Michelle Obama has been making the rounds to promote her latest book, “The Light We Carry,” and it’s made for plenty of standout style moments. The latest example? A look that involved a Marine Serre dress, altered into a top.
Obama paired the piece — which was layered over a black long-sleeve turtleneck — with wide-leg Balmain jeans and burgundy leather Stuart Weitzman boots, as the former First Lady’s stylist Meredith Koopshared on Instagram. She pulled her long box braids into a topknot bun, allowing her oversized earrings by Elizabeth Hooper to make maximum impact.
Though the press tour is already over, here’s hoping we’ll continue to see Obama in more daring outfits like this one (and hopefully, more Marine Serre) in the future.
Strayed is joyful about putting such a complicated figure on the screen, knowing that fictional female characters are still sometimes skewered for it. She says that when the movie version of Wild came out, she was stunned by the discussions about Reese Witherspoon’s character—that is, Cheryl Strayed—as an unlikable woman. “I was like, What? Likeability has never been my problem,” she says and then chuckles. “But that was shorthand for complexity—somebody who does some things that you’re not supposed to or that maybe are contradictory.”
Hahn’s character in Tiny Beautiful Things can’t stop doing things she’s not supposed to. She has passed the age that her mother was when she died, and yet Clare has not become the writer—or the person—her mother believed she could be. “It’s a really unique way to tell the story of a life, a nonlinear memoir,” Tigelaar continues. “Like we’re comprised of all these little dots of the stories that make us, and we’re pulling out dots in no particular order, weaving them together into this tapestry to say: [These are the things] that created you, and this is what you have to draw from now.”
Clare (Kathryn Hahn)By Elizabeth Morris/Hulu.
Those stories often resonate painfully for Clare, who remembers with horror how unappreciatively she received her mother’s last present. “It’s a very particular thing to lose a parent when you’re a teenager or in your young twenties,” Strayed says. “That group of people has a tremendous amount of regret and guilt, because they were regular teenagers. And in the last years of their mothers’ lives, they treated their mother like shit, you know? I had to grapple with that, too—going back in time and being like, I should have been more grateful for that coat she bought me in the last Christmas of her life.” She shakes her head. “But you have to live with it, you have to forgive yourself, you have to do all the things you have to do. And I love that we got to tell that story in this show.”
Tigelaar recalls that cast and crewmembers whose lives had been touched by loss often swarmed Strayed when she came on set, recognizing themselves in her evocation of grief as a long and steady hum, rather than something you get over and stay over. In fact, Strayed once wrote in a Dear Sugar column that her own writing comes from “the divine place within me that is my mother. Sugar is the temple I built in my obliterated place.” Strayed wanted to make sure that came through in the series, too. “At a lot of points in this season, everything’s all messed up,” she says thoughtfully. “The thing I find so moving about this character is that she leans in the direction of empathy and kindness and telling people that they can—that they can find love, that they can believe in themselves, that they can go on for another day—in the form of this advice column. She’s the conduit for not only the best parts of herself, even when everything’s gone to hell, but the best parts of us.”
