as \u201ca heavy leaden monstrosity we didn\u2019t bother to wear.\u201d They also had massive helmets that, despite also being heavy leaden monstrosities, were worn\u2014at least until superior officers turned their backs. And of course, the last thing crew members did was make sure their parachutes\u2014fortunately never used\u2014were packed properly. Zinn eventually received the Air Medal and two battle stars for distinguished service. He was also registered as a \u201cqualified marksman\u201d with a pistol, an accomplishment far more difficult than receiving that designation with a rifle.<\/p>\n<p>As the months in combat wore on, the always politically minded Zinn sought out fellow troops to talk to about radical politics and there was no small number willing to oblige. More than one million people, it is estimated, passed through both the Communist Party USA and the many organizations its members launched in the 1930s. The people influenced by their politics overwhelmingly supported and joined the war effort against the Nazis, in part because of a commitment to fight fascism, which was seen as the mortal enemy of the international workers\u2019 movement. It was also the case that by 1941, Stalin was no longer interested in a truce with Hitler\u2014a truce that had caused many to leave the party. Instead, after Germany invaded the USSR, Stalin turned on a dime and howled\u2014correctly\u2014that Germany was preparing to wipe the Russians out. In a November 1941 speech\u2014given one month before the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor\u2014Stalin sounded the alarm: \u201cThe German-fascist invaders are plundering our country, destroying the towns and villages created by the labors of the workers, peasants and intellectuals. The Hitlerite hordes are murdering and outraging the peaceful inhabitants of our country, having no mercy on women, children or old people. Our brothers in the regions of our country seized by the Germans are groaning under the yoke of the German oppressors.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"pullquote\">Zinn\u2019s illusions in the war, challenged already by lefties in the ranks and by seeing his friends killed, were permanently put to rest due to the bombing of Royan.<\/p>\n<p>CPUSA members as well as many ex-members and fellow travelers joined the armed forces with gusto. It also meant that Zinn met and debated with people who had different analyses of the war beyond fighting the \u201cHitlerite hordes.\u201d He met a fellow bombardier who said to him, \u201cYou know, this is not a war against fascism. It\u2019s a war for empire. England, the United States, the Soviet Union\u2014they are all corrupt states, not morally concerned about Hitlerism, just wanting to run the world themselves. It\u2019s an imperialist war.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Zinn answered sharply, \u201cThen why are you here?\u201d The man replied, \u201cTo talk to guys like you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This argument made by the unknown soldier\u2014which included a sly criticism of the USSR\u2014affected how the war-crazy Zinn was starting to reassess the entire operation. Zinn found himself \u201castonished and deeply impressed\u201d that someone would risk his life on these planes and do so not just to defeat Nazis, but also to \u201cwage his own political warfare inside the military, to persuade others of his point of view.\u201d Two weeks after they spoke, this bombardier was shot down with his crew. Everyone was killed. Perhaps this was the seed of a famous Zinn quote made four decades later after Reagan\u2019s bombing of Tripoli: \u201cThere is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Zinn also started to think about a theme he would tragically revisit often: how the powers that be can manipulate the masses to think that war is at worst a tragic necessity. \u201cThey always claim to be fighting for democracy, for liberty, against aggression, to end all wars\u2014but is that not a handy way to mobilize a population to support war, indeed, absolutely necessary because people do not instinctively want to fight?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He certainly felt like he was part of the \u201cgood guys\u201d making the skies safe for democracy. He told his Spelman College colleague Professor Henry West the story about how 99 percent of the time, he was so many miles up in the sky that he had no idea where the bombs were falling. But then toward the war\u2019s end, his crew flew low to drop food and medicine packages onto starving, desperate populations. As the Germans had fled from Holland, they blew up the dams while in retreat, thus destroying crops and sparking a famine. When Zinn looked down toward the end of his food- and medicine-dropping humanitarian run, he saw \u201cThank You\u201d spelled out in tulips.<\/p>\n<p>Zinn began to think about whether the war was fruit from a poisoned tree: how could the Allied powers be seen as unimpeachable good guys if they also had histories drenched with \u201cracism or colonialism or slave labor camps\u2014one or another of which was a characteristic of all of the Allied powers[?] And of course fascism and Nazis were worse, but was war the answer? Was the only way to deal with fascism to engage in a bloodbath which left forty million people dead?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It was two of the forty million dead people who pushed Zinn further into doubt. \u201cI knew I was lucky to be alive, because my two closest Air Force friends\u2014Joe Perry, nineteen, and Ed Plotkin, twenty-six\u2014died in the last weeks of the war. They were my buddies in basic training. We marched in the summer heat together. We went out on weekend passes together. We learned to fly Piper Cubs in Vermont and played basketball in Santa Ana, California, while waiting for our assignments.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When Zinn was back in New York City, he looked up Ed Plotkin\u2019s wife. The night before Ed was to be deployed, he had gone AWOL from Fort Dix for one more night with her. She told Zinn that Ed and she had that night conceived a child who would never meet their dad. Years later at the end of class at Boston University, someone passed to Zinn a note that read simply, \u201cEd Plotkin\u2019s daughter wants to meet you.\u201d Zinn was able to tell her about the father she had never met.<\/p>\n<p>But Zinn\u2019s illusions in the war, challenged already by lefties in the ranks and by seeing his friends killed, were permanently put to rest due to the bombing of Royan. After the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he felt that he was a party to a historic war crime. In August of 1966, Roz and he traveled to Hiroshima, Japan, at the invitation of a peace group. \u201cI look back at Hiroshima, I look back at the bombings I participated in, and I feel sick,\u201d he wrote afterward. \u201cI learned a lot about how it is possible to commit atrocities. Hiroshima and Royan were crucial in my gradual rethinking of what I had once accepted without question\u2014the absolute morality of the war against fascism.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Over the course of decades after the war, Zinn sent the Department of Defense letters requesting access to the records of his bombing runs. Some of these asks were successful; others were stonewalled. He kept the few files they did send him in a folder called \u201cWWII Photos of Bombings and Planes,\u201d which he kept throughout his life. It included aerial photos of targets in Royan and elsewhere. At the bottom of the folder, he wrote two words: \u201cNever Again.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">____________________________<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"275318\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/how-howard-zinns-hard-lessons-in-wwii-shaped-his-view-of-the-world\/the-peoples-historian\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/the-peoples-historian.jpeg\" data-orig-size=\"298,450\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"the peoples historian\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/the-peoples-historian.jpeg\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-275318\" src=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/the-peoples-historian-199x300.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"199\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/the-peoples-historian-199x300.jpeg 199w, https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/the-peoples-historian-40x60.jpeg 40w, https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/the-peoples-historian-33x50.jpeg 33w, https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/the-peoples-historian.jpeg 298w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 199px) 100vw, 199px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>From<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/132\/9780593473658\">The People&#8217;s Historian: The Outsized Life of Howard Zinn<\/a> <em>by Dave Zirin. Published by Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright \u00a9 2026 by Dave Zirin.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Royan is a resort town in the southwest of France right on the Atlantic Ocean. Home to twenty thousand residents, a vibrant fishing community, and five beaches, it transforms over the summer when ninety thousand tourists swarm onto the scene.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8651,"featured_media":275521,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43102,11,43092,43095],"tags":[17745,14748,25395,29383,39238,16228,111654,877,5132],"class_list":["post-275317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biography","category-fullwidth-slider","category-newsandculture","category-politics","tag-dave-zirin","tag-dutton","tag-historians","tag-howard-zinn","tag-penguin-publishing-group","tag-penguin-random-house","tag-the-peoples-historian-the-outsized-life-of-howard-zinn","tag-war","tag-world-war-ii","story-type-war"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-19CB","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/howard-zinn.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8651"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":275532,"date":"2026-08-12T05:09:50","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T09:09:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=275532"},"modified":"2026-08-11T15:25:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T19:25:16","slug":"what-happens-when-you-mail-30-writers-free-lit-mags","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/what-happens-when-you-mail-30-writers-free-lit-mags\/","title":{"rendered":"What Happens When You Mail 30 Writers Free Lit Mags?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s the thing about indie lit: it&#8217;s full of problems everyone complains about and almost nobody has the time, money, or spreadsheet stamina to solve. How can lit mags get more subscribers? How do they get submissions that actually fit what they publish? Good editors lose sleep over stuff like that. With the rest of the Chill Subs team, we decided to run a weird experiment and see if it helped solve the intractable problems facing the industry. We are nothing if not ambitious.