Month: October 2024

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Adaptation of ‘Conclave’ by Robert Harris Is in Theaters Now

CONCLAVE follows one of the world’s most secretive and ancient events – selecting the new Pope. Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) is tasked with running this covert process after the unexpected death of the beloved Pope. Once the Catholic Church’s most powerful leaders have gathered from around the world and are locked together in the Vatican halls, Lawrence uncovers a trail of deep secrets left in the dead Pope’s wake, secrets which could shake the foundations of the Church. Watch trailer

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How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II

A genteel lot of librarians, academicians, historians, and researchers, the civilians recruited to form the Office of Strategic Services (precursor to the CIA) in the early days of WWII had more experience lurking in library stacks than skulking around the grimy back alleys of foreign capitals. And yet it was precisely this expertise working among ephemera and archives that made them so attractive to those tasked with forming an intelligence-gathering organization that could provide information critical to winning the war. Read more

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Kathleen DuVal Wins 2024 Cundill History Prize

The announcement was made at an event in Montreal on Oct. 30 by jury chair Rana Mitter. DuVal was named the winner for her book Native Nations: A Millenium in North America (Penguin Random House). The book is a 1,000-year history of North America. DuVal teaches early American and American Indian history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Read more

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How Dead Authors’ Characters Became the Hottest Property in Publishing

In recent decades, the industry has woken up to the fact that literary legacies can be big business, allowing well-loved characters to live on indefinitely. In the UK, books enter the public domain 70 years after the death of their author. Before that, control is in the hands of their descendants, or whoever they have appointed to look after their estate. They are the guardians of the late writer’s characters, aiming to keep an author relevant to modern readers, without diluting their brand. They can veto or approve projects such as spin-off books and screen adaptations. Read more

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‘American Scary: A History of Horror, from Salem to Stephen King and Beyond’

American history is kind of terrifying: Native American genocide, slavery and witch trials; the Civil War, the Great Depression and Vietnam; AIDS, 9/11 and COVID. As Jeremy Dauber writes at the start of his casually magisterial, endlessly erudite “American Scary,” “You can write America’s history by tracking the stories it tells itself to unsettle its dreams, rouse its anxieties, galvanize its actions.” He then does just that, analyzing nearly 400 years of scary literature, film, comic books, television, video games, urban legends and just about anything else that might haunt you on a sleepless night. Read more

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The MAD Files

Before MAD there were the funny papers, with their well-worn jokesters: Dagwood and Blondie, Archie and Jughead, Little Orphan Annie. The funnies were calculated to make you smile or (rarely) crack you up, but not to dangle you upside down and show you the sheer dimwitted lunacy of life itself. For that, comics reader, you had to wait for the advent of MAD, whose Usual Gang of Idiots poked smirking fun at cows both sacred and profane. Proudly unfurling its adolescent gibes, MAD was kin to wild card TV comedy like the Smothers Brothers and Laugh-In. Small visual doodads festooned its pages, and there were tiny, snide jokes strewn about like buried treasure. This was a device to make young readers pore over each panel repeatedly, while picking their noses and ignoring calls to come to the dinner table. MAD’s densely textured comic vibe inspired the Firesign Theatre, along with Dr. Demento, Monty Python, Second City, SNL, the Simpsons, the Onion, and on and on—a comic Valhalla. Read more

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