Lit Hub Daily: July 17, 2019

• Alt-right ideas have become “imaginable and utterable”; Alexandra Minna Stern looks at the pseudo-anthropologists who made it possible. | Lit Hub
• Read a poem by Margaret Atwood, with photographs by Owen Deutsch, from Bringing Back the Birds. | Lit Hub
• “It’s also our mission to express the sheer joy of scientific speculation”: On the fine (and difficult) art of science writing. | Lit Hub
• Crossing, and claiming, spaces: how contemporary poetry treats the old myths of the American railroad. | Lit Hub
• Look, smell, taste, observe, concentrate: a primer on tasting chocolate like a professional (seriously). | Lit Hub
• The Essential Colson Whitehead: a reading list for America’s most versatile storyteller. | Book Marks
• This week in Secrets of Book Critics: Sarah Neilson on Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and brilliant Bookstagram critics. | Book Marks
• “The producers of Miami Vice had pulled off the Florida dream: They told a lie that came true.” Craig Pittman on the bright colors, cool attitude, and transformative power of Miami Vice. | CrimeReads
• “The technological optimism of the Apollo programme seems shadowed with a darker hue”: Author Erica Wagner reflects on the political undercurrents of humankind’s journey to the moon. | New Statesman
• Textbook publisher Pearson is moving to a “digital first” model—in an attempt to have its textbooks “be much more like apps, professional software, or the gaming industry.” School is fun after all! | Publishers Weekly
• “I feel most comfortable in the fluid mapping of sexuality”: Ahead of the release of Find Me, the follow-up to Call Me By Your Name, read an interview with André Aciman on the writing process, unexpected success, and the projects he’s working on next. | The New Indian Express
• A step-by-step guide to the ultimate American Gods-themed cross-country road trip. | Syfy
• “What would happen to the global economy if all the women on the planet suddenly decided: I don’t care if you think I’m fuckable.” Laura Lippman on not dieting. | Longreads
• Because the Summer of Scam is eternal (and because writing is the greatest scam of all), here’s a story about a conman turned true crime writer. | The Atlantic
• “Together, they form a lifelong refusal of every kind of goose-stepping conformism.” An ode to the “aggressively odd” books of Georges Perec. | The New Yorker

Also on Lit Hub: On Otherppl, Steve Almond on writing with genuine interest • Oyinkan Braithwaite talks beauty, violence, and My Sister, the Serial Killer, on Reading Women • Mukoma Wa Ngugi on the poem that made him fall in love with words • Read a story from Chuck Klosterman’s collection Raised in Captivity.