Author: GR

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The Power—and Necessity—of Reading Dangerously

Authors are not infallible. Each great writer is the child of her or his age, certainly. But the miraculous aspect of great books is their ability to both reflect and transcend the prejudices of the author as well as their time and place. It is this quality that allows a young woman in twentieth-century Iran to read a Greek man named Aeschylus, who lived thousands of years ago, and to empathize with him. Reading does not necessarily lead to direct political action, but it fosters a mindset that questions and doubts; that is not content with the establishment or the established. Fiction arouses our curiosity, and it is this curiosity, this restlessness, this desire to know that makes both writing and reading so dangerous. Read more

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Shadowman: An Elusive Psycho Killer and the Birth of FBI Profiling

In this exceptional true crime account, Franscell (The Darkest Night) tells the fascinating story of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit’s early days and the very first psychological profile used to catch a killer … Franscell’s portrait of rural Montana will remind many of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, and the way he weaves together the threads of the different killings is spellbinding. This is a must for Mindhunter fans. Read more

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Good Riddance to Amazon’s Terrible Bookstores

Amazon Books was always awkwardly situated between the company’s pitiless approach to commerce—its all-consuming need to be a “disruptor” in everything that it does—and the necessities of old-fashioned retailing, particularly bookstores. It was also simultaneously a P.R. stunt—an attempt to put a human face on the grim smiley face that adorns the company’s boxes—and a weird experiment, an attempt to use physical retail stores to mine data about how customers shop in person. No one ever asked for it, the strategy never worked particularly well, and now the company is doing what it does with its many failed experiments: quickly washing its hands and moving on to the next attempt to gain market share. Read more

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The best books on Ukraine and Russia

Thousands of people have been killed since 2014 in the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, in a war that has been rife with disinformation, misleading narratives and false flag operations. Here Serhii Plokhy, Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard University, recommends books to better understand the conflict, from an introductory work by an eminent historian to the latest work of some of Ukraine’s leading novelists. Read more

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Out There by Kate Folk

…tightly constructed and spectacularly mind-bending stories that ingeniously pair everyday challenges and outlandish predicaments, ranging from hilarious to terrifying. Folk writes with unnerving matter-of-factness as she veers into Poe- and Shirley Jackson-like horror or turns to the poignantly fantastic in the mode of George Saunders or Kelly Link … Folk’s shocking, grim, funny, and tender stories deliver astringently incisive perceptions of human longing and contradictions. Read more

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Hell’s Half-Acre: The Untold Story of the Benders, a Serial Killer Family on the American Frontier

Drawing on a wealth of primary sources, historian Jonusas debuts with an impressive and deeply unsettling account of the Benders, a family of German immigrants who killed at least 10 people after they settled in Kansas’s Labette County in 1870 … Radiant prose enhances the page-turning narrative. The combination of true crime and a vivid depiction of frontier life earn this a spot on the shelf next to David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon. Read more

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