<\/p>\n<p>So we got in touch with <em>The Georgia Review<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>We had a concept of a plan. Honestly, we just figured if you can name five lit mags off the top of your head, <em>The Georgia Review <\/em>is probably one of them. They were interested in the same challenges we were: widening their reach. Plus they were right up the road, and they had a closet full of back issues just sitting there.<\/p>\n<p>Together we landed on an elaborate scheme built around those gorgeous, coffee-table-worthy books. Yes, <em>books<\/em>. The kind you hold in your hand to be reminded that a lit mag can be a thing of beauty and not just another open link in your browser.<\/p>\n<p>So we thought, what if we gave away copies for free? Mail these backlist issues to writers, let them see for themselves how stunning and substantial they are, and maybe\u2014<em>maybe<\/em>\u2014a few of them subscribe.<\/p>\n<p>And since we were sending these to writers, the <em>GR <\/em>editors wrote long, craft-focused letters to pair with each issue: why they chose it, what they look for in a manuscript, how they actually read a submission. Surely <em>that <\/em>was the thing that would turn a curious reader into a better submitter.<\/p>\n<p>We actually pulled it off. It also didn\u2019t work as expected.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s everything we learned.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The experiment<br \/>\n<\/strong>The plan was simple, which is usually how trouble starts. Thirty writers, ten per genre. Three mailings, each with an honest-to-god <em>letter <\/em>tucked inside. Ninety backlist issues in all, with a discount waiting at the end for anyone who wanted to subscribe. Chill Subs announced the experiment in our newsletter\u201422,000 readers at the time\u2014and the spots filled in <strong>under three minutes<\/strong>. Another <strong>1,527 people<\/strong> joined the waitlist.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The receipts<br \/>\n<\/strong>First, the whole ledger\u2014shared with <em>The Georgia Review<\/em>&#8216;s permission\u2014because transparency only counts if you show your own work. If you run a lit mag and you&#8217;re wondering what it would take to try this yourself, this is a decent ballpark.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What it cost:<\/strong><\/p>\n<table width=\"624\">\n<thead>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"312\"><strong>Item<\/strong><\/td>\n<td width=\"312\"><strong>Cost<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"312\">90 backlist issues (already printed\u2014that&#8217;s the point)<\/td>\n<td width=\"312\">$90<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"312\">Domestic shipping (periodical rate)<\/td>\n<td width=\"312\">$162<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"312\">International shipping<\/td>\n<td width=\"312\">$533.16<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"312\">Editor time<\/td>\n<td width=\"312\">~15 hours per editor (6\u201310 of those on marketing)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>The cash outlay was modest\u2014the real cost was time. Those letters didn&#8217;t write themselves, and any lit mag considering this should budget for the editors&#8217; hours as the main line item.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What it returned:<\/strong><\/p>\n<table width=\"624\">\n<thead>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"312\"><strong>Metric<\/strong><\/td>\n<td width=\"312\"><strong>Result<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"312\">Spots filled<\/td>\n<td width=\"312\">Under 3 minutes<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"312\">Waitlist<\/td>\n<td width=\"312\">1,527 writers<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"312\"><em>GR<\/em> newsletter signups<\/td>\n<td width=\"312\">+1,515 (on a pre-experiment list of 30,400\u20145% list growth from one experiment)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"312\">Instagram<\/td>\n<td width=\"312\">~+300 followers, roughly 30\u00d7 <em>GR<\/em>&#8216;s normal daily growth<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"312\">Submissions from participants<\/td>\n<td width=\"312\">3<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"312\">Subscriptions from participants<\/td>\n<td width=\"312\">0<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"312\">Subscriptions from new newsletter signups<\/td>\n<td width=\"312\">3 within six months<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>So: if the goal was \u201cmail beautiful magazines, receive subscribers,\u201d the experiment flopped. Spectacularly. Zero of the 30 participants subscribed during the campaign.<\/p>\n<p>But if the goal was \u201cmake a lot of writers suddenly care about <em>The Georgia Review<\/em>,\u201d the story gets more interesting. The giveaway produced a 1,500-person waitlist, a 5% newsletter bump, a nice Instagram spike, and a few submissions.<\/p>\n<p>The experiment was great at making noise, not so great at making money. Indie lit in a nutshell.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The gift worked. The ask didn&#8217;t.<br \/>\n<\/strong>When we surveyed participants after the experiment, the power of the gift came through loud and clear. Lily Kelting put her issues on display: &#8220;Now they are out on my coffee table, so at least a handful of people in Pune, India will know it&#8217;s a well-designed and quality mag!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The subscription offer? That got lost. The discount went as a postcard, and after three months of thoughtful, personal messages, it barely registered. &#8220;Was I supposed to subscribe?&#8221; Chris Clemens asked. &#8220;I don&#8217;t have time to read what I&#8217;ve got.&#8221; Paulina Pinsky pointed out a timing problem: &#8220;If there had been follow-up from the initial copy, or if I&#8217;d been reminded, I would have submitted.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The goodwill was there. The nudge was just too subtle. We could have built an easier path to subscription\u2014anything more than a single postcard after three months of personal letters. Next time, we&#8217;d design the offer to be as thoughtful as the gift. We&#8217;d run the whole thing again to prove it out.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Writers loved the editor letters<br \/>\n<\/strong>If anything overdelivered, it was the <em>GR <\/em>editor letters. So many writers told us the letters changed how they think about submitting work\u2014which, honestly, is not a sentence we expected to write about a giveaway.<\/p>\n<p>This is the part where our \u201cgive people free magazines\u201d plan turned into a tiny craft class.<\/p>\n<p>Across the three mailings, <em>GR<\/em>&#8216;s editors\u2014Amy Bonnaffons (fiction), C.J. Bartunek (nonfiction), and Noah Baldino (poetry)\u2014wrote what amounts to a free, deeply personal seminar on how editors actually read. Submission guidelines are usually generalizations. These letters were real craft talk, grounded in specific examples and addressed directly to writers in the Chill Subs community.<\/p>\n<p>Baldino, on why an emerging poet&#8217;s restraint caught his eye:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px;\">&#8220;What&#8217;s kept on a poem&#8217;s edge speaks, I think, to discernment\u2014a quality crucial to both a writer and editor.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Bonnaffons, on what makes her pull a story out of a queue of 10,000 yearly submissions:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px;\">&#8220;About 25% of the stories I&#8217;ve advocated for in acquisition meetings have been debuts, several of those by writers without MFAs. \u2026 So while we do want your best and most polished work, we&#8217;re especially excited by work that takes big swings, that feels alive and full of potential.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And Bartunek, opening the very first mailing with the thesis of the whole experiment:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px;\">&#8221; &#8216;The best way to get published in a journal is to familiarize yourself with the journal first.&#8217; <em>The Georgia Review<\/em>&#8216;s Winter 2001 \/ Spring 2002 is an opportunity to REALLY familiarize yourself with <em>GR<\/em>&#8216;s legacy of publishing compelling nonfiction\u2014the issue is a retrospective of essays spanning 1947 to 1996.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re not the only ones who noticed. The letters stuck with participants even though they didn&#8217;t move anyone to subscribe.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Their reflections made me realize I had to become even more cognizant of the care that submitters put into their work\u2026 I&#8217;ve become a lot more open to risks; I&#8217;ve been sending out weirder poems to more journals. Weird is always fun.&#8221; \u2014a participating poet<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The final letter on crafting poem packets helped me understand how to read my own submissions the way I read for the magazine I run\u2014which sounds simple, but I know I&#8217;m not the only one to overlook my own writing that way.&#8221; \u2014Elaine Braunshweiger<\/p>\n<p>With <em>GR<\/em>&#8216;s blessing, we&#8217;re sharing those letters in full\u2014a sample of what landed in participants&#8217; mailboxes, worth your time whether or not you ever submit there:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><strong>Fiction:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/amy-bonnaffons-on-the-georgia-reviewsspring-2024-issue\/\">Amy Bonnaffons on the Spring 2024 issue<\/a><br \/>\n<strong>Nonfiction: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/c-j-bartunek-on-the-georgia-reviews-winter-2001-spring-2002-restrospective\/\">C.J. Bartunek on the Winter 2001\/Spring 2002 retrospective<\/a><br \/>\n<strong>Poetry:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/noah-baldino-on-the-georgia-reviews-spring-2024-issue\/\">Noah Baldino on the Spring 2024 issue<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Read all three. Somewhere in there is the answer to the question submissions guidelines always struggle to answer.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What the experiment revealed<br \/>\n<\/strong>Thirty free spots gone in under three minutes, a waitlist fifty times the capacity. The appetite for print is there\u2014what we\u2019re all still trying to solve is the part where readers become subscribers.<\/p>\n<p>Shipping outside the US ran three times the domestic bill for a fraction of the issues; we could have tripled the giveaway by staying home. We didn&#8217;t, on principle\u2014writers abroad shouldn&#8217;t be on the hook for postage when nobody else is\u2014but there&#8217;s no honest version of &#8220;print for everyone&#8221; that survives contact with an international shipping invoice.<\/p>\n<p>In trying to give away a limited number of magazines, we built a list of fifteen hundred writers who wanted the exact thing we were offering. And then we never wrote to them again. The people who didn&#8217;t get in were the real prize, and we left them hanging. Oops.