At the national diary archive in Pieve Santo Stefano, Tuscany, no journal is ever turned away – whether typed, scrawled or written on a bedsheet. Read more
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Month: June 2022
UC San Diego plans to sell the ‘storybook’ home of Dr. Seuss
The sun-kissed home on Mount Soledad where the late Theodor Geisel gazed at the Pacific and composed most of his beloved series of Dr. Seuss children’s books will soon be put up for sale by its owner, UC San Diego … The property has four bedrooms and four bathrooms, according to Redfin, a real estate brokerage company, which estimates the property’s value at $5,811,846. Read more
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St. Paul poet wins 2022 International Griffin Poetry Prize
Douglas Kearney is a St. Paul poet and a University of Minnesota professor. He is the winner of the 2022 International Griffin Poetry Prize and $65,000 for his most recent poetry collection, “Sho.” Read more
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The Historians Saving America’s Pint-Sized Railroads
From Maine to Alaska, narrow gauge is all the rage, including one of the most historic, Pennsylvania’s East Broad Top. Read more
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Where the Sagebrush Grows
Most of Nevada’s land — almost 86 percent — is uninhabited by people, covered in sagebrush, and managed by the federal government. That leaves plenty of room for the imagination. Green corporations envision wind farms. Red politicians see a dumping grounds for the nation’s nuclear waste. Even for those who have driven one of those two-lane highways stretching across high desert, it is still easy to assume that there is nothing, and no one, out there. John M. Glionna sets out to prove the opposite in Outback Nevada: Real Stories from the Silver State… Read more
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New Video Game is Based on Poems of Emily Dickinson
Ever wanted to play a computer game based on the poems of Emily Dickinson? Well, now you can, with the release of EmilyBlaster, a 1980s-style game in which players must shoot words out of the sky to correctly recreate Dickinson’s verse. EmilyBlaster is a real-life version of the fictional game that a character makes in Gabrielle Zevin’s novel Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, out next month. Read more
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The Historian George Chauncey Wins the Kluge Humanities Prize
Chauncey, a professor of American history at Columbia, becomes the first scholar in L.G.B.T.Q. studies to receive the $500,000 award. Read more
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An Introduction to Stanislaw Lem, the Great Polish Sci-Fi Writer, by Jonathan Lethem
Who was Stanislaw Lem? The Polish science fiction writer, novelist, essayist, and polymath may best be known for his 1961 novel Solaris (adapted for the screen by Andrei Tarkosvky in 1972 and again by Steven Soderbergh in 2014). Lem’s science fiction appealed broadly outside of SF fandom, attracting the likes of John Updike, who called his stories “marvelous” and Lem a poet of “scientific terminology” for readers “whose hearts beat faster when the Scientific American arrives each month.” Updike’s characterization is but one version of Lem. There are several more, writes Jonathan Lethem in an essay for the London Review of Books, penned for Lem’s 100th anniversary – at least five different Lems with five different literary personalities. Read more
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The Best Travel Books of All Time, According to Authors
There are an astounding number of travel books out there. How to choose the best of the best? You can start by asking the experts. Read more
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Bitch by Lucy Cooke: A Joyous Debunking of Gender Stereotypes in Nature
From lemurs to spiders, this gleeful exploration of female sexuality in the animal world overturns a host of outdated assumptions. Read more
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