Frida Liu is a working single mother in a near future who makes the mistake of leaving her child alone at home for a couple of hours one afternoon. Authorities are summoned by the neighbours, and her daughter Harriet is taken from her. Frida is given the choice to either lose her child permanently, or to spend a year at a state-run re-education camp for mothers where inmates must care for eerily lifelike robot children, equipped with surveillance cameras. Calling this novel “dystopian” doesn’t feel quite right, says Wired. “Near-dystopian, maybe? Ever-so-slightly speculative? This closeness to reality is what turns the book’s emotional gut punch into a full knockout wallop.” The School for Good Mothers is, says the New York Times, “a chilling debut”. (LB)
The Exhibitionist by Charlotte Mendelson
The Hanrahan family gather for a weekend as the patriarch Ray – artist and notorious egoist – prepares for a new exhibition of his art. Ray’s three grown-up children and steadfast wife, Lucia, all have their own choices to make. This fifth novel by Mendelson has been longlisted for the Women’s Prize, and has been highly praised. The Guardian points to the author’s “succinct specificity of detail,” and “a precision of observation that made me laugh frequently and smile when I wasn’t laughing”. According to the Spectator, Mendelson excels at “vivid, drily hilarious tales about messy families”. The Exhibitionist is “a glorious ride. Mendelson observes the minutiae of human behaviour like a comic anthropologist.” (LB)
Free Love by Tessa Hadley
Described by The Guardian in 2015 as “one of this country’s great contemporary novelists,” British writer and academic Hadley has been quietly producing works of subtly powerful prose for two decades. Like her recent novels, The Past (2015) and Late in the Day (2019), Free Love – Hadley’s eighth – explores intimate relationships, sexuality, memory and grief, through an apparently ordinary-looking suburban family. But, Hadley writes, “under the placid surface of suburbia, something was unhinged.” Set amid the culture clash of the late 1960s, the novel interrogates the counterculture’s idealistic vision of sexual freedom, in, writes the i newspaper, “a complex tale of personal awakening and a snapshot of a moment in time when the survivors of war were suddenly painted as relics by a new generation determined not to live under their dour and hesitant shadow.” NPR writes, “Free Love is a fresh, moving evocation of the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.” (RL)
Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson
A debut novel, Black Cake tells the backstory of an African-American family of Caribbean origin, and two siblings who are reunited after eight years of estrangement at their mother’s funeral where they discover their unusual inheritance. The plot is driven by an omniscient narrator, dialogue and flashbacks. It is, says the New York Times, full of “family secrets, big lies, great loves, bright colours and strong smells”. The themes of race , identity and family love are all incorporated, says the Independent, “but the fun is in the reading… Black Cake is a satisfying literary meal, heralding the arrival of a new novelist to watch.” (LB)
Auē by Becky Manawatu
Told through several viewpoints, Auē tells the story of Māori siblings who have lost their parents, with each sibling telling their tale, and later their mother, Aroha, also telling hers from the afterlife. The novel has already won two awards in New Zealand, and is now gaining wider praise. “The plot reveals are masterful,” says The Guardian. “Auē has done well because it is expertly crafted, but also because it has something indefinable: enthralling, puzzling, gripping and familiar, yet otherworldly.” (LB)
If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Culture, head over to our Facebook page or message us onTwitter.
And if you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called The Essential List. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Culture, Worklife and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday.
The CEO of Penguin Random House, the world’s largest trade publisher, is stepping down weeks after its attempt to buy rival Simon & Schuster was blocked by a federal court.
Markus Dohle’s decision is effective at the end of the year. He will be replaced temporarily by Nihar Malaviya, 48, currently president and COO of Penguin Random House.
“Following the antitrust decision in the U.S. against the merger of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, I have decided, after nearly 15 years on the Executive Board of Bertelsmann and at the helm of our global publishing business, to hand over the next chapter of Penguin Random House to new leadership,” Dohle, 54, said a statement released Friday by parent company Bertelsmann, the German conglomerate.
Dohle is also leaving his seat on the Bertelsmann executive board. His departure was made at “his own request and on the best of mutual terms,” according to the Bertelsmann announcement.
Dohle was named CEO when Penguin Random House was still Random House and presided over an era of enormous growth, notably the merger in 2012-13 with Penguin that made the new company the industry’s unchallenged market leader. But the failed purchase of Simon & Schuster proved an embarrassment to Dohle, who had strongly pushed for the $2.2 billion deal.
After a dramatic trial this summer that included testimony from bestselling author Stephen King, who opposed the $2.2 billion merger, a federal judge blocked the deal in November.
Simon & Schuster’s parent company, Paramount Global, said it still intends to sell the publishing house. Paramount is also the parent company of CBS News.
“We regret Markus Dohle’s decision to leave Bertelsmann and Penguin Random House,” Christopher Mohn, chair of Bertelsmann’s supervisory board, said in a statement. “He has sustainably focused Penguin Random House on growth and profitability. Under his leadership, our book division more than doubled its revenues and quintupled its profit. The fact that our global book publishing group is in such a strong position today is largely thanks to Markus Dohle.”