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes results only show up after the fact: zero subscriptions during the experiment, three in the six months after. Judged on a typical three-month clock, this was a flat failure. Generosity, it turns out, keeps worse time than a marketing calendar.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The ledger<br \/>\n<\/strong>We set out to solve a subscription problem, but instead we rediscovered what indie lit actually runs on: attention, goodwill, and editors willing to take time to talk about how they read. Thirty writers got beautiful magazines. Fifteen hundred more signed up for <em>The Georgia Review<\/em>\u2019s newsletter. The thing that stuck with people wasn&#8217;t the discount\u2014it was three editors treating strangers like writers worth talking to. The subscription math still doesn&#8217;t work. Nobody seems to have cracked it yet. But if the gift is what people remember, maybe that&#8217;s the part of the ledger worth protecting. Assuming we can figure out how to keep those editors fed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s the thing about indie lit: it&#8217;s full of problems everyone complains about and almost nobody has the time, money, or spreadsheet stamina to solve. How can lit mags get more subscribers? How do they get submissions that actually fit<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31617,"featured_media":275537,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43201,43071,43069,6,43092],"tags":[102642,102643,111702,6113,15185,52281],"class_list":["post-275532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-news-newsandculture","category-craft-and-advice","category-craftandcriticism","category-features","category-newsandculture","tag-benjamin-davis","tag-chill-subs","tag-david-mahaffey","tag-literary-community","tag-literary-magazines","tag-the-georgia-review"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-19G4","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Untitled-design-2026-08-11T092604.058.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31617"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":275278,"date":"2026-08-12T05:09:18","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T09:09:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=275278"},"modified":"2026-08-10T21:43:37","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T01:43:37","slug":"as-hitler-loomed-hannah-arendt-undertook-a-deep-analysis-of-german-antisemitism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/as-hitler-loomed-hannah-arendt-undertook-a-deep-analysis-of-german-antisemitism\/","title":{"rendered":"As Hitler Loomed, Hannah Arendt Undertook a Deep Analysis of German Antisemitism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hannah Arendt\u2019s 1936 lectures in Paris, where she had spent the past year and a half, were the first signals to the \u00e9migr\u00e9 population at large that she still had something to say. They were her attempt to introduce her work on modern antisemitism, which had been announced back in 1934 and was almost complete. She wished to open her work for discussion, and in the process reword or improve some of its sections.<\/p>\n<p>The collection of Arendt\u2019s papers includes a 159-page typed manuscript that was clearly intended for publication. The extant typescript, the last section of which (\u201cThe Aristocracy Turns Antisemitic\u201d) notes that it is a \u201cpersonal copy\u201d and lacks a chapter number, is still incomplete; the last page of the text makes reference to a \u201cnext chapter.\u201d Someone wrote the years \u201c1937-38\u201d on the manuscript, which might indicate that this was a written draft of the lectures. Very few texts written after 1933 are referenced here, so it would appear that at least large parts of the manuscript were planned for inclusion in the book project Arendt had mentioned back in 1934.<\/p>\n<p>The chronology is significant here. Up to the time of the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, quite a few observers of the developments in Germany were undecided as to whether the National dictatorship would last. Not Arendt.<\/p>\n<p>Pessimism runs throughout the manuscript. Arendt had no doubt that the form of antisemitism that had been empowered in Germany could exist only in that country. She began her text with Christian Wilhelm Dohm\u2019s <i>Ueber die Verbesserung der Juden <\/i>(On the Civic Improvement of Jews, 1781), and in the next paragraph she referred back to Johann Andreas Eisenmenger\u2019s <i>Entdecktes Judenthum <\/i>(Judaism Unmasked), published in 1701, which was regarded even by his Jewish contemporaries as a threatening compendium of all ancient and medieval lies about the peril posed by Judaism for the majority societies in which Jews lived.<\/p>\n<p>While Dohm\u2019s and Eisenmenger\u2019s books had often been cited and discussed in tandem, Arendt brought in a third book, Carl Wilhelm Friedrich Grattenauer\u2019s <i>Wider die Juden <\/i>(Against the Jews, 1803), which she associated with the Romantic movement\u2019s intellectual elite: Brentano, Arnim, Kleist, and the influential German Christian Table Society. Arendt then cited Wilhelm Marr\u2019s <i>Sieg des Judentums \u00fcber das Germanentum<\/i> (The Victory of Judaism over Teutonism, 1869), thus lining up all the antisemitic pipe dreams that came close to fulfillment. Now that the National Socialists, a \u201cpolitical movement whose catchword is \u2018antisemitism,\u2019 \u201d had assumed power in 1933, they could realize the remaining piece of their dream: \u201cthe perennial suggestion for solving the Jewish question by slaying all the Jews.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"pullquote\">Arendt had no doubt that the form of antisemitism that had been empowered in Germany could exist only in that country.<\/p>\n<p>Arendt\u2019s analysis of antisemitism also offers an analysis of Jewish history, because she was convinced that these went hand in hand.<\/p>\n<p>Arendt\u2019s analysis employed language that would capture both the disfiguration and configuration of what had taken place. The years of freedom\u2014and a limited freedom, at that\u2014were evidently enough to make the \u201cJews from the East\u201d the object of the German Jews\u2019 arrogance and sense of superiority. But in 1933, within a matter of days, they were jerked back into reality. The superiority of the German Jews turned out to be nothing but a mirage. Those who remained behind wondered what they had done wrong, while the \u201cJews in the East\u201d observed that the German Jews were \u201chopelessly inferior.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The year 1933, Arendt contended, marked the close of the age of bourgeois emancipation and Jewish liberation, which brought an end to a feeling of security in the West and signaled that the new sense of security in the East was a pipe dream. If such things could happen in Germany, it was only a matter of time until something similar occurred elsewhere. For Arendt, the experiences of German Jews served as \u201can example,\u201d a call to other nations to begin a battle of annihilation, because they would be met by a weak adversary.<\/p>\n<p>Arendt argued that the \u201cGerman catastrophe\u201d and the weak reaction of German Jews and of \u201cworld Jewry\u201d shed light on the past 150 years, that is, on the decades of emancipation. This development could have taken place only in Germany, a structure of history that had always been centered on antisemitism, in no need of the old \u201cventilation theory,\u201d which held that a scapegoat had to be found for national discontent. It was possible not to see this because Jewish history was always conceived as a history of victimization. In the nineteenth century, Arendt explained, two forms developed, with the West hoping to merge into \u201cworld history,\u201d that is, without the baggage of suffering and without God. The Jews in the East attempted to construct a \u201cnational history\u201d that sought Jewish traces in individual histories while establishing the existence of a Jewish people as a whole. The Western variant, by contrast, had already reached its ultimate objective; in creating a Reform synagogue, it opted to put unwanted distinctions in the past.<\/p>\n<p>But both sides had failed to grasp one thing\u2014and this was Arendt\u2019s overarching point throughout the analysis presented here\u2014that within this model, antisemitism was always regarded as merely an \u201copinion\u201d held by individuals. This, she argued, was a fatal error. \u201cOur history\u201d\u2014Arendt was always speaking as a Jew who inserted herself into analyses that extended into the present\u2014could eventually fold into the history of the majority societies that surrounded them. \u201cThe Jews were Germans and nothing more.\u201d Zionism, she said, was to be credited for putting an end to what Kant had termed \u201cdogmatic slumber\u201d for this uncritical acceptance of the state of affairs. It had failed where it substituted for assimilation, adaptation, and achieving equality the notion of two substances: of a given \u201chost nation\u201d and of the Jews, both eternal, both immutable. Hence both interpretations were dangerously misleading, because both left it to non-Jews to define Jewish history.<\/p>\n<p>Arendt cited Otto Heller\u2019s book <i>Der Untergang des Judentums: Die<\/i> <i>Judenfrage, ihre Kritik, ihre L\u00f6sung durch den Sozialismus <\/i>(The Decline of Judaism: The Jewish Question, Its Critique, Its Solution Through Socialism) to point up the dramatic impasse that Jewish historiography had come up against as part of the analysis of the current situation. Heller, who was born in 1897 in Brno and died of exhaustion in late March 1945 at the Ebensee concentration camp, a subcamp of Mauthausen, was not a true theorist or authority in the subject he chose to write about. He had been living in Paris since 1936, and his book was translated into French, but it never had the role that Arendt ascribed to it: No one regarded it as exemplary, and it did not broaden out into more general issues.<\/p>\n<p>Far more momentous was Arendt\u2019s own analysis of the situation. She found it disastrous that the status of emancipation, as stipulated by the German majority society, was regarded not as a reason for rethinking people\u2019s own actions, but instead as an impetus to adapt to the current circumstances. In the end, the German Jews were confronted by the \u201ctrue representative\u201d of the German people\u2014Hitler\u2014who informed them that they were a \u201crace\u201d to which he was issuing special regulations and laws.<\/p>\n<p>At this moment, complete inertia, helplessness, or escape seemed to be the only ways to react, but Zionism offered a strategy for coping with the changing circumstances, a strategy that had begun with Theodor Herzl. The aim was preserving the \u201cJewish substance\u201d in the face of antisemitism, even when that substance was attacked in the extreme. In juxtaposing National Socialist and Zionist dogmatics, Arendt concluded that the former sought to eradicate a populace it considered alien, fundamentally different, and hence incompatible with its values, while Zionism insisted that Judaism, as the Other, needed to seek a way to thrive as the only means of securing its substance. Whether in economic analysis (Herzl) or in \u201cpseudophilosophical profundity\u201d (Martin Buber), the outcome was what both, in their different ways, strove to avoid, namely for the substance in need of rescue to adapt to the prevailing zeitgeist. Arendt\u2019s conclusion sounded bitter: \u201cThe bankruptcy of the Zionist movement caused by the reality of Palestine is at the same time the bankruptcy of the illusion of autonomous, isolated Jewish politics.