NYU students can take a 4-credit undergraduate course on Occupy Wall Street and America’s debt issues this spring. According to the university’s website, this year’s tuition costs start at $19,672.
Occupy a Classroom
In Defense of Quiet Books
“The best thing I ever do for my writing is to take a walk alone in the woods behind our house. Nothing else gets my writing juices flowing so well. And yes, I think that I absolutely need more quiet in our current fractured world.” For Poets & Writers, novelist Leesa Cross-Smith interviewed fellow writer Silas House about quiet books and the importance of nature in the writing process. Pair with: our own Emily St. John Mandel on the pleasures of quiet books.
Letter from a Pulitizer Juror
Michael Cunningham, who alongside Maureen Corrigan and Susan Larson sat on the jury of the Pulitzer Prize for for fiction, gives the clearest account yet of how the award process works and defends the three shortlisted titles. His letter is in two parts, he also addresses the function of judgment and begins to build a poetics of literary greatness.
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50th Anniversary of “Silent Spring”
The environmental movement is gearing up for 2012, with today being the fiftieth anniversary of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.
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Remembering Tomie dePaola
Naomi Fry reflects on celebrated children's writer and illustrator Tomie dePaola, the author of more than 270 works for children.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Mitchell, Hadley
It’s a quiet week for new books. David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, which famously became a blockbuster bestseller after being released as a paperback original, is now available in hardcover for the first time ever in the U.S., thanks to a new Modern Library Edition. Short story master Tessa Hadley has a new collection out, Married Love, (as a paperback original, coincidentally).
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Baldwin on the Bosphorus
“He combed through the sahaflar, the second-hand bookshops that line the streets around the Grand Bazaar, their dusty wares stacked on haphazard tables. He sat by the New Mosque, drinking tea out of tulip-shaped cups, playing backgammon, and watching the fishermen’s wooden boats launch into the dirty waters of the Golden Horn.” For Public Books, Suzy Hansen writes about James Baldwin‘s less-well-documented time in Istanbul. Pair with this piece from our pages about the famed author, race, and fatherhood.