Hardback books are highly profitable. Publishers reckon they can sell a hardback for twice (or more) the price of a paperback, but a hardback doesn’t cost nearly twice as much to produce.
Tags: Bookseller, booksellers, bookstores, hard-back books, Phillip Jones, publishers, The Guardian
One of the seminal events in America’s long involvement in Vietnam occurred 50 years ago this past week. CBS newscaster Walter Cronkite — often called “the most trusted man in America” — narrated a prime-time documentary that called into question the American government’s rosy predictions about the war’s progress. Cronkite did not come out against the war. Rather, he said:
Tags: Chandos portrait., Dec. 7 1941, Eleanor Roosevelt, First Family of Radio, Franklin Roosevelt, Hot Stove League, MacBeth, Mark Bowden, New York Times, portraits of Shakespeare, radio, Samuel Johnson, The Guardian, Vietnam, Walter Cronkite, watercolor, Wesbster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, William Shakespeare
At no time did Cronkite express opposition to the war. He merely described what he saw and what people on the ground had said to him.
Tags: CBS, Mark Bowden, New York Times, Vietnam, Walter Cronkite
Dictionaries are marvels of any language. But English has resisted the orderly cataloguing that has been routine for many other tongues. Early lexicographers believed they could impose some necessary order on the language by setting down spellings and definitions and making them permanent. But the language quickly showed them who was boss.
Tags: dictionaries, dictionary, James Boswell, Oxford English Dictionary, Samuel Johnson, The Guardian
A portrait of Jacqueline Bouvier Lee, a.k.a. Jackie Kennedy, depicting her as a teenager, has appeared in a Long Island art gallery and has sparked a federal lawsuit brought by some of her relatives. The relatives say it is stolen. The art gallery owner says it is not and that he has doubts that the • Read More »
Tags: Big Edie, Edith Beale, Grey Gardens, J. Randy Taraborrelli, Jackie Kennedy, Jacqueline Bouvier Lee, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassi, Janet Auchincloss, John Kennedy, Laura Thompson, Lee Radziwill, Little Edie, New York Times, painting of 19-year-old Jackie Kennedy, portrait of Jackie Kennedy, Terry Wallace, Wallace Gallery
By their ninth year in the White House, the Roosevelts had become masters of the medium of radio. Franklin had a soft but strong modulating voice. His was a natural. He sounded like your favorite uncle: serious, cheerful, informed and confident. Eleanor, as usual, had to work harder and longer. She did that and became an important voice for the American people.
Tags: 1941, December 7, Eleanor Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, radio
The “Four Horsemen” became part of the legend of Notre Dame football, and publicists at the University placed the four footballers on four horses for a famous photograph. And that photograph was turned into a postage stamp more than 50 years later.
Tags: Army, Damon Runyon, Four Horsemen, Grantland Rice, Notre Dame, Red Smith, Ring Lardner, Shirley Povich
Because Leonardo da Vinci kept a vast quantity of journals, we have a good idea about how his mind worked, what he was thinking about, and what he saw. With William Shakespeare, we have no such record. And William Shakespear is the reason we have the English language as it is today.
