“Putin, like Hitler, understood that the purpose of spectacles is to dazzle the eye while clouding the mind.” For the Daily Beast, staff writer Bill Morris writes about the thuggish dictators who love the propaganda of the World Cup. (If you haven’t already checked out our list of seven great soccer reads, do it now!)
Putin Wins the World Cup
Curious Case of the Missing Publishers
What’s going on in Hong Kong? Last week, a man by the name of Lee Bo became the fifth member of the Hong Kong-based publishing house Mighty Current, which specializes in provocative tomes about Beijing leaders, to vanish mysteriously. A few of those missing have been in sporadic communication with worried family members, letting them know in opaque terms that they are “helping with an investigation.”
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We Can’t All Be David Ebershoff
Recommended Reading: this essay by Sophia Knight on why she decided to quit her high-stakes job as a corporate editor in favor of a more modest writer’s income. If it's publishing stories you're after, here's an old Millions favorite on whether or not to self-publish.
From Chernobyl
Recommended Reading: An excerpt from Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich’s Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster at n+1. Read more about Alexievich at The Millions.
The Millennials Are Alright
The Bygone Bureau’s latest ebook, The Graduates, is intended to be “a response to all of these half-hearted pieces about how screwed Millennials are,” says editor Kevin Nguyen. “It's true that graduating in 2009 didn't provide the best job market, but in a lot of ways, those struggles have actually led to more interesting experiences and opportunities. And we wanted to capture that optimism.” You can catch two excerpts from the collection over here and over here.
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Why Bookstores Are Needed
While calling for the preservation of the wonderful St. Marks Bookshop, Paris Review editor Lorin Stein explains that "magazines like The Paris Review need good bookstores, where the staff knows how to spread the word about good writing, face to face, hand to hand."
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Teachable Moments
Lots of writers have stories about creative writing classes that changed their lives. The remembrance of the pivotal class is a mini-genre in itself. At The Rumpus, Warren Adler writes about his own life-changing experience, looking back on a class he took at the New School all the way back in 1949.
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