November 2019
Sold! Or Not
A few years ago I started collaborating with a client on her first book. When we signed the papers, in addition to including the fee structure and the schedule, I added one important stipulation: There is no guarantee that this book will sell.
Read MoreJessica Sequeira: The Fate of the Meadowlark
Since a few hours ago, when we wrote those short notes to each other, I’ve been to a meeting of the Failed Novelists Society. This was partly an attempt to advance a story...
Read MoreA History of Leprosy and Japan
Though surely unintentional on the part of the author, the timing of the book’s publication, the first English-language monograph on Japan’s history of leprosy, could not have been better.
Read MoreEd Simon: A Struggle in Edom
About a hundred years after that fateful day when the Augustinian monk Martin Luther apocryphally affixed his remonstrance to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral, and thus supposedly initiated the Reformation...
Read MoreOn the Perpetual Virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary
In January the Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio, suffered a minor scandal concerning the virtue of the Mother of God.
Read MoreM. Munro: Ethics and Andrea Long Chu
Andrea Long Chu’s Females is—already—many things to many people, including, as Bryony White notes, “an exercise in logic, not what they were expecting.”..
Read MoreKeith Doubt: Peter Handke in Serbia
If Handke bears witness on behalf of the people of Serbia, how does he do so? What is the self-consciousness Handke ascribes to the Serbian people?
Read MoreSilencing the Bomb
In Silencing the Bomb: One Scientist’s Quest to Halt Nuclear Testing, Lynn Sykes offers a fascinating look at the time and effort it took for states, during and after the Cold War, to agree...
Read MoreWill Warren Win?
The big story of the campaign so far has been the ascent of Elizabeth Warren. A reluctant and somewhat shaky candidate in 2012...
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The tea should be strong. For a pot holding a quart, if you are going to fill it nearly to the brim, six heaped teaspoons would be about right...
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The thing about new blooms is that they tend to bleed— / Those petals birthed / hugging close / that come warmer weather are tricked into jumping away...
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I spent a good part of my childhood at home staring outside my bedroom window, following the trail of planes approaching the nearby Paris airport in the sky from my banlieue. I envied the passengers...
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The tea should be strong. For a pot holding a quart, if you are going to fill it nearly to the brim, six heaped teaspoons would be about right...
Read More
The thing about new blooms is that they tend to bleed— / Those petals birthed / hugging close / that come warmer weather are tricked into jumping away...
Read More
I spent a good part of my childhood at home staring outside my bedroom window, following the trail of planes approaching the nearby Paris airport in the sky from my banlieue. I envied the passengers...
Read More