TODAY: In 1908, Robert Baden-Powell’s Scouting for Boys begins publication, eventually selling over 100 million copies over time.
- “Here is a book that says, I understand.” Javier Zamora on Marcelo Hernandez Castillo’s Children of the Land, and telling the hard stories of undocumented immigration. | Lit Hub
- “Please note that ‘a bonanza of incompetence’ can easily be shortened for blurb purposes to ‘A bonanza!’” Don’t worry—Bob Garfield has a plan for overhauling media literacy. | Lit Hub
- Yes, the American economy is rigged: Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn on tax codes, unequal education, and homegrown inequality. | Lit Hub Politics
- James Tate Hill recommends five great audiobooks about iconic musicians, just in time for the Grammys. | Lit Hub Audiobooks
- How, exactly, does neuroscience account for the way we see color? Riccardo Manzotti and Tim Parks debate the internalist view of consciousness. | Lit Hub Science
- “She would have to quietly surprise men with her reporting, cover politics without appearing political, advance in the journalistic ranks by not letting on that she wanted to.” On life as a female reporter at the turn of the century. | Lit Hub
- Isabel Allende’s A Long Petal of the Sea, Jeanine Cummins’ American Dirt, and Emma Copley Eisenberg’s The Third Rainbow Girl all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
- Raymond Fleischmann gives us some pointers for how to make historical fiction true to its time period, without making it stuffy. | CrimeReads
- Jim Lehrer, longtime PBS anchor, PBS NewsHour co-founder and author of three memoirs and 20 novels, died Thursday at 85. | PBS NewsHour
- In which Mary Norris, Comma Queen, unpacks milk (and its place at the impeachment trial). | The New Yorker
- “The harder you try to nail something down, the more it escapes.” Kyle Chayka on the many meanings of the word “minimalism.” | The Paris Review
- “I can still hear his voice, and I can remember his gestures.” On the friendship that became Bohumil Hrabal’s Letters to April. | The Wilson Quarterly
- Myriam Gurba on the ecstatic language of men’s misogynistic death threats. | Los Angeles Review of Books
- “The fear that individuals will surrender their ethical compasses to technology is a constant specter in Bradbury’s stories.” On the continuing relevance of The Illustrated Man. | JSTOR
- Kaitlyn Greenidge on new motherhood, work conferences, and other literary mothers. | The New York Times
Also on Lit Hub: On the rise of the Vietnamese noodle shop in Anchorage, Alaska • Ben Moon remembers his late friend Denali, a very good boy • Read a story from Alexander Weinstein’s collection Universal Love.