Dohle’s contract had been set to expire in December 2025.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Just like lightning strikes at random, so does the opportunity for inspiration that can spur your business or further your leadership skills. Whether you are actively seeking it or taking a break to reset your mind, there are always opportunities to revisit what you have experienced and glean insightful takeaways. For example, one of the best pieces of inspiration came from a simple conversation with my 9-year-old daughter. More on that later…
If you are actively seeking opportunities for inspiration, here are some particular ones that have inspired me as a co-founder and CEO.
As an avid reader, I have found a lot of inspiration from books. When you’re in a leadership role, absorbing ideas from others not only opens your perspective and inspires you to change the way you work but can also reinforce your intuition and validate your initial thoughts. Some of the standout books that I have read include:
The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz — a must-read for emerging and veteran entrepreneurs, this book candidly discusses the pros and cons of running your own business and key lessons every CEO should learn.
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson — this book helps you identify what matters to you. As your company grows, what is the most important to your business, and where can you make an impact? If you stay true to those two values, it helps you filter out the rest of the noise and remain focused on succeeding and bringing your business to fruition.
The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle — another book on culture, as it is vital to a company’s overall success — especially in the current market that we are in today. This engaging book inspires us to transform how teams operate so they can perform together more efficiently.
Sometimes you’ll find that inspiration comes when you take the time to unwind. Recently, I sat down to watch some TV with my family, and two documentaries we watched have stayed with me:
All or Nothing: Arsenal (available on Amazon TV): Aside from being entertaining as it is all about my favorite sport, soccer, watching Mikel Arteta’s leadership in bringing his team to the front of the Premier League was inspiring. Mikel doesn’t compromise on his or the club’s values, and his passion for the sport inspires his squad to perform at the next level. As leaders, we should all proudly showcase our love for what we do to lead by example and inspire our teams.
Kiss the Ground (available on Netflix): This documentary, centered on finding a solution for our climate crisis, uses compelling data to illustrate how a simple solution — dating back hundreds of years — can help address our climate crisis and create healthier food for people. My takeaway from this as an entrepreneur was three-fold: first, there are always opportunities to evolve and rethink the status quo to devise a solution to a problem. Second, look back to history to see what was successful and why. Lastly, look at the larger picture to ask yourself: what impact are we making on humanity and this planet?
My final note of a place I found unexpected inspiration came from my daughter, who was nine at the time. This image had come up during the workday, and I was looking at it at home and contemplating the correct answer. As it illustrates, are there four bars, or are there three?
She took one look at it and said that both characters in this image were right without hesitating. The answer isn’t about who is right or wrong but their perspective and how they interpret it. That simple revelation from her has stuck with me throughout the years: my main takeaway was that communication is essential and, in life and business, many scenarios are not “right or wrong” — the important thing is that even if you disagree with them, listen to the other’s reasoning to come to an understanding of their point of view.
At the end of the day, whether you actively seek it or take a break from the hustle of life and enjoy the moment, you can find inspiration everywhere. Take a moment to reflect upon the content you consume or the conversations you have had, and you will become a more well-rounded character.
Best-selling authors rallied around a new novelist after she shared that she was “upset and embarrassed” at the low turnout to one of her book signings.
On Sunday, author Chelsea Banning tweeted her frustration at only two people showing up to the signing for her debut fantasy novel “Of Crowns and Legends” after a few dozen people RSVP’d to the event.
Only 2 people came to my author signing yesterday, so I was pretty bummed about it. Especially as 37 people responded “going” to the event. Kind of upset, honestly, and a little embarrassed.
“Only 2 people came to my author signing yesterday, so I was pretty bummed about it. Especially as 37 people responded “going” to the event. Kind of upset, honestly, and a little embarrassed,” she tweeted.