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The first chapter of the manuscript was written before her involvement with the Youth Aliyah. But Arendt likely saw that it was possible to engage in \u201cJewish politics,\u201d at least in the form of a reaction to an existential threat to all Jews, because Arendt had argued time and again that Germany was only the first stage in the history of a new type of antisemitism and the danger of annihilation impended.<\/p>\n<p>In the second chapter, \u201cThe Classic Land of Antisemitism,\u201d Arendt noted that the developments in Germany triggered a pan-European alignment of the various Judaisms with their specific histories and environments. Hitler\u2019s so-called seizure of power made all Jews indistinguishable; he forced all of them into the same mold, with varying degrees of perceptible consequences. German antisemitism was universal and applicable to all, and made enemies of all Jews. The Jews\u2019 greatest achievement, the greatest model and the respect they had attained, was now followed by their downfall. Arendt drew an arc from Gotthold Ephraim Lessing to Alfred Rosenberg\u2019s <i>The Myth of the Twentieth Century<\/i>. Seen retrospectively, they formed a narrative that had the Jews rising to the status of coequal human beings, only to be denied their humanity.<\/p>\n<p>The crucial step along this path was abstraction, making living Jews into a principle, a bearer of traits leading to one thing: evil. Equating Jews and evil was regarded as significant progress in furthering antisemitism without the need for additional consequences; that was reserved for later generations.<\/p>\n<p>For now it sufficed for this process to have become possible, accepted by society, and attained in a \u201cscholarly\u201d manner. The third chapter, \u201cAntisemitism and Hatred of the Jews,\u201d attempted to grapple with this issue. Arendt insisted that modern antisemitism was rooted in reversing processes of social differentiation. \u201cJews\u201d were facing the danger of disappearing as they achieved assimilation and equality under the law, and only the introduction of a clear demarcation could prevent total integration. \u201cOne could discuss its history [that of modern antisemitism] as a history of associations\u2014quite random associations that contain only a minimum of reality when it comes to Jews, but very necessary associations when viewed from amid the struggles of the period.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"pullquote\">Hitler\u2019s so-called seizure of power made all Jews indistinguishable; he forced all of them into the same mold, with varying degrees of perceptible consequences.<\/p>\n<p>The fourth chapter, \u201cUsurers, Pariahs, Parasites,\u201d reconstructs a historical development using sociological and economic categories. The essential point is that the three designations have become obsolete in the wake of nineteenth-century social and economic developments, but for that very reason are associated with Jews. The Other is not modern; its features are to be regarded as lodged in an era that is over and done with. What remains is the pariah, a figure of the present, with \u201cneither rights nor a country&#8230;citizens of no nation.\u201d As such the Jews go back to being parasites, because even refugees have to live somewhere, and so they become a \u201csociety outside of society\u2014a <i>caste<\/i>.\u201d This was the first time that Arendt brought into play a fully formulated theory that later became famous, although at this point it lacked the term she later paired with the pariah, namely the parvenu, in arguing that the Jewish emancipation gave rise to only these two types.<\/p>\n<p>Arendt introduced ideal \u201ctypes\u201d in the fifth chapter. She was drawn to particular historical figures by the primacy they accorded to accumulating wealth as a means of achieving success, to attaining rights, and to gaining civic participation. The best they could hope for was an improvement of their legal status. The \u201ccourt Jews\u201d were far from having achieved a secure station in life, because they enjoyed privileges that could be snatched away at any time. The dissolution of the ghettos in the eighteenth century could be interpreted as tearing down barriers, but now poverty set in and the wealthy separated from those who formerly shared a similar destiny. When the walls came down, the differences between Western and Eastern Jews became even more marked, making it all the easier to instrumentalize contrasts.<\/p>\n<p>The sixth chapter is devoted to \u201cexceptional Jews,\u201d those whose exclusion gave them something special to offer, and they intrigued or attracted the curiosity of outside groups, especially among the educated. Arendt regarded this situation as the basis for the emergence of the Jewish salons. The window of opportunity shut right back down, a phenomenon that Arendt explored here by explaining that the close, no longer merely economic connection between the aristocracy and the Jews led to new resentments. From the viewpoint of the bourgeoisie, both Jews and the aristocracy advocated revolutions and radical change, and thus both attacked the status quo. Resentment swelled among the aristocrats, who had no desire to be grouped with the <i>Judenseite <\/i>(Jewish side).<\/p>\n<p>According to Arendt, this had far-reaching consequences. Those who were against the state were attracted to antisemitism. The alliance of the \u201cexceptional Jews\u201d with the state was a favored point of attack for modern antisemites; after all, they argued, what sort of state would fleece its own people and offer advantages to the beneficiaries of this swindle?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs long as antisemitism cannot establish a basic link with the great political struggles of the time and as long as it is not supported by at least one unified level of society, it remains without political significance and poses no threat to Jews.\u201d But if it does succeed, antisemitism goes beyond vague pronouncements and becomes a political problem, meaning that it affects society as a whole, at which point it becomes dangerous because it seeks out solidarity and gauges how far it can go, testing the limits in particular of the state, which needs to ensure domestic stabilization and look to the good of the state as a whole, not any specific individual interests. Arendt explains that assimilated Jews afforded antisemites the perfect opportunity to make their case. Assimilated Jews wished to make use of their freedoms while retaining their identities, and modify societal modernization to meet their special needs. At the same time, they had to ensure that neither successes nor failures would attract attention to themselves. Envy and schadenfreude are two emotions that are readily associated with old anti-Jewish stereotypes, and could develop dynamics of their own. But it had not reached that point quite yet. The functions of Jews and the images that were made of them continued to undergo changes.<\/p>\n<p>The state discovered that reforms had to be beneficial to all, and so the political mission had to be implementing education and acculturation as a means of solidifying the nascent bourgeoisie. The goal needing to be attained was being a Jew, a citizen, and a German all at the same time. The bourgeoisie gradually evolved, and, like any new social stratum, it had to displace existing ones or become so strong that others would adopt its forms of employment and ways of life. The nobility was the first to be affected, and the bourgeoisie and the Jews seemed to be the beneficiaries of this development. With the two pillars of modernity merging into one, antisemitism, in its modern form, was also anti-bourgeois.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">____________________________<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"275279\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/as-hitler-loomed-hannah-arendt-undertook-a-deep-analysis-of-german-antisemitism\/hannah-arendt-2\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Hannah-Arendt.jpeg\" data-orig-size=\"296,450\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"Hannah Arendt\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Hannah-Arendt.jpeg\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-275279\" src=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Hannah-Arendt-197x300.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"197\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Hannah-Arendt-197x300.jpeg 197w, https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Hannah-Arendt-39x60.jpeg 39w, https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Hannah-Arendt-33x50.jpeg 33w, https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Hannah-Arendt.jpeg 296w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 197px) 100vw, 197px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>From<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/132\/9781984878434\">Hannah Arendt: A Life of the Mind<\/a> <em>by Thomas Meyer, translated by Shelley Frisch. Published by Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright \u00a9 2023 by Thomas Meyer, translation copyright \u00a9 2026 by Shelley Frisch.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hannah Arendt\u2019s 1936 lectures in Paris, where she had spent the past year and a half, were the first signals to the \u00e9migr\u00e9 population at large that she still had something to say. They were her attempt to introduce her<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31504,"featured_media":275522,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43102,6,43101,43092,43095],"tags":[40901,12167,2765,9546,111638,12391,2408,39238,16228,48009,111637],"class_list":["post-275278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biography","category-features","category-history","category-newsandculture","category-politics","tag-antisemitism","tag-europe","tag-germany","tag-hannah-arendt","tag-hannah-arendt-a-life-of-the-mind","tag-nazi-germany","tag-penguin-press","tag-penguin-publishing-group","tag-penguin-random-house","tag-shelley-frisch","tag-thomas-meyer","story-type-antisemitism"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-19BY","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/hannah-arendt.