A forthcoming anthology of poems endorsed by the Taliban, Poetry of the Taliban, is marked as controversial in an interesting Guardian dispatch by Julian Borger. The book, which is being published in the UK by Hurst and Co. on May 17, and in the U.S. this…
For a week now debate has raged over a poem by Günter Grass (“What Must Be Said,” first published in Süddeutsche Zeitung) that harshly criticizes Israel’s nuclear program and its aggression toward Iran. But the story has now moved beyond debate: as the Guardian reports, On Sunday,…
The re-launched Baffler — back from the dead under editor John Summers — carries a 10-page takedown of The Atlantic by Maureen Tkacik. The piece (“Omniscient Gentleman of The Atlantic,” not available online) focuses on changes at the venerable magazine under owner David G. Bradley, who bought The Atlantic…
A marriage advice book, entitled A Gift for Muslim Couple by Maulavi Ashraf Ali Thanvi, is creating an uproar in Canada. For sale at Islamic Books and Souvenirs in Toronto, the book includes advice on the ways that a Muslim husband can beat and intimidate his…
Despite “emotional testimony from retailers opposed to the plan,” a bill giving Amazon a 15-month exemption from collecting sales taxes advanced in the New Jersey state senate yesterday, according to a Bergin County Record report by Hugh R. Morely. The report notes that “The owners…
What’s Viktor Bout, the convicted international arms trafficker, reading these days? In an interview with Nicholas Schmidle of The New Yorker, Bout—who is currently awaiting sentencing at Manhattan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan—praised: …Laura Hillenbrand’s “Unbroken” and encouraged me to read Henri Charrière’s “Papillon.” Among…
The “academic spring” uprising of professors against academic publishing giant Elsevier has led to at least a partial victory: in a statement released late Monday, the publisher announced it was withdrawing its support of the Research Works Act, a proposed piece of legislation that would…
Mike Kelley of Library Journal has broken down the figures on the proposed library cuts by NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg and they’re grim figures to be sure. They are made more grim however, by the strategy Bloomberg could be implementing. Kelley breaks down the cuts…
Fidel Castro made a rare public appearance last Friday in order to attend the launch party for his new book. According to a Associated Press wire story, it was a real Fidel-Castro-kind-of event: everything about it was long. Castro ”spent six hours presenting the two-volume book,”…
Just over a month before the election in Iran, the world’s media is beginning to weigh in on a fresh wave of arrests of bloggers, journalists and web users in the country—though of course these remain unreported in Iran’s official media outlets. Among the most recent arrests…
