Lit Hub Daily: June 19, 2018

• When the president liked to read: a brief history of Barack Obama’s recommended reading lists (oh look, Reinhold Niebuhr!). | Lit Hub
• And while we’re looking back: on Orwell, Metropolis, and the “future shock” of David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs. | Lit Hub
• Rebecca Makkai: as hard as it may be, we have a responsibility to write across difference. | Lit Hub
• One town among many: The all-too human cost of Appalachia’s fracking boom. | Lit Hub
• Murder on the Left Bank author Cara Black shares 5 books that reveal the many different sides of Paris. | Book Marks
• “This is a good reminder that achieving gender parity is not a one-time goal.” The 2017 VIDA count is here. | VIDA
• “Since when has one generation ever doubted and pitied the next so much that it decides not to burden them with the full package of the English language?” Geraldine McCaughrean against the dumbing down of children’s books. | The Guardian
• “At 520 pages, you can hollow it out and keep drugs in it and no one will ever find them.” J.W. McCormack on the emptiness at the heart of The President is Missing. | The Baffler
• Through these maps, one sees that imagination and lively intelligence at work: On the work of Emma Willard, America’s first female mapmaker. | The Paris Review
• What happens when your tenant won’t stop renovating your house? | Lit Hub
• Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad tells a new story of the war in Iraq. | Lit Hub
• “He took dumb shit—The Real World, the Lakers-Celtics rivalry, semi-incoherent Tom Cruise passion project Vanilla Sky—seriously.” Looking back at Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, 15 years later. | The Outline
• From learning morse code to buying a dog, 9 writers and students share their most dramatic procrastination stories. | The Cut

Also on Literary Hub: Dear Book Therapist: How do I survive my C- marriage? · New poetry by Terrance Hayes, from American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin · Read from Edouard Louis’s international hit, History of Violence.