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31504"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":275164,"date":"2026-08-12T05:08:19","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T09:08:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=275164"},"modified":"2026-08-10T21:45:35","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T01:45:35","slug":"eight-books-to-read-if-youre-still-thinking-about-the-roman-empire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/eight-books-to-read-if-youre-still-thinking-about-the-roman-empire\/","title":{"rendered":"Eight Books to Read If You\u2019re Still Thinking About the Roman Empire"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Now that our president is minting gold coins with his face on them, building a triumphal arch, and sponsoring blood sport in the capital, it seems like a good time to read up on ancient Rome. That\u2019s what I was thinking when I wrote <i>Lessons from a Lost Republic: What Ancient Rome Can Teach Us About This American Moment<\/i>. It explains how the ancient Roman Republic collapsed into autocracy and how we might prevent it from happening to us. For those who might want to learn more about the messy world of ancient Rome, I recommend starting with historical fiction and an ancient Roman epic. While others are busy poring over Marcus Aurelius\u2019s late-life musings about how to be a better Roman emperor (hint: slaughter \u201cbarbarians,\u201d persecute Christians, choose your idiot son as your successor), you can enjoy these books instead.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"275165\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/eight-books-to-read-if-youre-still-thinking-about-the-roman-empire\/augustus\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/augustus.jpeg\" data-orig-size=\"600,959\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"augustus\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/augustus.jpeg\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-275165 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/augustus-188x300.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"188\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/augustus-188x300.jpeg 188w, https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/augustus-38x60.jpeg 38w, https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/augustus-31x50.jpeg 31w, https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/augustus.jpeg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 188px) 100vw, 188px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>John Williams, <a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/p\/books\/augustus-john-williams\/769c0560b094b1c6?ean=9781590178218&amp;bkshp-astro=t\"><i>Augustus<\/i><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This 1972 novel about the rise of Augustus\u2014the man we call the first Roman emperor\u2014is told almost entirely by those who surrounded and enabled him. The transition from republic to autocracy is narrated through (imagined) letters and journals of his closest advisors, friends, and family. Even for those of us who know what happened, the author creates an intimate view of this extraordinary period through the inner thoughts and conflicts of the aspiring emperor\u2019s closest confidantes (imagine a novel about Donald Trump told entirely through Pete Hegseth\u2019s Signal chat and Melania\u2019s diaries, but beautifully written). <i>Augustus<\/i> is at its most compelling when we hear from his exiled daughter, Julia, who does not get her say in the historical sources, but whose tragic fate is sympathetically drawn in this novel.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"275166\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/eight-books-to-read-if-youre-still-thinking-about-the-roman-empire\/the-aeneid-2\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/the-aeneid.jpeg\" data-orig-size=\"350,500\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"the aeneid\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/the-aeneid.jpeg\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-275166 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/the-aeneid-210x300.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"210\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/the-aeneid-210x300.jpeg 210w, https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/the-aeneid-42x60.jpeg 42w, https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/the-aeneid-35x50.jpeg 35w, https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/the-aeneid.jpeg 350w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 210px) 100vw, 210px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Virgil, <a href=\"https:\/\/shadibartsch.com\/books\/the-aeneid\/\"><i>The Aeneid<\/i><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>There is perhaps no greater Roman writer than Virgil (apologies to another recommended author, Ovid, below) and no greater Roman poem than the <i>Aeneid. <\/i>It is an epic in the mold of the <i>Iliad <\/i>and the <i>Odyssey<\/i>, but written centuries later by a poet working under the watchful eye of a still-figuring-it-out Roman emperor. In the <i>Aeneid, <\/i>Virgil crafts the story of Rome\u2019s distant past in a way that \u201cpredicts\u201d the best possible version of the world he was actually living in. Even if he did not necessarily believe it all, Virgil shaped the story of Rome and Augustus into a masterpiece. If you think you don\u2019t know the <i>Aeneid, <\/i>imagine the story of the Trojan Horse and thank Virgil. I don\u2019t think he is credited in Christopher Nolan\u2019s <i>Odyssey<\/i>, but he probably should be.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"275167\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/eight-books-to-read-if-youre-still-thinking-about-the-roman-empire\/lavinia\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/lavinia.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"265,400\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;1&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"lavinia\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/lavinia.jpg\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-275167 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/lavinia-199x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"199\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/lavinia-199x300.jpg 199w, https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/lavinia-40x60.jpg 40w, https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/lavinia-33x50.jpg 33w, https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/lavinia.jpg 265w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 199px) 100vw, 199px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Ursula K. Le Guin, <a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/p\/books\/lavinia-ursula-k-le-guin\/c66c04d6e7bee864?ean=9780156033688&amp;bkshp-astro=t\"><i>Lavinia<\/i><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>If you find yourself missing Virgil after the <i>Aeneid, <\/i>you can turn to this lesser known, but brilliant novel by Ursula K. Le Guin. It is an early contribution to what is now a cottage industry of stories told from women&#8217;s points of view in classical mythology. Lavinia was the young woman whose hand in marriage was promised to Aeneas, the hero of Virgil\u2019s <i>Aeneid <\/i>and founder of the Roman people. Her role in the origin story of Rome is crucial but unvoiced<i>. <\/i>Le Guin not only gives Lavinia something to say but also conjures her whole life and her world as they could have been or should have been. A brief but essential bit of science fiction provides the marvelous, impossible conceit that gives Lavinia agency she never had even as she remains a character written by a man in the future. She knows what is to come but makes her choices and lives her life in a magnificently described world. Le Guin\u2019s version of pre-Roman Italy is the version I now imagine whenever I read the <i>Aeneid<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"275170\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/eight-books-to-read-if-youre-still-thinking-about-the-roman-empire\/i-claudius\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/i-claudius.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"600,924\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;1&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"i claudius\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/i-claudius.jpg\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-275170 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/i-claudius-195x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"195\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/i-claudius-195x300.jpg 195w, https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/i-claudius-39x60.jpg 39w, https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/i-claudius-32x50.jpg 32w, https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/i-claudius.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 195px) 100vw, 195px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>\u00a0Robert Graves, <a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/p\/books\/i-claudius-robert-graves\/f360e9d1d393e72f?ean=9780679724773&amp;bkshp-astro=t\"><i>I, Claudius<\/i><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A saga of the first dynasty of Roman emperors in all of their back-biting and conniving glory, this 1930s novel inspired a soapy 1970s mini-series that set Derek Jacobi up for a lifetime of wearing togas on the silver screen (I once asked AI to generate a picture of a bust of a Roman senator and it made one with his face). Extrapolating from salacious and rumor-filled ancient sources, the novel offers an inside scoop into the machinations of the first Roman imperial family. It paints a picture of Livia, the wife of Augustus, as someone not to be trifled with, unless you like your figs with a dash of poison. A huge bestseller over the decades, it remains in print. Graves wrote another novel about a different famous family of the first century CE\u2014it\u2019s called <i>King Jesus <\/i>(good, but not as good as <i>I, Claudius,<\/i> imho).<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"275171\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/eight-books-to-read-if-youre-still-thinking-about-the-roman-empire\/tristia\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/tristia.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"600,972\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;1&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"tristia\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/tristia.jpg\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-275171 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/tristia-185x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"185\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/tristia-185x300.jpg 185w, https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/tristia-37x60.jpg 37w, https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/tristia-31x50.jpg 31w, https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/tristia.