Believe it or not, but the widely publicized murder case is not just a modern phenomenon. In 1761, Voltaire became obsessed with the case of Marc-Antoine Calas, a young man who was found dead in his home city of Toulouse. At The Paris Review Daily, a post on the Candide author’s impact on modern justice.
Droit ou l’Ordre
Tuesday New Release Day: Larsen; Hamid; Afrika; Stace; Lethem
Out this week: I Am Radar by Reif Larsen; Discontent and Its Civilizations by Mohsin Hamid; Bitter Eden by Tatamkhulu Afrika; Wonderkid by Wesley Stace; and Lucky Alan, a new story collection by Jonathan Lethem. For more on these and other new titles, check out our Great 2015 Book Preview.
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9 Big Books from Small Publishers
From The Huffington Post: nine big books from small presses.
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50% off at CUP
It’s time for Columbia University Press’s annual Spring Sale!
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Such Thing As a FAT MIND?
“Directly you are in motion you will feel quite helpless, and experience a sensation of being run away with, and it will seem as if the machine were trying to throw you off.” The bicycle was little more than a confusing craze back in 1877. The London Library has just uncovered some fascinating and hilarious vintage educational pamphlets on everything from ‘The Gentlewoman’s Book of Sports’ to ‘Cycling As a Cause of Heart Disease.’
Our Vampire Lit is Vintage
“Why, hello there! — I was just appraising some rare PDFs in the back room when I heard you come in. Feel free to peruse our inventory, and if you have any questions, please allow me—one of the world’s foremost authorities on and purveyors of fine electronic books—to act as your steward through the wonderfully esoteric world of antique eBook collecting.”
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Fantastisch
In 1980, Julio Cortázar gave a series of lectures at Berkeley, which you can now read in the slim, simply-titled volume Literature Class. Among the highlights? This sentence: “I had lived with a complete feeling of familiarity with the fantastic because it seemed as acceptable to me, as possible and as real, as the fact of eating soup at eight o’clock in the evening.”
Go on, judge these books by their covers
Book Cover Roundup, Item #1: Each year The Millions publishes a high stakes face-off between the UK and US covers of books featured in The Morning News’ Tournament of Books (2014, 2013, 2012). Now, for Sarah Hemfrey’s research on book covers in the publishing industry, it’s your turn to be the judge. Item #2: if Harry Potter is more your style, that whole series is getting new cover designs, too.