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6mins
Digitization has actually made working on biographies more laborious. The sheer amount of material means that the process actually takes longer if you're going to be thorough.
2mins
Although biographies often focus on individuals, they’re really about exploring big historical trends.
26mins
A conversation with the Cornelius Vanderbilt biographer.
Screenwriter Danny Rubin says that he came up with the idea for the classic comedy "Groundhog Day" while thinking about the idea of immortality—and, specifically, how a person might change […]
California is currently considering a couple of bills that could effectively legalize marijuana use. One plan would place a heavy excise tax on the drug—which could help plug the state's […]
6mins
Digital books and iPads are certainly changing the way that people write, but so did computers when they first came out. You just have to move with the culture and […]
7mins
Writing a novel isn't a practical, logical thing to do. The author starts by writing an outline from an "emotional place" and then becomes a "cool technician" to shape it […]
1mins
"It's very easy to write a script compared to a book," says the author. A novel is not a logical thing and it doesn't come from a logical place—a screenplay […]
2mins
It's much less fun to release a book these days—with all the necessary Twitter and Facebook promotions—than when the novelist began.
3mins
The author has "no idea" why characters from his previous novels reappear in his new ones. "It just feels right."
4mins
"There's an argument to be made, sure, that the violence in 'American Psycho' was gratuitous," says the author. But he also sees how the book is "a kind of performance […]
"The public health establishment has been wrong before. The best advice that government can give citizens is to develop their own diet and exercise plans." Read it at the L.A. Times.
The American credit crisis was a direct result of widening income inequality, says Daniel Indiviglio at The Atlantic. Achieving the American Dream came to mean drowning in debt.
"The most underrepresented groups on elite campuses often aren’t racial minorities; they’re working-class whites (and white Christians in particular) from conservative states and regions."
"For people with depression the world really does look dull. That's because their ability to perceive contrast is impaired." A new experiment could help diagnose clinical depression.
"Us ranchers on the Great Plains are used to adapting. City folk could learn much from the way we use our scarce resources." One conservationist rancher writes about her hopes for The Guardian.
"Any effort to bring peace between Israelis and Palestinians must reckon with the fact that bitter experience has taught many Israelis to doubt that their foes want a lasting concord."
"The mass-deportation fantasies of some restrictionists notwithstanding, the great majority of 'illegals' are here to stay." The New Yorker draws the borderlines of the real immigration debate.
"The finance industry, regulators, and political leaders need to create a shared sense of collective responsibility for the system as a whole," says Nobel Laureate Michael Spense.