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 185px) 100vw, 185px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Ovid, <a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/p\/books\/sorrows-of-an-exile-tristia\/c61e6072b927bb41?ean=9780198147923&amp;bkshp-astro=t\"><i>Tristia<\/i><\/a> (\u201cSorrows\u201d)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>No one is sure what the Roman poet Ovid did to tick off Augustus, but whatever it was, it got him exiled to a seaside town in Romania for the rest of his life. Although a nice enough place, it wasn\u2019t Rome, and Ovid never stopped complaining about it or trying to get the emperor to let him come home. The <i>Tristia <\/i>is a series of poems describing his exile and making a case for forgiveness. It even includes a poem that addresses the book itself, telling it how to present itself when it gets to Rome. Ovid\u2019s <i>Tristia <\/i>is less famous than his magnum opus, the <i>Metamorphoses, <\/i>but if you want to know what it is like to be a once-famous artist who gets on the wrong side of an autocrat, this is for you.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\" style=\"text-align: center;\">__________________________________<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"275172\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/eight-books-to-read-if-youre-still-thinking-about-the-roman-empire\/lessons-from-a-lost-republic\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/lessons-from-a-lost-republic.jpeg\" data-orig-size=\"600,900\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"lessons from a lost republic\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/lessons-from-a-lost-republic.jpeg\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-275172 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/lessons-from-a-lost-republic-200x300.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/lessons-from-a-lost-republic-200x300.jpeg 200w, https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/lessons-from-a-lost-republic-40x60.jpeg 40w, https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/lessons-from-a-lost-republic-33x50.jpeg 33w, https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/lessons-from-a-lost-republic.jpeg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/p\/books\/lessons-from-a-lost-republic-what-ancient-rome-can-teach-us-about-this-american-moment-michelle-berenfeld\/9faec7f48cb2d30a?ean=9781966302216&amp;next=t&amp;next=thttps:\/\/bookshop.org\/p\/books\/lessons-from-a-lost-republic-what-ancient-rome-can-teach-us-about-this-american-moment-michelle-berenfeld\/9faec7f48cb2d30a?ean=9781966302216&amp;next=t&amp;next=t\">Lessons from a Lost Republic<\/a> <em>by<\/em> <em>Michelle Berenfeld is available from Spiegel and Grau.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Now that our president is minting gold coins with his face on them, building a triumphal arch, and sponsoring blood sport in the capital, it seems like a good time to read up on ancient Rome. That\u2019s what I was<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31472,"featured_media":275174,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,43101,43092,43135],"tags":[24942,74728,6092,111550,111552,111553,5897,37216,29251,28003,111551,4165,2466],"class_list":["post-275164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-history","category-newsandculture","category-readinglists","tag-augustus","tag-gertrude-and-claudius","tag-john-williams","tag-lavinia","tag-lessons-from-a-lost-republic","tag-michelle-berenfeld","tag-ovid","tag-robert-graves","tag-spiegel-and-grau","tag-the-aeneid","tag-tristia-sorrows","tag-ursula-k-le-guin","tag-virgil"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-19A8","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/ancient-rome.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31472"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":274789,"date":"2026-08-12T04:54:49","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T08:54:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=274789"},"modified":"2026-08-10T21:55:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T01:55:08","slug":"mia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/mia\/","title":{"rendered":"Mia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When I first met her, I was happier than I\u2019d ever been. I\u2019d finally triumphed over the mother who abandoned me, my whole ugly childhood. I had everything I\u2019d ever wanted: a husband who adored me, two beautiful children, a stunning glass house high on a hill. More than anything, I had this year in Mexico, rising before me like a stark white sail.<\/p>\n<p>A few days before leaving the States, Tom and I had thrown a party. Three couples we knew and their children. Because we\u2019d rented out our house furnished, it was as I always kept it, full of flowers I\u2019d cut from the garden, stacks of art books and polished silver dishes and leather trays holding keys. On every surface, a curated clutter, as if we were leaving in a rush for nothing more than a long weekend.<\/p>\n<p>After the meal, we sat amid empty platters and wine bottles, talking about the country\u2019s problems, how envied Tom and I were for getting out. It was a time, much like the current one, in which it was almost compulsory to express disillusionment, a kind of resigned despair. Leaving was something our friends had floated more than once\u2014first in reaction to the Iraq war, then the election. \u201cI\u2019m moving to Canada,\u201d someone would say at a dinner party. \u201cNo, I\u2019m serious. I actually spent an hour looking through the Canadian immigration website.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Inevitably one of the children would ask in their tiny voice, \u201cAre we really going, Daddy?\u201d and the speaker\u2019s fierce resolve would crumble. \u201cIf only we could.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Not that it was our ideology that was taking us to Mexico; in a way, it was the opposite. Tom, an architect, had been asked to oversee the construction of an elaborate community aimed at wealthy Mexican and American retirees. Toward the end of the evening, when we were well into our drinks and sharing stories and laughing, Tom told everyone what had happened the night before; someone had rifled through our unlocked car. He felt violated, he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>Really<\/em>, violated?\u201d I scoffed, gesturing to the dishes stacked everywhere, the empty bottles of wine, like: <em>What do we care? Look at all we <\/em><em>have;<\/em> <em>it\u2019s<\/em> <em>obnoxious.<\/em> \u201cSo they took a few dollars in change,\u201d I laughed, \u201cso what? I just hope it was enough to get a beer or whatever, a bottle of mouthwash.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMouthwash!\u201d someone barked out amid a ripple of laughter.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd what about the fact it\u2019s wrong?\u201d Tom cut in, in his pedantic way, a way I couldn\u2019t help feeling dampened everyone\u2019s joy. \u201cWhat about it?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt doesn\u2019t upset you, that we were robbed?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNot really.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWow. Okay, then.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I sensed people becoming embarrassed. It was silly to me, their unease. If Tom and I argued, it was only because we were so close, like one person split in half. Disagreements like this were just the sparking of our passionate connection.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShould we maybe get some air?\u201d my neighbor Jessica asked, touching my arm with that fatuous look of concern so many women have mastered.<\/p>\n<p>When we stepped outside, the children were running along darkened lawns scattered here and there with signs protesting the war, little shadowy figures rushing past. With a stab of love, I saw my son whooping and pumping his fists as Jessica\u2019s twin daughters chased him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI can\u2019t stand it,\u201d Jessica said. \u201cThey\u2019re all going to miss this so much!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It was only a year, I consoled her; we\u2019d be back before she knew it. In truth, though, I was already indi,erent to her, to everything. My house, my things. I\u2019d learned this in girlhood, trailing my mother from town to town after she left my father, in and out of other relationships, our fortunes synchronously rising and falling. Rather than attachment, I had learned to cultivate a reckless joy in our inevitable leaving, the opportunity to remake myself, the defensive scorn of seeing people and places as disposable: <em>I never liked them anyway.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\u201cStill\u2014a year! Poor Mavis and Etta, they\u2019ll be miserable without Henry.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Mavis and Etta<\/em>, I thought, what names for two little white girls in eighty-dollar shoes; what could girls like that possibly know of misery? We had reached the end of the block and, without speaking, turned around. These sad conventions; these American ways of being, pacing to the end of a block and back like hamsters. <em>Soon<\/em> <em>it<\/em> <em>will<\/em> <em>all<\/em> <em>be<\/em> <em>different<\/em>, I told myself. <em>Soon everything will be new.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>And how I loved Mexico! From the beginning. I loved the freedom of it, driving around with no seat belts the way all the locals did, Ida and Henry straining through the open windows, their mouths wide with delight. I loved walking them to school in their tidy plaid uniforms, past makeshift shrines where women knelt and crossed themselves, through four-hundred-year-old squares with their sounds of pigeons lifting at once like a flurry of slapping rags, their church bells ringing nonsensically, fallen out of time.<\/p>\n<p>After dropping them o,, I\u2019d wander the vast covered market buying the things Mar\u00eda needed for the afternoon meal. The <em>tortiller\u00eda<\/em>. The produce seller\u2019s stand, with its tall pyramids of shining fruits. The poultry store, with its bright stench of blood and bleach. At noon, I picked up Henry, waiting with the other mothers on a stone bench beneath a huge old pepper tree for the kindergarteners to be brought out. Ida, who was in second grade, would be done with the older children at two o\u2019clock. One afternoon, as I sat waiting for Ida, one of the younger-looking mothers arrived having just bobbed her hair. It made a stir as she strode through the gate, the other women springing forward to touch it, test its weight, its bounce, while she turned her head from side to side loudly criticizing herself\u2014it was too short, wasn\u2019t it? It was ugly! <em>No<\/em>, they rebuked her, <em>don\u2019t<\/em> <em>say<\/em> <em>that!<\/em> <em>It\u2019s<\/em> <em>so<\/em> <em>pretty!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I smiled to myself. Somehow it didn\u2019t bother me as much here, their competition masquerading as concern. Maybe it was the novelty of seeing it in a different context, being an outsider. I let the conversation wash over me, inhaling the reek of the littered arroyo that trickled beside the school, the ubiquitous smell of roasting corn and dust and the lavender soap that the maids dumped into the street each afternoon when they had finished cleaning. I checked my watch\u2014nearly two o\u2019clock\u2014and lazily glanced up the hill beyond the wrought iron fencing.