Mikhail Gorbachev is calling for an annulment of the recent Moscow elections because he’s concerned about “falsifications and rigging.” For your part, you can join the Stateside movement to echo Mr. Gorbachev’s call. Elsewhere, the Russian Socialist Movement is equally outraged. n+1 editor Keith Gessen has also translated some of the local protests.
Russia Debriefing
Lots of Chutzpah
Recommended Reading: Here’s some helpful advice we all could use — how to raise a mensch: “Less obvious but equally central values that Marjorie Ingall highlights include having a healthy distrust of authority. Jews come from a vertiginously long tradition of ‘questioning, yammering, challenging and disputing,’ she writes. ‘The Talmud, the compendium of Jewish law, is pretty much a bunch of dudes contradicting one another. Each page is a big box of text in the middle, and wrapped around it like a frame is lots of ‘Wait, you think what?’ '”
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Your Words Here
For years, one of the best ways to make a living as a writer (if you didn’t want to go into academia) was to become an ad copywriter. They heyday of print was flush with opportunities to make bank off billboards and publications. At The Paris Review Daily, Dan Piepenbring looks back on the ad copy of Fay Weldon, who gave the UK, among other things, the slogan “Vodka makes you drunker quicker.” (Related: Hope Mills on working for a creative agency.)
Wikileaks, Bookshelf Voyeur
Quartz has a roundup of the books Hillary Clinton borrowed from the State Department library during her time as Secretary of State, including a memoir, poetry, and a lot of non-fiction. Pair with our piece about what private libraries reveal about their readers.
The Last Samurai
Recommended Reading: On Helen DeWitt’s novel The Last Samurai and how it cultivates ambition in its readers.
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