TODAY: In 1963, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois dies.
- “You were a sweet and powerful man, walking through the fire of your time.” Nikky Finney writes a letter to John Lewis. | Lit Hub Politics
- Sarah M. Broom looks back at the devastation of New Orleans East, 15 years after Hurricane Katrina. | Lit Hub History
- When Muhammad Ali first met the Black Prince of Harlem—also known as Drew “Bundini” Brown, one of boxing’s great hype men. | Lit Hub Biography
- Poetry by Eduardo C. Corral and Noah Falck. | Lit Hub Poetry
- “In their broad incoherence, The Protocols sound a lot like the conspiracy theories inundating our discourse now—and the president’s speeches.” Daniel Torday on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, 100 years later. | Lit Hub Politics
- The new seduction of an old literary crime classic: Eugen Bacon pays homage to Peter Temple’s Truth with criticism (and some interspersions of fiction). | Lit Hub Criticism
- Trump as Hiaasenian Florida Man, Beowulf for the social-media era, Parul Sehgal on Elena Ferrante’s new novel, and more of the Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks
- Five debut crime and mystery novels to check out this August. | CrimeReads
- “There is no industry standard for which books get fact checked . . . There is no industry standard for what it means for a book to be ‘fact checked.’ There is no industry standard for where the fact check should go in the production process of a book.” Emma Copely Eisenberg on the lack of standard fact-checking in nonfiction and why we all should care. | Esquire
- How Chekhov invented the modern short story. | New Statesman
- “It felt uncomfortable not doing anything to stop the president while he destroyed America. But as a senior White House official with family money and other job opportunities, my hands were tied.” Behold: a probably far-too-accurate theoretical query letter from a former Trump staffer. | McSweeney’s
- Nobel-prize winning Belarusian author Svetlana Alexievich called on Russia to help persuade President Alexander Lukashenko to negotiate. | Yahoo News
- “I’m not equipped nor interested in teaching anybody how to be anti-racist.” Brit Bennett on adapting her own work, Zoom fatigue, and storytelling. | Glamour
- In response to John Freeman’s call for a revitalized canon of California literature, readers responded with suggestions of books to include. | Alta
- 2020 will be remembered for a lot of disasters, but some good things too, like the surge of Black women who have topped bestseller lists. | Elle
Also on Lit Hub: On the brink of war: A view of North and South Korea in 1950 • An illustrator brings realism into Octavia Butler’s speculative fiction • Read an excerpt from Susan Abulhawa’s new novel Against the Loveless World.
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