"My decades of research show he was no raunchy proponent of bro culture but a daring and ingenious defender of women and the innocent." - The Conversation
Decades ago, names were usually communicated by finger-spelling. Today, with the rise of "capital-D Deaf" culture, ASL users often create individual gestural signs as identifiers. - The New York Times
Judy Batalion didn't mean to find all of this out, but she stumbled across a book in Yiddish - which she speaks and reads. It changed everything. - Los Angeles Review of Books
The ABA took its Twitter private after promoting a scientifically inaccurate anti-trans book to indie bookstores, apologizing, and then deleting the apology. - LitHub
"Across Africa, literary journals managed by young writers and artists are emerging with the aim of publishing both new and established voices, collaborating across geographies." - The New York Times
This year, far fewer politically sensitive books are on display. Vendors are curating their books carefully to avoid violating the national security law, which Beijing imposed on Hong Kong in June 2020. - The Guardian
Speakers of other languages often have to use English for internet-specific terms; digital rights advocates find that there are no words in many other languages for things like data protection and surveillance. Here one activist writes about why and how she's working to change that. - The Nation
Arguably the most prestigious division of the Penguin Random House conglomerate, Knopf has been without a leader since Mehta, who held the job for 32 years, died in late 2019. The new boss is Jordan Pavlin, whose current title at Knopf is editorial director. - The New York Times
Almanacs are an anomaly in the 2021 literary landscape, a choose-your-own adventure of print culture. So much of reading, especially online, is about seeking: looking for a fact, an image, a bit of information. - Los Angeles Review of Books
First, for God's sake, he shouldn't wipe it off himself. (This lesson was learned the hard way.) Beyond that, there are ways of repairing the damage, or at least keeping it from getting worse. - The Atlantic
"Some more enterprising major-media columnists sometimes compare Substack to the broadsheets of journalism’s early decades in the 1800s, though they do this, invariably, as a means of dismissing digital newsletters as retrograde." - Seth Abramson
Over six centuries in the Habsburg empire and most of another in Yugoslavia, the tongue of this tiny Alpine land might well have faded away. But one dedicated (or obsessive) 18th-century priest/author/publisher led the effort to mold a bunch of hillbilly dialects into a serious language. - Atlas Obscura
