The Book is a Weapon (3)

By: Joshua Glenn

Artist: Broder, S. Title: “Books are weapons in the war of ideas : books cannot be killed by fire” Publisher: Washington, D.C. : U.S. G.P.O. : Distributed by Division of Public Inquiry, O.W.I., Date: 1942. […]

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Add significance — today!

By: Joshua Glenn

I’m thrilled to announce the Significant Objects Story Contest. In partnership with the editors of Slate, Rob Walker and I (who are running an experiment called Significant Objects) invite submissions of a 500-word story featuring […]

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Frank Herbert

By: Joshua Glenn

Alia, a telepathic four-year-old girl who, in the bestselling science fiction novel of all time, roams the battlefields of Arrakis slitting the throats of imperial stormtroopers, gained her powers in utero because her mother drank […]

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Middlebrow Bestsellers — Week of 9/27/09

By: Joshua Glenn

1) THREE CUPS OF TEA, by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. (Penguin, $15.) A former climber builds schools in villages in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Sentimental, uplifting, a favorite gift from compassionate conservatives to their […]

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MIDDLEBROW BESTSELLERS — THIS WEEK

By: Joshua Glenn

Same as last week, except Gladwell Moore’s Clunk enters the list at no. 8, knocking out Don Piper’s 90 Minutes in Heaven. 1) THREE CUPS OF TEA, by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. (Penguin, […]

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Engaged vs. Disengaged Irony

By: Joshua Glenn

A quick note about Neo-Dadaists and Pop Art. This item is excerpted from yesterday’s essay on the Postmodernist Generation. Neo-Dada artists Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, and Yves Klein were born between 1924-33. Reacting […]

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John Brunner

By: Joshua Glenn

The popularity of apocalyptic fiction in the Sixties (1964-73), it has been suggested, indicates that SF writers had become bored and suspicious of utopian idylls promising that ameliorative reforms could right modern civilization’s manifold wrongs; […]

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Ambivalent about New Age?

By: Joshua Glenn

HILOBROW is superficially similar, as we’ve noted, to Middlebrow. So HiLobrow despises Middlebrow for the same reason that idlers detest slackers, and punks detest rockists: we’re afraid that we’re really just like them. No wonder, […]

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Middlebrow Bestsellers — this week

By: Joshua Glenn

A service that we may or may not continue to offer. Thanks to our friends at the New York Times for doing the primary research. 1) THREE CUPS OF TEA, by Greg Mortenson and David […]

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