<\/p>\n<p>It was then I noticed her: an older woman standing outside the gate a short distance up the hill. She struck me immediately as an impressive person. Tall and exceedingly slender, she was dressed in a faintly androgynous way. Tailored button-up shirt, dark slacks, her cropped silver hair combed sleekly back. She held a cane in one hand, an over-sized black leather bag crumpled beneath her other arm. One foot poised above a milky stream of discarded mop water as if above a cool brook. In spite of everything, she possessed a very definite sort of elegance. She reminded me of an old greyhound rescued from the races, its body broken but its pedigree intact.<\/p>\n<p>Her face turned safely in profile, I continued to study her. I had a habit of casting around for older women I found appealing. A way of reckoning with the inevitability of aging, maybe. Or the fact I hadn\u2019t seen my mother since I was a girl. I suppose I did it with all women\u2014that brutal process of deciding in a few wordless seconds whether someone counted or didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>Into these chronic musings, she suddenly turned her face, and our eyes met. I tried to arrange my mouth into an expression of neutrality, as though I\u2019d only just noticed her, to which she smiled in a way I couldn\u2019t read. My cellphone was in my hand, a rudimentary !ip phone I rarely used. Self-consciously, I brought it to my face now, just as the school bell rang and the end-of-day pandemonium erupted, throngs of children flooding into the concrete breezeway, pushing and laughing. Right on cue, the ice cream man beyond the gate began calling out, his high voice cracking, \u201c<em>\u00a1Paletas<\/em> <em>y<\/em> <em>helados!<\/em> \u201d<\/p>\n<p>I spotted Ida among the fray, alone as usual. I could see her already speaking to me, a river of words that never paused, not even to reverse their flow when she reached me. I could put a cardboard cutout of myself in front of her, I often thought, and she wouldn\u2019t notice, so relentless was her focus on her own ideas.<\/p>\n<p>Outside the courtyard, I stole a glance over my shoulder. The older woman had gone. Just as well. I had to return to the market\u2014I\u2019d forgotten limes\u2014and as I continued on past our car, Ida seemed not to notice. She spoke fervently, touching her fingertips together in tense excitement. In this state, she would let me lead her anywhere, close at my side yet infinitely far away. I bought the limes at my usual produce stand, lingering for a moment to chat with the young seller. Then, as we were making our way out along a corridor that sold pottery, I suddenly caught sight of the woman from the hill.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIda, darling, hold on; can you wait here a moment?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I hurried after the woman\u2014to do what exactly? I had no idea. But I felt an almost primitive attraction to her. She had turned down another corridor. When I reached it, she was nowhere to be found, though, absorbed into the noisy thrumming of the market.<\/p>\n<p>I doubled back, only to discover that Ida, too, had vanished. I looked up and down, my panic mounting as people brushed past me obliviously, talking, laughing. I retraced my steps. She wasn\u2019t at the produce stand. I moved along the tables selling toys, ready to break into a run if only I\u2019d known where, everywhere seeing other mothers holding their own children\u2019s hands tightly. At an intersection crowded with plastic bins of flowers, I stopped, turning a slow circle as the claustrophobia of the market closed in on me, overwhelmed by my helplessness, my hampered Spanish, the limits of my belonging.<\/p>\n<p>It was only a few minutes. Soon enough, I found her in the very corridor where I\u2019d left her, crouching in concentration with several \u201cfairy things\u201d lined up on the concrete floor before her: tiny clay plates and pots, tiny straw brooms, tiny glass bottles, all of them handmade, smaller than a mouse might use. She seemed unaware of having been lost as I seized her shoulders in relief, kissing the fragrant crown of her head, her cheeks. Ida shook me off, maintaining her focus on the objects.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI need these for my project.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It was what she\u2019d been talking to me about, I realized. I glanced at my watch. We were late. \u201cMaybe tomorrow, my love.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>Please<\/em>,\u201d Ida pressed, staring up into my face.<\/p>\n<p>I relented. I smiled at her. Yes, she could have them. Only now she couldn\u2019t decide which she wanted. I tried to hurry her\u2014she could have all of them\u2014at which she bristled and seemed to begin the process again, setting her mouth stubbornly as I pleaded and tried to reason with her: Daddy would be home already; Mar\u00eda would be setting out the <em>comida<\/em>; we needed to bring her the limes.<\/p>\n<p>At last, she handed me three things. I paid. We hurried to the car, Ida clutching the paper bag with her treasures. Inching up the steep Cuesta, caught behind a gas truck, I reproached myself for losing her, buying things for her and not for Henry, the trivial amount of money I\u2019d spent and Tom\u2019s imagined disapproval at it. Somehow the small exchange had left me unaccountably frazzled, almost bereft. What did it say of me, of my weakness and need, that I had chased after this woman I didn\u2019t know?<\/p>\n<p>As I was parking the car, I tried to extract some small measure of gratitude from Ida. \u201cDo you like your new things, my love?\u201d I always called my children by those names\u2014<em>love<\/em>, <em>darling<\/em>, <em>sweetheart<\/em>, <em>angel<\/em>. When she nodded, I told her maybe it would be best if we didn\u2019t mention anything about the gift to Daddy or Henry.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\" style=\"text-align: center;\">__________________________________<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>From <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/132\/9781668227329\">Mia<\/a> <em>by Leslie Bazzett. Copyright \u00a9 2026, Leslie Bazzett. Reproduced by permission of Scribner, an imprint of Simon &amp; Schuster. All rights reserved.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I first met her, I was happier than I\u2019d ever been. I\u2019d finally triumphed over the mother who abandoned me, my whole ugly childhood. I had everything I\u2019d ever wanted: a husband who adored me, two beautiful children, a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":274790,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[25508,3,43074,43076,26764],"tags":[111414,111413,454],"class_list":["post-274789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-fiction","category-excerpts","category-fictionandpoetry","category-from-the-novel","category-novels","tag-leslie-bazzett","tag-mia","tag-scribner","story-type-daily-fiction"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s5rKFr-mia","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/9781668227329.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":275558,"date":"2026-08-12T04:01:01","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T08:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=275558"},"modified":"2026-08-12T07:23:37","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T11:23:37","slug":"kei-miller-on-yuval-noah-hararis-sapiens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/kei-miller-on-yuval-noah-hararis-sapiens\/","title":{"rendered":"Kei Miller on Yuval Noah Harari\u2019s <em>Sapiens<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel clear no-pb mb-20\">\n<div class=\"podcast-show\">\n<div class=\"pod-summary\">\n<p><em>The Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast features a series of conversations with past and present <a href=\"https:\/\/windhamcampbell.org\/\">Windham-Campbell Prize<\/a> winners about their favorite books and plays. Hosted by Michael Kelleher.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Prize Director Michael Kelleher talks with 2026 Windham-Campbell Prize for Nonfiction recipient Kei Miller about Yuval Noah Harari&#8217;s sprawling and sometimes controversial book <em>Sapiens <\/em>and about how humanity <em>is<\/em> fiction (and vice-versa).<\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"width: 100%; height: 200px; border: 0 none;\" src=\"https:\/\/art19.com\/shows\/17d50751-be27-4055-9722-4d602cd2bbf7\/episodes\/fb55eb5e-b9ce-4435-bb63-7d022d6246e5\/embed\" scrolling=\"no\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-popups allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Kei Miller<\/strong> is a Jamaican poet, essayist, and novelist, shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award and winner of the prestigious Forward poetry prize for his collection <em>The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion<\/em>. His most recent book is the essay collection <em>Things I Have Withheld<\/em>, out in 2021. His story collection <em>Fear of Stones<\/em> was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers\u2019 Prize for Best First Book, and his most recent novel, <em>Augustown<\/em> was a finalist for the PEN Open Book Award, and won the Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the Prix Les Afriques, and the Prix Carbet de la Cara\u00efbe et du Tout-Monde. In 2010, the Institute of Jamaica awarded him the Silver Musgrave medal for his contributions to Literature and in 2018 he was awarded the Anthony Sabga medal for Arts &amp; Letters. He has taught at the Universities of Glasgow, Royal Holloway and Exeter and, in 2019, he was the Ida Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor to the University of Iowa.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>The Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast<\/strong><\/em> is a program of The Windham-Campbell Prizes, which are administered by Yale University Library&#8217;s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.<\/p>\n<p><em>The Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast is a production of Literary Hub<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Hosted by Michael Kelleher<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Theme music by Dani Lencioni<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Produced and edited by Drew Broussard<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast features a series of conversations with past and present Windham-Campbell Prize winners about their favorite books and plays. Hosted by Michael Kelleher. Prize Director Michael Kelleher talks with 2026 Windham-Campbell Prize for Nonfiction recipient Kei Miller<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11395,"featured_media":275560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43071,43069,6,43072,43110,43070,87223],"tags":[26598,41410,87226,5089,91313,104614,1840,25133],"class_list":["post-275558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-craft-and-advice","category-craftandcriticism","category-features","category-in-conversation","category-lithubradio","category-literary-criticism","category-windham-campbell-prizes-podcast","tag-kei-miller","tag-lit-hub-radio","tag-michael-kelleher","tag-podcasts","tag-sapiens","tag-sapiens-a-brief-history-of-humankind","tag-windham-campbell-prizes","tag-yuval-noah-harari","story-type-windham-campbell-prizes"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-19Gu","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/banner-WCP7.