The tweet garnered responses from some of the world’s biggest authors who offered her moral support by sharing similar stories from early in their careers.
“The Handmaids Tale” author Margaret Atwood was one of the first to chime in, sharing a time she was confused for being a store worker at one of her signings.
“Join the club. I did a signing to which Nobody came, except a guy who wanted to buy some Scotch tape and thought I was the help. :),” she tweeted.
English author Neil Gaiman also responded to Banning, tweeting about a signing where not even one person showed up.
“Terry Pratchett and I did a signing in Manhattan for Good Omens that nobody came to at all. So you are two up on us,” he tweeted.
Even author Stephen King shared a similar experience, recounting a time when just one interesting customer showed up.
“At my first SALEM’S LOT signing, I had one customer. A fat kid who said, “Hey bud, do you know where there’s some Nazi books?” he tweeted.
Since her now-viral tweet, Banning said that she has sold nearly 500 digital copies of her book, the first in a trilogy about the children of King Arthur.
“Reporting 474 digital copies of my book sold so far in the last couple days. YOU ARE ALL SO AMAZING THANK YOU SO MUCH,” she tweeted on Tuesday.
As both a beauty lover and a bookworm, finding an intersection between the two can be difficult. That’s when I find a good beauty book, my excitement levels spike through the roof.
Below, find the best beauty-centric books out there for the avid reader who also happens to love makeup, skincare, fragrance, or hair. Whether you’re more interested in a book exploring the origins and staying power of red lipstick or a book about the politics and history of Black hair, there’s something for everyone on this list.
As a self-described “latchkey kid of busy immigrant parents in suburban Boston,” Mindy Kaling developed a deep love of books. “I wasn’t allowed to watch TV or play video games, and I was not particularly good at musical instruments or sports,” she says. “Reading was my only pastime.” The solitary hobby allowed her to “go on adventures” and “experience romantic entanglements that fogged my glasses,” she says. It also inspired her to become a writer.
It’s about time, then, that the prolific multi-hyphenate has entered the world of publishing with a new imprint. Starting today, Mindy’s Book Studio will publish titles from a diverse roster of new and established literary voices. In honor of the launch, Kaling is recommending some of her favorite recent reads that also happen to make great gifts. “I love Bridget Jones as much as Agatha Christie,” she says, “but all of my favorite books have one thing in common—they’re cinematic.”
Read on for Kaling’s picks, but first, some advice from the lifelong bookworm: “Never start reading at 10 p.m., or you won’t go to bed until 2 a.m. Great books are more addictive than anything.” Also, she advises, choose paperback whenever possible: “Hardcovers are too poke-y!”
Advertisement – Continue Reading Below
If You’re Feeling Adventurous
Thomas & Mercer
Kismet by Amina Akhtar
If You’re Curious About the Wellness World
Little A
The Goddess Effect by Sheila Yasmin Marikar
If You’re Looking to Gain Perspective
Little A
Token Black Girl by Danielle Prescod
If You Love Bollywood
Mindy’s Book Studio
The Vibrant Years by Sonali Dev
If You’re Craving Romance
Skyscape
Somebody That I Used to Know by Dana L. Davis
If You’re on the Precipice of a Midlife Crisis
Little A
Excuse Me While I Disappear by Laurie Notaro
Claire Stern Deputy Editor Claire Stern is the Deputy Editor of ELLE.com.
“Standing on the edge of the sixth mass extinction, fashion might seem a small player in the emergency,” Safia Minney wrote in the opening pages of her latest book, “Regenerative Fashion.” But, she goes on to argue that it’s anything but small.
“We can put nature and people central to creating beautiful product. What my book is trying to do is show that we can redesign the fashion industry,” she tells Fashionista, “that these solutions already exist and that it’s really now up to us to learn what the solutions are to start.”
The British social entrepreneur and writer has spent decades committed to ethical change in fashion. She founded the Fair Trade brand People Tree in the ’90s and served as its CEO for over two decades. In 2022, she launched grassroots campaign Fashion Declares, which aims to mobilize the industry on issues relating to the climate, ecological and social crises.
