The omnipresence of drones in the world’s skies—haunting Afghanistan, hovering over Yemen, delivering your tacos—has lately found its equivalent in world culture and art. Thinkers and creators in many genres have been wrestling with the unsettling implications of this new aerial technology, with its pilotless cockpits and all-seeing eyes. The French philosopher Grégoire Chamayou’s A Theory of the Drone, published last year and recently translated into English—you can read a four-chapter excerpt here—is an unabashedly polemical investigation of the historical, geopolitical, and ethical questions raised by remote-controlled high-tech war. (Chamayou has in turn been criticized, in articles nearly as linguistically dense as A Theory of the Drone itself, for things like stacking the evidentiary deck in his own favor and romanticizing the myth of the boots-on-the-ground “noble soldier.”) In a much-reproduced series of tweets billed as “seven short stories about drones,” the novelist Teju Cole mordantly imagined seven great protagonists of world literature destroyed by fire from the sky before their stories could even begin. At New York’s Public Theater, Anne Hathaway is starring in Grounded, a one-woman show directed by Julie Taymor in which Hathaway plays an alienated former F-16 pilot going slowly insane as she wages remote-controlled war in Afghanistan from in front of a screen in Nevada. Slate’s war correspondent Fred Kaplan recently wrote of Grounded: “As drama, it’s... Continue reading at 'Slate'
[ Slate | 2015-05-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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PEN's revamped awards ceremony, replete with jazz combo and an Oscars-style "In Memoriam" video, was held at New York University on February 20. Layli Long Soldier, Jenny Zhang, and the late Ursula K. Le Guin were among the winners. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2018-02-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Books and pop-culture podcast, Mostly Lit, has teamed up with Waterstones on a year-long partnership to create a new series of events and online content for the bookseller. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2018-02-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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It’s easy enough to believe that this is an especially awful moment for truth—in part because it is. But in a new book Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News, Kevin Young shows that the concepts listed in his title have been around in America for a very... Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2017-11-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Authorities are investigating a series of racially charged threats made on social media and in fliers that targeted Latino and Jewish students at Cal State Long Beach, officials said Saturday. They included a threat to shoot officers of the La Raza Student Assn. posted on the group’s Facebook... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2017-09-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The path to the Games is complicated and political, and the power held by corporate video game publishers makes it doubly challenging for e-sports. Continue reading at Silicon Valley Business Journal
[ Silicon Valley Business Journal | 2017-09-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Denise Mina's The Long Drop (Harvill Secker) has been awarded the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish crime book of the year. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2017-09-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Hinton worked for media mogul for more than 50 years before he resigned from News Corp at height of hacking scandalRupert Murdoch’s righthand man for more than 50 years is to have his memoirs published, providing one of the most informed portraits of the media mogul to date.Les Hinton, who... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2017-09-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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If you like 'Stranger Things,' you should pick up these two books by Lindsey Barraclough, says PW assistant editor Drucilla Shultz. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2017-08-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
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How years, hundreds of queries, and an abandoned manuscript led to the publication of Margaret Wilkerson Sexton's outstanding debut novel, 'A Kind of Freedom.' Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2017-08-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Trapeze has acquired David Barnett’s The Lonely Hearts Cinema Club, a novel about loneliness and an unlikely friendship between young and old. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2017-06-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Phaidon is to publish the "long-awaited" debut cookbook from self-taught chef Stephen Harris, founder of Kent-based pub The Sportsman. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2017-06-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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In 1969, an angry young man caught up in the social unrest of the period holed up in the New York Public Library poring through piles of military manuals and eventually emerged with “The Anarchist Cookbook.” Containing detailed instructions for making TNT and “converting a shotgun into a grenade... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2017-03-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Leaf Arbuthnot, author of An Unmaimed Man, has won Tibor Jones' 2017 Pageturner Prize for unpublished novels. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2017-03-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
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With 23 categories, the newly re-introduced British Book Awards are an uber suite of combined honors, known to some as the Nibbies. The post Long on Shortlists at London Book Fair: The Expanded British Book Awards appeared first on Publishing Perspectives. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2017-03-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The start of the state basketball playoffs this week didn’t go smoothly for Fairfax High. The Lions learned that standout forward Robert McRae had reinjured his surgically repaired hand in practice, leaving him unavailable for Wednesday’s Southern California Division I Regional opener against... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2017-03-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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HarperCollins Publishers has unveiled a global campaign celebrating two centuries of publishing. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2017-03-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Mark Thornton, founder and co-owner of Mostly Books, on how bookshops can help in the fight against loneliness. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2017-02-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Twenty-two years after the release of the first book in His Dark Materials trilogy, Philip Pullman is set to release a new three-part series to stand “beside it” called The Book of Dust, with the charter of Lyra “at the centre of the story”. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2017-02-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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In 1906, a reporter for the Detroit Free Press described a scene that had become all too common at the city’s public libraries. A child hands an overdue book to a stern librarian perched behind a desk, and with a “sinister expression,” the librarian demands payment of a late fine. In some cases,... Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2017-02-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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'Princess Pamela's Soul Food Cookbook,' Pamela Strobel's collection of soul food recipes, is coming back after being out of print for 40 years. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2017-01-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
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