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11395"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275558\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":275503,"date":"2026-08-11T15:06:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T19:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=275503"},"modified":"2026-08-12T05:21:27","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T09:21:27","slug":"a-wealthy-donor-to-my-university-just-silenced-one-of-the-worlds-leading-scholars-of-genocide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/a-wealthy-donor-to-my-university-just-silenced-one-of-the-worlds-leading-scholars-of-genocide\/","title":{"rendered":"A Wealthy Donor to My University Just Silenced One of the World\u2019s Leading Scholars of Genocide"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>July 2026 was the deadliest month of the last year for Palestinians. The Gaza Health Ministry reported that 152 Palestinians were murdered by Israel, bringing the official death toll in the American-backed Israeli genocide to more than 73,000 people in less than three years. <a href=\"https:\/\/news.un.org\/en\/story\/2026\/06\/1167790\">The UN reported in June that 20,000 of those people were children<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In spite of these horrific numbers, on August 1 the<i> Atlantic City Press <\/i>(my local paper) <a href=\"https:\/\/pressofatlanticcity.com\/news\/local\/education\/article_c09aa98d-bc71-4ebb-9f5a-0144def65723.html\">reported<\/a> that John F. Scarpa, a so-called \u201cmajor donor\u201d to Stockton University, where I have taught since 2010, had complained to Stockton\u2019s president, Joe Bertolino, that Stockton\u2019s webpage for its master\u2019s program in Holocaust and Genocide Studies contained \u201cmisinformation:\u201d \u201cThe\u2026 \u2018About the Program\u2019 page\u2026 states that \u2018Israel&#8217;s ongoing genocide in Gaza since October 2023 has killed, according to official figures, more than 70,000 Palestinians, including over 20,000 children, leaving almost the entire population of 2.3 million people forcibly displaced.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Scarpa\u2014who made his fortune in the cell phone and cable tv industries\u2014asserted that the genocide in Gaza is \u201ca matter of significant legal, political, and scholarly dispute,\u201d that the page\u2019s language about the Israeli genocide \u201cappears to be the personal views of one individual who has previously expressed similar positions and\u2026 should not be given a platform to spread opinion as fact.\u201d This last was a transparent dig at my colleague Raz Segal, the author of text in question, and one of the leading Holocaust and genocide scholars in the world, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/ng-interactive\/2026\/aug\/06\/professor-israel-gaza-university-of-minnesota\">who has been publicly harassed since calling the crisis in Gaza \u201ca textbook case of genocide\u201d in late October 2023<\/a>. As a result of Scarpa\u2019s letter, the <i>Press <\/i>reported, Stockton\u2019s University Relations and Marketing office would be \u201c\u2018reviewing the webpage and the concerns raised, including how content across different areas of the university is presented, attributed and reviewed.\u2019\u201d The following day, Stockton erased Raz\u2019s words from its website.<\/p>\n<p>*<\/p>\n<p>I thought the writing of this would be straightforward, but I\u2019m finding it hard. I initially wrote that \u201cleadership at Stockton removed Raz\u2019s words from its website,\u201d but for style purposes, changed the wording to \u201cStockton,\u201d as though a cluster of modern buildings standing in the Pine Barrens of southern New Jersey is a magical entity capable of making editorial changes on its own. This is the perennial problem of writing about an institution, but I want my reader to know who is responsible for this erasure of mass murder\u2014President Bertolino, Provost Palladino, the people in charge.<\/p>\n<p class=\"pullquote\">For two years we have watched as places like Harvard, Columbia, and Cornell caved to the Biden and Trump administrations\u2019 mafia-style demands.<\/p>\n<p>Provost Palladino sent a cookie-cutter email to those of us who had written in outrage at the removal of Raz\u2019s words. The email was a series of quasi-fascist corporate lies. Removing the language about Israel\u2019s genocide in Gaza from the webpage did not, the provost wrote, violate Raz\u2019s academic freedom, because academic freedom has nothing to do with \u201cpublic facing\u201d materials like the university website. It only applies to scholarship and the classroom. And anyway, he concluded, the university was already in the process of homogenizing its website, and although the master\u2019s program in Holocaust and Genocide Studies was not initially part of that redesign, this was a prudent opportunity to remove \u201cpersonal statements\u201d from the website.<\/p>\n<p>I wrote \u201che concluded,\u201d but here\u2019s the thing: when a university higher-up writes to you, you can\u2019t be sure who\u2019s behind the message. There is a labyrinth of assistants who could have done the job and, from what I can tell, the president (or someone on his behalf) uses artificial intelligence to directly compose or dramatically edit his emails to all of us, so the words we read from the man in charge of our livelihood (to say nothing of the moral and intellectual care of his thousands of students), are machine-generated. In other words, I don\u2019t want to put words in the provost\u2019s mouth, even if he did sign the email. It\u2019s words, in the end, that all of this is concerned with, language and its erasure, its subjectivity. In Scarpa\u2019s letter to President Bertolino (which I am sure he wrote; it\u2019s riddled with errors), he reminded Raz Segal \u201cthat official university communications should reflect scholarly objectivity\u2026\u201d.<\/p>\n<p><i>Objectivity<\/i> is the great byword of higher education, that by which you prove your capitalist credentials. Stand too close to something and you\u2019re said to be unable to see it clearly, even if the thing in question is blowing up in front of your face. <i>Show me the data, <\/i>says every university administrator I have ever met, but the data is somehow suddenly moot when it\u2019s 73,000 dead Palestinians and counting. As our local language squabble was unfolding last weekend, I listened to <a href=\"https:\/\/thecradle.co\/podcast?playing=319\">an interview with the British-Palestinian doctor Ghassan Abu-Sittah<\/a> about the concept of liberatory medicine. \u201cHow do you develop consciousness when your academic institutions are kowtowing to a colonial tune?\u201d he was asked. \u201cPeople are subjective,\u201d he replied. \u201cCapitalism works by objectifying the subject\u2026 and colonial wounding aims at objectifying the subjective by mutilating it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He meant this literally\u2014Palestinian bodies, Lebanese bodies, Iranian bodies as objects identified for destruction by American-made bombs\u2014but consciousness can also be mutilated. Anything I write about Gaza I write with an urgency and shame fueled by the constant reminder that I have little but language at my disposal. My body, my colleagues\u2019 bodies, those of our students are safe from mutilation, but our consciousness is available for the capitalist objectification Mr. Scarpa demands and to which our university kowtowed. If we name our sorrow about Gaza, we make ourselves into subjects and become the thing higher education abhors. But if we describe the genocide with objective facts, those facts are mutilated by the university in all its collective power, the place we thought of as our academic home.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have some questions about <i>YOUR NUMBERS,<\/i>\u201d a racist colleague repeatedly yelled at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aaup.org\/news\/muhlenberg-college-violated-academic-freedom-dismissing-finkelstein\">the anthropologist and pro-Palestine activist Maura Finkelstein<\/a> when she spoke at Stockton in the fall of 2024. Maura had quoted statistics from a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thelancet.com\/journals\/lancet\/article\/PIIS0140-6736(24)01169-3\/fulltext\"><i>Lancet <\/i>article about the death toll in Gaza<\/a>, one she had not written. The numbers were objectively not hers, and yet her insistence on saying them aloud and in great pain as a genocide unfolded in front of her eyes sapped them, in that moment, of objectivity and authority, of the academic authority and freedom which are the alleged foundations of the university where we have made our home. I could say we are homeless, then, those of us who insist on naming the genocide in Gaza publicly, no matter the consequences. But the same horror and shame that animates my public speech about Palestine refuses me the right to use the word <i>homeless <\/i>metaphorically since, as Raz Segal wrote in his statement, now erased from Stockton\u2019s website, \u201c2.3 million Gazans have been forcibly displaced,\u201d living in tents among the rubble of what was once their homes, freezing, drowning, and starving to death. And all I can do is write about it.<\/p>\n<p>Stockton\u2019s eager capitulation to John Scarpa\u2019s demands make the thing we already suspected objectively clear: it is not academic authority, but authoritarianism, that upholds Stockton University. For two years we have watched as places like Harvard, Columbia, and Cornell caved to the Biden and Trump administrations\u2019 mafia-style demands, thinking Stockton was somehow different. We know better, now. And we\u2019ll fight back, using all the facts and language and solidarity at our disposal. I have to believe we will win, but I would fight even with the certainty that we would lose. It\u2019s the least I can do from my safe little perch in America, where my language and my livelihood, but never my life, can be lost in this fight.<\/p>\n<p>And Free Palestine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>July 2026 was the deadliest month of the last year for Palestinians. The Gaza Health Ministry reported that 152 Palestinians were murdered by Israel, bringing the official death toll in the American-backed Israeli genocide to more than 73,000 people in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1793,"featured_media":275547,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,43095],"tags":[94766,29302,13600,8632,23022,111699,1210,111708,77552,23001],"class_list":["post-275503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-politics","tag-academic-freedom","tag-emily-van-duyne","tag-freedom-of-speech","tag-gaza","tag-higher-education","tag-john-scarpa","tag-palestine","tag-raz-segal","tag-stockton-university","tag-universities"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-19FB","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/gaza.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1793"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}]