In “Regenerative Fashion,” Minney takes on the mammoth task of breaking down the complexities of today’s fashion ecosystem. She highlights the implications of its waste, the toll on biodiversity, the human cost of it all. She teases apart why certain fabrics, like wool, may be better than their synthetic alternatives. Most importantly, she emphasizes the hope and power consumers hold to shape a better future, and proposes regenerative fashion as a path forward.
“Regenerative Fashion: A Nature-Based Approach to Fibres, Livelihoods, and Leadership” by Safia Minney, $40, available here.
Regenerative fashion is a multi-pronged approach to finding and implementing circular solutions to problems that have historically led fashion to extract natural resources from the environment, rather than give back to it. It’s a practice inspired by regenerative agriculture, and to Minney, it presents a solution to everything from pollution to poor working conditions. It means mapping out the supply chain, building better relationships with farmers, introducing legislation that ensures accountability — things that allow for more transparency throughout the process and uphold ethical practices.
Despite the role fashion has played in environmental destruction, there are plenty of people “who passionately care about changing the industry and changing the way we think about workers and the supply chain,” she says. “We can’t not have hope.”
Garment workers are still heavily exploited
Fashion is the fourth biggest manufacturing industry. Behind the massive quantities produced are actual people sewing, cutting and packaging your clothes. And those people are especially vulnerable to mistreatment and exploitation.
“Because [fashion manufacturing] is accessible to low-income countries, it can generate employment opportunities and is often described as ‘an engine for global development,’” Minney wrote in the book. “Yet modern slavery, trafficking, sexual harassment and wage theft are endemic.”
That has only exacerbated in recent years due to the Covid-19 crisis, which saw brands cancel massive orders, many of which had already been created and even shipped but would go unpaid. More recently, high inflation and economic uncertainty have also trickled into deferred orders and conditions “worse than in the pandemic” in places like Bangladesh, the world’s third-largest apparel producer.
Garment workers have repeatedly gone on hunger strikes in Bangladesh due to unpaid wages.
Photo: Allison Joyce/Getty Images
The human cost of the fashion industry goes beyond the assembly line: It also affects farmers and their soil, the environments where people live. It implicates people who aren’t even a part of the chain.
“Farming fibres regeneratively, alongside crops and livestock, protects the land from contamination by synthetic pesticides and insecticides and actively works to improve soil health, habitats and ecosystems, promoting biodiversity and resilience,” Minney wrote.
Even donating clothes — seen as a more noble way to get rid of used garments — comes at the expense of others, particularly along colonial lines.
“When second-hand clothes started flooding into Ghana in the 1960s, people assumed they came from dead foreigners, since excess was not an indigenous concept,” OR Foundation founder Liz Ricketts told Minney in the book. “Colonial power dynamics persist in many ways across the second-hand economy.”
Scroll to Continue
The way we think about pricing has to change
The fashion industry is currently “one of absurdity,” London fashion professor Dilys Williams said in “Regenerative Fashion.”
To build its wealth, it has created inherent “sacrifice zones” — areas made to be disposable in the interest of economic gain. For example, companies increase profit margins by underpaying garment workers and allowing for poor working conditions. That’s what lead to catastrophes like the 2013 Rana Plaza Collapse that killed thousands.
Low prices should be a red flag to consumers on the ethics of the product they’re purchasing.
Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
“Capitalism is a broken concept,” Minney wrote. “It promotes endless growth, but ignores the fact that natural resources to support it are finite.”
Making changes — like setting pricing to reflect the cost on nature, expanding the slate of stakeholders, having uncomfortable conversations and corporate activism — contribute to longevity.
Though we may not see an end to capitalism anytime soon, Minney is hopeful, thanks to the work of activists and advocates within the industry. “There’s some really exciting legislation coming through in terms of modern slavery,” she tells Fashionista. “I think the Remake Report also gives some really clear indications as to what kind of transparency civil society is now expecting. There are lots of different levers pushing for change.”
