Wherever I travel, it has long been my custom to check out the local secondhand bookstores. I carry a pocket flashlight for scanning dark shelves and shadowy alcoves, methodically pull out any hardback with a faded spine to verify the title, and never use a cellphone to compare prices with online listings. If I want a book, I’m not going to nickel-and-dime a brick-and-mortar shop, especially when so many of them are struggling. Read more
Author: GR
Sentenced by Algorithm
Is it fair for a judge to increase a defendant’s prison time on the basis of an algorithmic score that predicts the likelihood that he will commit future crimes? Many states now say yes, even when the algorithms they use for this purpose have a high error rate, a secret design, and a demonstrable racial bias. The former federal judge Katherine Forrest, in her short but incisive When Machines Can Be Judge, Jury, and Executioner, says this is both unfair and irrational. Read more
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Valeria Luiselli has won the world’s richest prize for a novel written in English.
Today at the opening of the International Literature Festival Dublin, Dublin’s Lord Mayor Hazel Chu announced that Valeria Luiselli has won the 2021 Dublin Literary Award for Lost Children Archive, her first English-language novel. At €100,000, the award is the world’s largest prize for a single novel published in English. Read more
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His book helped expose Tulsa’s massacre of Black citizens. Now he’s helping find their graves
“The Ground Breaking: An American City and Its Search for Justice” recounts the events that began May 31, 1921, but its main focus is on the century that followed: the long-lasting trauma; efforts to rebuild and to finally confront the past; and most recently the fight for reparations and the search for bodies. Read more
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Cuomo Set to Receive $5.1 Million From Pandemic Book Deal
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo was expected to earn more than $5 million from his book about leading New York during the coronavirus pandemic, according to figures released by his office on Monday, as investigators continued to look into his use of state resources to write and promote the book. Read more
John le Carré Fans Are Getting One More Novel
Viking plans to release “Silverview,” a spy novel set in an English seaside town, nearly a year after the famed writer’s death. Read more
How Humans Gained an ‘Extra Life’
Starting in the second half of the 19th century, the average life span began to climb rapidly, giving humans not just extra life, but an extra life. In rich countries, life expectancy at birth hit 40 by 1880, 50 by 1900, 60 by 1930, 70 by 1960, and 80 by 2010. The rest of the world is catching up. Global life expectancy in 2019 was 72.6 years, higher than that of any country, rich or poor, in 1950. People in the shortest-lived countries today will, on average, outlive those of your grandparents’ generation. Read more
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A New Brain Implant Translates Thoughts of Writing Into Text
In early experiments, a paralyzed man with implants in his premotor cortex typed 90 characters per minute—by envisioning he was writing by hand. Read more
Poet Carl Phillips wins $75,000 Jackson Prize
On Monday, Poets & Writers announced that the 61-year-old Phillips has won the Jackson Prize, which in previous years has gone to Elizabeth Alexander, Claudia Rankine and current U.S. poet laureate Joy Harjo, among others.
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Top author stirs anger with ‘too white’ history
Richard Cohen’s new book, which has reportedly been dropped by his US publisher despite extensive additions, is still set for British release next month. Read more
