The good souls at Longform.org have organized all of this year’s National Magazine Award winners.
And the NMA Winners Are…
NYRB in the NYPL
Exciting news — the New York Public Library has acquired the archives of The New York Review of Books. You could also check out Sam Allingham’s piece about his experience working in a library.
●
●
In A New York Epoch
Maria Popova investigates Teresa Carpenter's new anthology, New York Diaries: 1609 to 2009, and includes some wonderful excerpts and photographs.
●
●
Evelyn Waugh’s Brother Invented the Cocktail Party
“Unable to replicate the success of his first novel [The Loom of Youth],” writes Philip Quarles, “[Alec Waugh] did create a lasting impact by being credited with inventing the cocktail party when he shocked guests by serving, instead of afternoon tea, rum swizzles.”
●
●
Happy 110th Bloomsday! (1/2)
True James Joyce fans don't need to be reminded that today, June 16th, is the 110th Bloomsday--the day of Leopold Bloom's fictional wanderings-about-Dublin commemorated in the 732 pages of Ulysses. Though the most traditional way to celebrate Bloomsday may be to follow in his literal footsteps with your own tour of the city, as the Paris Review explains, there's more than one way to prove your love for Joyce even if you never read his book.
●
●
Calvino’s Other Invisible Cities
William Weaver, Italo Calvino’s longtime translator, writes about the pair’s “complex relationship,” their “consuming passion for words,” and the Cosmicomics author’s travels through “his invisible cities, cities of ideas, or perhaps ideas masquerading as cities.”
St. Crispin’s Day is Here Again
Today is St. Crispin’s Day, a day immortalized in Shakespeare’s Henry V when the title character rallied his British “band of brothers” to face their French adversaries. And according to Guy Patrick Cunningham, “there are lots of ways we can celebrate it.”
Outsourcing Tech Manufacture and the Cost of the Kindle
According to Steve Denning at Forbes, "the U.S. has lost or is on the verge of losing its ability to develop and manufacture a slew of high-tech products." He says the U.S. will never be able to manufacture a Kindle on its own soil. But if the environmental cost of producing just one e-reader, as VQR's Ted Genoways says, is "roughly the same as fifty books," why would anyone want to?
●
●