“You know, it’s dangerous to focus on one person as a way of talking about a big system. But I think Kissinger reveals the system. He’s not singularly responsible for the system—if we expunge Kissinger from history, we still wouldn’t have a Virtuous Republic—but he illuminates it like nobody else.” Greg Grandin discusses his recent release, Kissinger’s Shadow: The Long Reach of America’s Most Controversial Statesman, at The New Republic.
Revealing the System
Slouching Towards Summer
From “A Prayer For Maintaining At Least A Tenuous Hold On My Sanity” to “A Prayer for My Wrecked Bladder,” here are five prayers whispered by a first-year teacher as the school year slouches to a finish.
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If Bears Were Presidents
Recommended Reading: Three poems by Dalton Day at Hobart. “In the end, there are five bear cubs underneath your porch. You name them after U.S. Presidents. Taft dies of starvation.”
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I Heart Antosha Chekhonte
This summer Antosha Chekhonte’s (aka Anton Chekhov‘s) first book The Prank will finally be published after more than 130 years of waiting, and it’s been described as “frankly indispensable for readers of Chekhov, or Russian literature, or comedic literature, or parody, or any and all literature” generally. Pair with our own Sonya Chung‘s essay, “I Heart Chekhov.”
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Big Kindle On Sale
Normally $379, the Kindle DX, Amazon’s oversized version of the regular Kindle, is today going for $299 thanks to a one-day sale.
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The Patriarch
This week, Richard Ford published his first novel in a while to feature Frank Bascombe, the protagonist of his Pulitzer-winning book The Sportswriter. At Salon, our own Lydia Kiesling posits a through-line from Bascombe to a certain TV gangster, arguing that The Sopranos shares its view of manhood with Ford’s novels. You could also read our own Michael Bourne on Ford’s 2012 book, Canada.