Tags: Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Claude Monet, Dennis McCarthy, George North, Isaac Butler, June Schleuter, Richard III, Slate.com, William Shakespeare
I don’t usually venture into the realms of food and its preparation (above my pay grade, I am told), but I thought this was interesting. On the British Broadcasting Corporation site a couple of weeks ago was a listing of the 100 most nutritious foods based on research done by scientists and compiled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The listing • Read More »
That’s what school officials in Duluth, Minnesota (and a few other places, unfortunately) would have you believe. The school system in Duluth is the latest to remove To Kill a Mockingbird and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the required reading list for ninth graders. The reason they give: the language used in these books • Read More »
Tags: Anne Frank, Duluth, Harper Lee, Mark Twain, Stephen King, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (3,317) on Friday, Feb. 9, 2018. Hi, This has been The Week of Interesting Things for me. Most of my weeks could take that moniker, but this one seemed especially full. I try to put a lot of interesting things I find into the newsletter, but I • Read More »
Tags: A Word a Day, alphabet, Cades Cove, crimes against English, Daniel Moore, First Amendment, football, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Langston Hughes, Leonardo da Vinci, Leonardo's journals, lost letters, Mt. Vesuvius, Pliny the Younger, redundancy, University of Alabama, Walter Isaacson, watercolor
Maria Popova, the brain behind BrainPickings.com — a newsletter you should subscribe to — has written another tribute to the ideas of the late science fiction novelist, Ursula Le Guin. Le Guin, as Popova points out, has important things to say about the function of storytelling. Here is part of it: “People wish to be • Read More »
Tags: art, BrainPickings.org, Maria Popova, storytelling, Talking on the Water, Ursula Le Guin, writing
My assumption about newsletter readers is that they are intelligent individuals, they are readers of good books, and they people who can handle the occasional challenge of learning something new.
Most of all, my assumption about newsletter readers is that they are my friends, even though I have not met all of them personally.
The mind of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) still fascinates observers even after 500 years. He was interested in so many things, and he observed the world with the mind and attitude of a scientist, mechanic, inventor, naturalist, and philosopher. He was also a writer. And an artist, of course. We know about Leonardo’s mind because • Read More »
Tags: Leonardo da Vinci, Leonardo's journals, Leonardo's mind, Walter Isaacson
Austin McConnell has put together this fun video about the symbols that were once part of the English alphabet but that we no longer use.
Tags: alphabet, Austin McConnell, letters dropped from the alphabet
The mountain exploded in August 79 AD. The ensuing lava flow engulfed two entire cities (Herculaneum and Pompeii) and smothered a third, Stabiae, with poisonous gas. The darkness that the clouds of dust and smoke created was, in the ones of an eyewitness, “. . . not the dark of a moonless or cloudy night, but as if the lamp had been put out in a closed room.”
Tags: eyewitness, Herculaneum, Mt. Vesuvius, Pliny the Elder, Pliny the Younger, Pompeii, Stabiae
Pliny the Younger is never listed as a journalist, but he should be. This extraordinary Roman (he lived from 61 to about 113 A.D.) was a lawyer, politician, author, poet, and government official whose stated goal was to be famous and to be remembered. He was, indeed, all of those things. We would remember Pliny • Read More »
Tags: early Christian practices, early Christianity, Mount Vesuvius, Pliny the Elder, Pliny the Elder beer, Pliny the Younger, Pliny the Younger beer, Roman administration, Roman Emporer Trajan, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, the first reference in ancient literature to Christians and Christianity made by a non-Jewish writer, women in the early Christian church
Whatever she was, she had a special talent for keeping readers in her grip, for making them see what they had never seen before, and for making them think about what she had written long after they had finished reading.
Tags: BrainPickings.org, Julie Phillips, Maria Popova, New Yorker, No Time to Spare, On the Media, spare time, The Dispossessed, The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula Le Guin
Parrish wisely makes the distinction between “news creators” and “journalists.” News creators simply want to gain your attention and hold it for as long as possible. He doesn’t spell it out, but I assume that in his view journalists report information that adds value to your life.
Tags: books, Brain Food, decision-making, Farnham Street, how we spend our time, journalism, read books that have stood the test of time, Read from publications that respect and value your time, Shane Parrish, stop reading the news
The place to look for the origins of the literary private eye is in 19th century France with the character of Eugene Francois Vidocq.
Tags: ballistics, crime-scene investigation, criminal identification, criminal investigative unit, Dashiell Hammett, Edgar Allan Poe, Eugene Francois Vidocq, finger-printing, Kinsey Millhone, Lew Archer, Mike Ashley, Murders at the Rue Morgue, Phillip Marlowe, private detective, private eye, Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, Sam Spade, Strand Magazine, Sue Grafton