Year: 2022

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How a Death-Row Inmate’s Embrace of Conservatism Led to His Release

In 1957, Edgar Smith, a 23-year-old former Marine who was both a husband and a new father, confessed to the bludgeoning murder of 15-year-old Vickie Zielinski in New Jersey. After deliberating for two hours, a jury convicted him. The judge sentenced him to death and he was sent to Trenton State Prison. What interests Weinman, who writes the Crime column for The New York Times Book Review, is not the murder but what transpired in its wake. Through a confluence of events, William F. Buckley Jr., the founder of National Review and one of the architects of the 20th-century conservative movement, learned that Smith was a fan of his publication. Flattered, Buckley began to mail the inmate the latest issues. These communications initiated a relationship that would add up to nine years and 1,500 pages of correspondence — and, ultimately, Smith’s release from prison. Read more

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The Huntington’s Chinese Garden will host an opera based on Lisa See’s bestselling book ‘On Gold Mountain

Filled with bamboo, pine and plum blossoms, the Chinese Garden at the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens is one of the city’s loveliest places to while away an afternoon. In May, the 15-acre space will break in a new outdoor performance area, the Terrace of Shared Delights, to stage a production of “On Gold Mountain,” an opera based on author Lisa See’s bestselling book about her Chinese American family’s immigrant experience in California. Read more

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‘Power of the Dog’ author Thomas Savage died in obscurity. It’s time to honor his work.

Jane Campion’s outstanding adaptation of Thomas Savage’s novel “The Power of the Dog” — which won three Golden Globe Awards and has been nominated for a dozen Oscars — finally spotlights a first-rate novelist who never received much recognition in his lifetime, or even well beyond it. Read more

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Toshio Mori endured internment camps and overcame discrimination to become the first Japanese American to publish a book of fiction

“Yokohama, California” remained out of print for 35 years before the University of Washington Press added it to their “Classics of Asian American Literature” and reprinted it in 1985. The book continues to be available through the publisher. Another edition was released in 2015. Read more

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Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age

This book’s playful title announces both its subject and its tone … This may sound like dry stuff, but the narrative both sparkles with geeky wit…and shines with an infectious enthusiasm … Duncan brings his chronicle into the digital present before closing with not one, but two indexes: a machine-generated one and a human-compiled one, by Paula Clarke Bain, member of the Society of Indexers, whose wit matches the author’s and underscores his passionate appreciation of the art … Always erudite, frequently funny, and often surprising—a treat for lovers of the book qua book. Read more

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‘Bloom County’ to Bring Opus, Bill the Cat and the Rest of the Comic Strip to Fox As an Animated Series

Ack! Bill the Cat, Opus and the rest of Berkeley Breathed’s “Bloom County” universe are heading to Fox. The comic strip, created and written by Berkeley Breathed, is being developed as an animated series at Fox, through its animation studio, Bento Box Entertainment, as well as Miramax, Spyglass Media Group and Project X Entertainment. Read more

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“Jawbone” by Mónica Ojeda

Interweaving pop culture references and horror concepts drawn from Herman Melville, H. P. Lovecraft, and anonymous “creepypastas,” Jawbone is an ominous, multivocal novel that explores the terror inherent in the pure potentiality of adolescence and the fine line between desire and fear. Read more

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