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Why used books make the best travel souvenirs

Stores that sell new books are pretty, clean and sell great swag. I love them. I take pictures of them. I spend eagerly on their tomes and tote bags … But for me, the true treasures are buried in the funky, sometimes-musty secondhand shops, where a great find is like kismet. Read more

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Ted Cruz criticized Ibram X. Kendi’s ‘Antiracist Baby.’ He may have just propelled the book to the top of the bestseller list.

As of early Saturday morning, the book by Kendi, a professor and the founding director of the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University, continued to hold a top spot in multiple categories, including the overall bestseller on the site. Read more

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USPS To Release Shel Silverstein Stamp

The U.S. Postal Service will honor author and illustrator Shel Silverstein with a Forever stamp featuring artwork from his book, “The Giving Tree.” The first-day-of-issue event will be held at the school Shel Silverstein attended, Chicago’s Darwin Elementary School. Read more

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Colm Toibin’s ‘The Magician’ wins Folio Prize for literature

The jury of three other writers — Tessa Hadley, William Atkins and Rachel Long — said they surprised themselves by reaching a unanimous decision. They said Toibin’s book “is such a capacious, generous, ambitious novel, taking in a great sweep of 20th century history yet rooted in the intimate detail of one man’s private life.” Read more

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Black Sunset: New Essential Horror Reads from the American West

Stories about the American West have always been rife with scares and horrors sure to delight and repulse even the most hardened of horror fans, from pulpy matinee fare like Billy the Kid Vs. Dracula to literary classics like Blood Meridian, but by taking what works and leaving what doesn’t, writers today are riding into the sunset with some of the most breathtaking and terrifying fiction in recent memory. Read more

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The Listeners: A History of Wiretapping in the United States

Georgetown University English professor Hochman (Savage Preservation) explores in this fascinating history how wiretapping by U.S. law enforcement agencies went from a “dirty business” to a “standard investigative tactic.” … Contending that today’s “regime of ubiquitous backdoor surveillance” wasn’t inevitable, Hochman notes a major shift in the late 1960s when civil rights protests and racial uprisings in the Watts neighborhood of L.A.; Newark, N.J.; and other U.S. cities sparked a conservative backlash that led to the implementation of “repressive law enforcement policies,” including wiretapping, aimed largely at communities of color … This is an essential and immersive look at “what happens when we sideline privacy concerns in the interest of profit motives and police imperatives.” Read more

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