There is a path forward
“Fashion is a unique human construct and, as such, has a powerful role in promoting awareness of equality, sustainable living and solidarity in the face of climate breakdown,” Minney wrote in the book. “Regenerative fashion brings us together through close working partnerships… and promoting a decolonialized trading system.”
“Regenerative Fashion” is a powerful read because it reminds us of the practices — largely established by Indigenous cultures — that have existed for a long time and support harmony between us and our ecosystems, and that it’s vital to return to them and step away from the hyper-capitalist, consumption-driven path we’ve been on. We have the power and ability to rethink how fashion operates and potentially undo some of the damage we’ve caused.
“The next evolution of fashion design,” she wrote, “will be triggered by talented individuals reaching even greater heights of creativity and systems thinking, while reducing their ecological footprint and increasing their social impact. Anything less will go out of fashion for good.”
Minney is hopeful based on the energy and creativity people in the industry dedicate to building a better future.
Photo: Adam Berry/Getty Images
Regenerative fashion, she argued, is important not only for the health of the planet, but for that of all people, especially in the Global South.
“It’s not just a matter of reining in the worst excesses,” Minney wrote. “Fashion must have a future in which it creates a positive impact, both socially and ecologically.”
“Regenerative Fashion: A Nature-Based Approach to Fibres, Livelihoods, and Leadership” by Safia Minney, $40, available here.
Please note: Occasionally, we use affiliate links on our site. This in no way affects our editorial decision-making.
For about $600, people could buy limited editions of Bob Dylan’s new book, “The Philosophy of Modern Song,” with the promise of the book being hand-signed by the famed musician himself. Now, the book and its publisher are under fire as buyers revealed that the supposed hand signature was actually a replica.
Publisher Simon & Schuster offered a $599 version of Bob Dylan’s new book “guaranteed” to include his handwritten signature.
Simon & Schuster/Wayback Machine
A now-erased webpage for Simon & Schuster, the book’s publisher, offers an “exclusive edition” of the book “guaranteed to be personally hand-signed by Bob Dylan.” The listing price for the book was $599, final sale, with no returns accepted. Meanwhile, the unsigned copy of the book is listed by the publisher for $45.
Simon & Schuster is a division of Paramount Global, as is CBS News.
The book even came with a letter from the publisher’s president and CEO, Jonathan Karp, dated November 15, that further guarantees the signature’s authenticity.
“You hold in your hands something very special, one of just 900 copies available in the US of The Philosophy of Modern Song signed by Bob Dylan. This is Bob’s first book of new writing since Chronicles, Volume One, published in 2004, and since winning the Nobel Prize in literature in 2016,” the letter states, ending with a simple promise, “This letter is confirmation that the copy of the book you hold has been hand-signed by Bob Dylan.”
But when buyers of these limited editions got their copies, they were shocked to find that the signature was not hand-signed. It was a computer-printed replica.
The revelations of the replica signature emerged a month ago, before many people received their books. One YouTuber popular for promoting fan mail and autograph collecting posted a video on October 21 that showed a signed copy of the book that someone had acquired through Canadian bookseller Indigo.
“It was painfully clear that it was never signed by Bob,” the YouTuber says, saying it was clearly made by a machine for a number of reasons. “…It just doesn’t look like Bob’s signature. Secondly, the lines are 100% uniform and have distinctive starting and stopping points.”
And finally, he said, “at 81 years old, you would expect to see some shake in his signature.”
“If you ordered a copy, now’s your time to cancel,” he warned.
One person who purchased the book said on Reddit that it looks like it had been signed with an “auto-pen,” a machine that reproduces someone’s signature.
“Definitely NOT a real signature,” another person tweeted this week after getting their copy of the book. “I have 3 actual Bob autos that look nothing like this. Anyway, glad I’m getting my money back. The letter is a complete joke.”
