Happy Birthday, Baldwin

"Are things getting worse for women in publishing?" The Guardian asks, and while the article focuses on the UK, it also touches on the state of affairs in the U.S. What both situations share is a lack of female representation at the executive level, based partly on "a generation of women retiring and the amalgamation of publishing houses, which has left fewer c-circle jobs to compete for." Oh, and sexism.

“What does it look like to be the child of war? A product of war? What does it look like to be a queer child from a very traditional Confucian family? How does one feel to pay homage to a family but to also, in a way, betray those familial values?” Kaveh Akbar interviews Ocean Vuong about linguistic identity, syntax, and the American gaze for Divedapper.

College football season is upon us, and I'd be remiss not to highlight the recent flood of fantastic writing on my favorite televised sport. Most striking is Pulitzer Prize-winner Taylor Branch's Atlantic article "The Shame of College Sports." It's accompanied by several other takes on the issue. In regards to academia, this New York Times piece on the University of Chicago's football team demonstrates that tension between educators and football fans is nothing new. (A sentiment the paper illustrated in a 2006 piece on Ivy League football.) However, as Gregg Easterbrook notes, major football programs can also demonstrate success in the classroom as well. Finally, and on a purely emotional level, I will always seize any opportunity to share this fantastic ESPN story by Eric Adelson.

We live in a truly marvelous time. By that, of course, I mean we live in an age when students at the London School of Economics can hand in 98-page (PDF) dissertations about LOLCats.

The Skinny is acclaimed author Susan Orlean's strangest work, hands down: a half-serious diet book that advises women, among other things, to cover tempting food with bleach. Not one to follow her own advice, Orlean's diary of a week of eating for Grub Street features yogurt breakfasts, crackers eaten over sinks, and other basically realistic, bleach-free culinary adventures.