Lit Hub Weekly: April 28 - May 2, 2025

• Charlotte Beradt on the psychological effects of totalitarianism and how Nazi Germany perfected the art of fear. | Lit Hub History
• Tobias Carroll explains what Elon Musk doesn’t understand about Iain M. Banks. | Lit Hub Criticism
• Sam Weller on Ray Bradbury’s underappreciated classic: “The Martian Chronicles is a serious book about serious human themes. It is science fiction as a reflection of modernity.” | Lit Hub Criticism
• Cutter Wood on Thomas Browne and the joys and possibilities of exploring the unknown. | Lit Hub Craft
• Mitchell S. Jackson reads Shakespeare for the first time in his 40s: “[E]ven in this dogged culture war—no, especially in this fierce war for the rule of white culture—I’m claiming old William of Stratford as mines, too.” | Esquire
• What does it take to write a cookbook? Jenn Sit, editorial director of cooking at Clarkson Potter, talks culinary inspiration and new food canons. | Eater
• “Kemp’s concentration camps literalize gender expectations as compulsory, inescapable structures in which people aren’t individuals but representatives of an ideal.” Arielle Isack considers the heteropessimism of Sophie Kemp’s fiction. | The Baffler
• Jill Lepore recommends 100 classic books for 100 days of the Trump administration. | The New Yorker
• Daniel Lavery wants to know what’s going on with book festivals and the power of storytelling. | The Chatner
• Maddalena Poli on why pre-modern Chinese literature is in. | Los Angeles Review of Books
• Francis Northwood looks at the problematic business of the energy fueling AI. | The Baffler
• Sadie Stein remembers Jane Gardam, who has died at 96. | The New York Times
• Feroz Rather talks to novelist and poet Aria Aber about language, dislocation, and excess. | Public Books
• Viet Thanh Nguyen discusses family history, otherness, and the first 100 days of the second Trump administration. | Democracy Now!
• “It is the daily, diaristic churn that gives her unloosed first novel the sense of a fully textured fictional world.” Anne Enright examines the relationship between Helen Garner’s fiction and her diaries. | London Review of Books
• “What’s undeniable is that 4chan helped form the content ecosystem as we know it.” Kyle Chayka on the life, death, and disastrous legacy of the infamous imageboard. | The New Yorker
• “Allowing re-creation of known stories by new authors gives these monsters an afterlife of their own, leaving lasting impacts on the genre for decades, or even centuries to come.” Olivia Pavao on the public domain as horror hero. | Public Books
• Gina Gagliano catches up with comics publishers four months after originally talking to them about the effects of Trump’s tariffs on their work. | The Comics Journal
• Zoe Dubno considers Shulamith Firestone’s Airless Spaces and how capitalism makes us all miserable. | The Nation

Also on Lit Hub:

Forrest Gander talks to Poets.org • Milo Todd on tracing and preserving trans history • Alok A. Khroana examines William Dalrymple’s The Golden Road • Read “Shots Fired on New Year’s Eve,” a poem by Ali Black • Harry Bliss and his close encounters with Sy Hersh • Resurrecting Murray Kempton, a forgotten American journalist • Reimagining movies as vintage book covers • Recovering World War II’s stolen and looted artworks • Nin Andrews on writing a memoir about her father • Shelby Van Pelt remembers her first writing class • Guadalupe Nettel on capturing the surreal in the day to day • Zoe Roth examines Charlotte Beradt’s The Third Reich of Dreams • The literary film and TV coming to streaming in May • April’s best reviewed books • Courtney Gustafson explores casual misogyny in animal rescue • These are April’s best book covers • Get ready for April paperbacks • How London’s Great Plague of 1666 paved the way for modern research • The most anticipated May audiobooks • My mean, rich, hot ex-friend is a mediocre literary darling and I hate it • Dive into the history of surf literature • 5 book reviews you need to read this week • The historical role of baseball in Black communities • Lauren Haddad sings the praises of Twin Peaks • Ancient Rome’s most famous emperors • On the Lit Hub Podcast: Leaving Twitter, publishing poetry, and talking about… men who read? • Ten new universe-expanding children’s books • New poetry collections are coming in May • On being both a parent and a memoirist • This month’s SFF brings stories of queer futures