“When it comes to living in a democracy, Nato Thompson argues, nothing affects us more directly and more powerfully than culture. Culture suffuses the world we live in, from TV to music to advertising to sports. And all these things, Thompson writes in his new book, Culture as Weapon, ‘influence our emotions, our actions, and our very understanding of ourselves as citizens.'”
Culture Shock
Unorthodox Taxidermy
Fans of Theodore Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss, often know that he had an earlier career as an ad agency illustrator, but how many of them know he was also an amateur taxidermist? “His father, superintendent of parks in Springfield, Mass., occasionally sent him antlers, bills and horns from deceased zoo animals,” reports NPR, elements that Geisel then integrated into fantastical wall sculptures.
A Time of Scarcity
“I realized that there was something wrong with an arrangement whereby a relatively affluent person such as I had become could afford to write about minimum wage jobs, squirrels as an urban food source or the penalties for sleeping in parks, while the people who were actually experiencing these sorts of things, or were in danger of experiencing them, could not.” Barbara Ehrenreich on writing about poverty.
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Up with Me
If you’re an insomniac, you probably feel an odd kinship with people who work the night shift, especially if you live in a large city which is easy to explore on sleepless nights. At The Rumpus, Jess Lowry recalls her own late nights in Manhattan.
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Brand New Books in Your Ear
Hey book podcast lovers, Between the Covers has a new episode out featuring author Thalia Field on her fascinating-sounding novel Experimental Animals. For more literary listens, see our round-up of 10 more shows to check out.
Europe at Bay
Writing about European immigration laws for the London Review of Books, Jeremy Harding drops this excellent line: “Perhaps we should agree to think of rights and values as limited resources, and admit that Europe is now caught in a bitter struggle over who can or can’t access them.”
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