Lit Hub Weekly: September 14 - 18, 2020

• The countess who wanted to be the most photographed woman in the world: Nathalie Léger on Virginia Oldoïni of Castiglione. | Lit Hub History
• “A fact is a wan thing without interpretation. The same facts are often marshaled to prove wholly contradictory arguments.” Siri Hustvedt on how easily we’ve been mesmerized by Trump’s norm-breaking rhetoric. | Lit Hub Politics
• “A good court—maybe this is the definition of a good court—helps you witness the catalog, the encyclopedia, of tendernesses it is.” Ross Gay has written possibly the definitive ode to the pick-up basketball court. | Lit Hub Sports
• Back to school reading for students of all ages: it’s our fall 2020 book preview! | Lit Hub Reading Lists
• Hari Kunzru on Ayad Akhtar’s Homeland Elegies, Julian Lucas on Hervé Guibert’s To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life, and more of the Reviews You Need to Read. | Book Marks
• Larry Harnisch has spent 24 years researching the Dahlia case and dispelling myths.Has he finally found an answer of his own? | CrimeReads
• “Lorde was not constrained by boundaries. She combined the personal and the political, the spiritual and the secular.” Roxane Gay on the legacy of Audre Lorde. | The Paris Review
• John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan, is leaving the company “after months of turmoil” there. | The New York Times
• “In an alternate universe, we could be living with a meticulous tool for finding books we would love to read, from a much wider diversity of authors. Instead we have a book tracker that, for many people, barely works.” Why Goodreads is bad for books (and readers), and where to go instead. | New Statesman
• “I felt like I belonged there, but of course I didn’t, and I just needed to be reminded of that to see it completely differently.” Read a profile of Rumaan Alam. | Vulture
• An oral history of the first National Book Festival. | The Washington Post
• Here’s how publishers based in the West are responding to a difficult, destructive fire season. | Publishers Weekly
• The Justice Department issued a subpoena to Simon & Schuster to investigate whether John Bolton mishandled classified information while writing The Room Where It Happened. | CNBC
• “I have some anarchist instinct, some righteous impulse toward disorder.” Alexandra Schwartz profiles Ayad Akhtar. | The New Yorker
• “It’s one thing to lie to yourself, but it’s another thing to lie to yourself in a way that makes a system of inequality run more smoothly.” Eula Biss talks about race, class, and self-deception. | The Nation
• “My thinking now: this year has said no over and over, so I’m saying yes as often as I can.” Maggie Smith on finding beauty in a broken world. | The Guardian
• Hari Kunzru on whiteness and its ability to “take on a transhistorical, even transcendental quality, naming something more like a spiritual condition, a fallen state that is paradoxically also one of culpable innocence.” | New York Review of Books
• Is Walt Whitman, exemplary poet of a politically divided US, once again the writer of our moment? | The New York Times
• Bibliographies, scientific treatises, memoirs: What were the most popular books in the Ottoman Empire? | Daily Sabah
• W. Scott Olsen fondly remembers the mail-order book clubs of his childhood. | Minneapolis Star Tribune
• Three designers on revamping the covers for George Orwell’s classic novels. | SPINE

Also on Lit Hub:

Walter Mosley on storytelling, writing advice, and Winnie the Pooh • What draws libertarians to New Hampshire? • Lan Cao on the beginning of her American life • In a family of readers, packing up my late father’s library was hardest of allLara Ehrlich on what becoming a mermaid taught me about being a modern woman • A conversation between Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum and Karen Russell • In case you need reminding, a book is not a baby • David Nasaw on the search for a home for the last refugees of World War II • Sharon Salzberg on the books that brought her closer to mindfulness • Alex Ross on Wagner’s complicated influence on American culture • Eva Nour on the writer’s view of the Syrian Regime • Anne Posten on what it’s like to fall hard for a text • Spending a night alone in Mount Everest’s death zone • Mary Rizzo considers Baltimore on the small screen • Omari Weekes and Elias Rodriques on reading Randall Kenan • Alane Mason on the joy of editing Randall Kenan • Ashley Dawson on the endless commoditizing of American energy • Claudia Castro Luna on Seattle’s season of peaceful protest • Lincoln Michel proposes a new way to think about fictional worlds • Peter Balakian on the party of Lincoln’s “Big Government” origins • How a 1960s sci-fi fable expanded the meaning of Cuban pilgrimages • On the time Jimi Hendrix took the UK by storm • Erica Barnett on the books that helped her in recovery • Sophia Chang on entering the Wu-Tang Clan’s inner circle • Kailyn McCord wonders what serenity in an apocalypse might look like • Playwright Dan O’Brien knows that every family is unhappy in its own way: • Daniel Yergin on the 21st-century energy economy • Can America’s governors save our system of democracy? • Angela Chen on rethinking how we talk about love • Robert Michael Pyle on land ethics in the 21st century

Best of Book Marks:

New on CrimeReads:

Agatha Christie and the art of opening a mystery novel • Lisa Levy recommends five psychological thrillers to read this September • Ben Macintyre on a legendary spy and his unusual recruitment strategy in 1930s Shanghai • “How is it all these convenient things happen in novels?” Curtis Evans on the delightful marginalia of an exasperated Victorian reader • Why Lee Child edited a book about nicotine • Wendy Walker on eight great books about women who disappear • Micah Nemerever looks at five novels about destructive romantic friendships • Michael Gonzales on the art and life of comic book visionary Jeffrey Catherine Jones • Callie Hutton draws a thread between past and present with historical fiction • There is no crime fiction without politics, from Vanessa Lillie