TODAY: In 1802, Alexander Dumas is born.
- “Escape, memorialization, independence, recklessness, empathy, self-definition, imagination, leadership.” Rachel Cohen on Jane Austen’s politics of walking. | Lit Hub
- Historian Alan Taylor wonders whether Thomas Jefferson was a hero or villain… (Both, and neither.) | Lit Hub History
- Age of Consent author Amanda Brainerd tackles writer’s block with a vigorous walk, writes by dictation while commuting, and can’t imagine her life without early Bowie. | Lit Hub
- Poonam Chawla talks to Lindsey Tramuta about tourism, cooking, and raising her boys in Paris. | Lit Hub Food
- “He might be considered Hawaii’s Robert Caro.” Julia Flynn Siler on the citizen-scholar who led the hunt for Queen Lili’uokalani’s lost diaries. | Lit Hub History
- Will Cathcart remembers Chris Dickey, writer, friend, and truly great editor. | Lit Hub
- L. Annette Binder on learning to decipher her father’s past in Nazi Germany, and the complexities of family history. | Lit Hub History
- “The practices of celebrity reporting, and celebrity media production more broadly, are now important to US politics and world events.” On the dangerous and untold story of paparazzi work. | Lit Hub
- Scientists and authors attempt to explain the unusual affinity between physics and crime fiction. From Lee Randall. | CrimeReads
- New titles from Maggie O’Farrell, Catherine Lacey, Emma Donoghue, and Adrian Tomine all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
- Need something to read? Check out this list of the 50 most impactful books by Black writers published in the last 50 years. | Essence
- “Reading Vipers—a book that roasts its readers, their moms, and the military for some three hundred pages—feels as patriotic as pantsing Ben Franklin.” Emily Harnett revisits Philip Wylie’s bestselling 1943 essay collection. | Lapham’s Quarterly
- What should contemporary readers do with Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage, which champions “compromisers on racial justice as exemplars of courage”? | The New Yorker
- “This is a crucial part of fandom, a willingness to treat the imagined as meaningful, the decision to eschew skepticism and engage earnestly.” Raven Leilani on a trip to Comic Con after leaving her faith. | Esquire
- Caroline Corcoran looks at domestic suspense, “mum noir” in the UK, and the dark side of motherhood in fiction. | Grazia
- In June, artists in Durham, NC painted murals in support of Black Lives Matter. Many were upset to find images of their work in a book about the nationwide protests without their permission. | News Observer
- “I have never experienced this level of support around Black women and girls.” Inside the surge in support to create a new Black-owned bookstore in Inglewood. | Los Angeles Times
Also on Lit Hub: Chiara Barzini at the end of quarantine in Italy • “mong kok, october 2019”: A poem by Xiao Yue Shan • “The Corridor”: A story by Ryan Eric Dull from the New England Review.
