America, 1981: Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president, MTV aired its first video, and the culture wars were on. That January, the Rev. Jerry Falwell—a televangelist-turned-political-kingmaker who essentially invented the religious right as we know it today—had sent a massive direct mailing to his Moral Majority constituency, urging readers to examine their school libraries […]
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Posted inNonfiction
The Nine Lives of Cat Videos
Are cat videos mindless distraction or a radical form of pure entertainment? A visit to the Internet Cat Video Festival at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
‘Good Girls From Good Families Don’t Write About Sex’
Soniah Kamal dared to read—and then write—literature considered explicit by conservative Muslim society. The backlash was intense. Read more from “Girls From Good Families” at The Butter.
Posted inBooks, Member Pick, Nonfiction
The Wandering Years
Thoughts, observations, and reflections from the travel journals of Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
Posted inNonfiction, Story
The Nine Lives of Cat Videos
Are cat videos mindless distraction or a radical form of pure entertainment? A visit to the Internet Cat Video Festival at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
How the Descendants of the Marquis de Sade Became Champions of His Once Taboo Legacy
“For five generations, the marquis’ name was taboo in our family,” Hugues marveled. “It was as if there was an omertà (conspiracy of silence) against him! The family no longer even used the title marquis.”
Posted inBooks, Member Pick, Nonfiction, Story
The Wandering Years
Thoughts, observations, and reflections from the travel journals of Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
Posted inPodcasts, Quotes
Twitter and the Self-Censorship Society
I don’t know if I care necessarily about other people’s reactions toward opinions. And I’m not even really talking about jokes. I get attacked for opinions. People get attacked for their likes and their dislikes. And mostly they get attacked for their dislikes because to be negative in the Twittersphere is akin to hate speech […]
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction
The Missing History of Ravensbrück, The Nazi Concentration Camp for Women
The story of the Nazis’ only concentration camp for women has long been obscured—partly by chance, but also by historians’ apathy towards women’s history. Sarah Helm writes about the camp, where the “cream of Europe’s women” were interned alongside its prostitutes, and members of the French resistance perished alongside Red Army prisoners of war.
Posted inBooks, Member Pick, Nonfiction
The Holy Junk Heap
Some 300,000 Jewish documents were hidden in a closet in Cairo for hundreds of years. They were discovered by the lady adventurer twins Agnes Lewis and Margaret Gibson and the legendary Rabbinical scholar Solomon Schechter. Here is their story.
