TODAY: In 1898, German novelist Erich Maria Remarque, author of All Quiet on the Western Front, is born.
- “While lawmakers are doing the difficult work of declaring racism a public health emergency, have physicians done the work of labeling it a disease?” Dr. AC Lynch on the need for a diagnostic metric for racism. | Lit Hub Science
- “The marches and chants are ultimately for the purpose of guarding and defending our inner lives.” A letter from Vermont by Major Jackson. | Lit Hub
- The poet-publisher who scorned death by pursuing it: Ben Mazer on the wild and profligate life of Harry Crosby. | Lit Hub History
- Amy Poeppel can’t believe readers are still getting upset over f*cking swearing. | Lit Hub
- “All three orders today were for books about railways.” Shaun Bythell recounts his days in Scotland’s largest used bookstore. | Lit Hub
- “There is a solace to be found in how the narrators and protagonists of these stories refuse to see themselves in the wrong.” Jeffrey Zuckerman on translating the Hervé Guibert’s visceral autofictions. | Lit Hub
- Urban apiarist Andrew Coté searches for bee swarms in the heart of New York City. | Lit Hub Science
- Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Shirley Hazzard’s The Transit of Venus, Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities, and more rapid-fire book recs from Deborah Shapiro. | Book Marks
- “If King was the preacher, Baldwin was the poet, and he sought to account for his confusion by gathering up the pieces—of himself, of black folk—buried beneath the disaster that was the country.” On the history that James Baldwin wanted America to see. | The New Yorker
- Carlos Ruiz Zafón, beloved and bestselling author of The Shadow of the Wind, has died at age 55. | Reuters
- Ian Holm, the English actor best-known for his roles in Chariots of Fire, Alien and, of course, as Bilbo Baggins in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, has died at 88. | The Guardian
- “These Edwardian mores Forster was writing about, they were brought over to Singapore and just never died.” How Kevin Kwan built a career as an observer of wealth, class, and privilege. | The Atlantic
- Rafia Zakaria on the publishing industry’s allies of whiteness: “those who are invested in maintaining the architecture of white supremacy even as they pretend to deplore it.” | The Baffler
- “In so many ways, too much of U.S. history reads as a story of white men. This is about to change.” Nell Painter on the history of black cowboys. | The Paris Review
- Queer alternative publications of the 1970s had “grit and talent galore.” | JSTOR Daily
Also on Lit Hub: Benjamin Cheever imagines one last lunch with his father, John • Celebrating Yahya Hassan, poet and rebel, gone too soon • Read a story by Sean Bernard from the Gettysburg Review‘s Winter 2019 issue.