@DefDylan@skennedy88 I got mine. Definitely NOT a real signature. I have 3 actual Bob autos that look nothing like this. Anyway, glad I’m getting my money back. The letter is a complete joke. pic.twitter.com/RBFk1nvabm
Simon & Schuster publicly addressed the situation on Sunday, issuing an apology to those who purchased the supposedly hand-signed book.
“As it turns out, the limited edition books do contain Bob’s original signature, but in penned replica form,” the statement says. “We are addressing this immediately by providing each purchaser with an immediate refund.”
Dylan has not publicly commented on the signature snafu.
The book was originally announced in March for a November 8 publication. It’s the legendary singer and songwriter’s first book of new writing since his 2004 book “Chronicles, Volume One.” In it are more than 60 of Dylan’s essays about music and songs, in which he breaks down their rhymes and syllables and shows how genres are intertwined – even bluegrass and heavy metal.
Out of millions of books and dozens of genres, there is one story that sticks out for Brooklynites and beyond. The Brooklyn Public Library, one of the nation’s largest library systems, has announced the most borrowed books in its quasquicentennial history.
In the 125 years the library system has served New Yorkers and others who frequent its locations, the system has acquired more than 2.86 million physical items and 250,000 digital materials. To celebrate its birthday, the system has spent the past few weeks unveiling the 125 most borrowed books out of that collection.
And it turns out that Brooklyn’s most beloved books cover a wide range of genres and themes, from “The Cat in the Hat” and “Naruto: Volume 1” to “Wuthering Heights,” “The Old Man and the Sea,” and “Murder on the Orient Express.”
But only one title could top the list – Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are.”
The award-winning children’s classic tells the story of Max, an imaginative child who, dressed in a wolf suit, travels to the world of the Wild Things where he joins them in a rumpus and becomes their king. The library has 145 physical copies of the beloved story, as well as five audio versions.
Children’s books as a whole dominated their list, with many spots going to Dr. Seuss, whose real name is Theodor Geisel. “The Very Hungry Caterpillar,” “Charlotte’s Web,” and “Amelia Bedelia,” are also among the children’s books listed.
“Here’s to 125 years of Brooklyn stories,” the library says on its website. “We’re looking forward to the next chapter.”
The Brooklyn Public Library has captured the hearts of many locals and passersby since it was established on November 30, 1896. The system got its start in a former public school building in Bedford and has since expanded to 61 branches across the New York City borough.
Author Lois Lowry, known for “The Giver” and “Number the Stars,” said in a video message that the library system has a special place in her heart.
“Brooklyn is where I learned to read,” she said. “…My sister was three years older. She came home from school every day and taught me how to read.”
Soon after she learned how to read, her family moved away. But Lowry moved back to Brooklyn in high school, where she “used what she had learned as a little girl.”
“Reading is the most important thing in the world to me still, and Brooklyn is where I first made friends with it and with the library,” she said.
The shocking behind-the-scenes story of climate deniers’ fight to discredit climate change science over the past twenty-five years, told by one of the world’s foremost climate scientists who lived it
A hungry polar bear on the outskirts of Norilsk, hundreds of miles from its natural habitat, … [+] authorities said on June 18, 2019. (Credit: IRINA YARINSKAYA/Zapolyarnaya pravda newspaper/AFP via Getty Images)
Zapolyarnaya pravda newspaper/AFP via Getty Images
Greta Thunberg and Fridays for Future. Tomato soup splashed onto a priceless van Gogh masterpiece. Orange paint sprayed on landmarks and across office buildings around London. What is all this drama about?
Climate change, or more accurately, climate catastrophe, after the complete failure of COP26. Now that COP27 is underway and is making international news, you may finally have become concerned to learn about climate change: what it is, what it’s doing to us globally and locally, how we know that the climate is indeed warming up and why we all — every one of us — should care deeply about this issue. If so, then you will learn a lot from this provocative debut book, Hot Air: The Inside Story Of The Battle Against Climate Change Denial (Atlantic Books, 2022: Amazon US / Amazon UK).
Hot Air by Peter Stott (Atlantic Books, 2022)
Atlantic Books, 2022
Hot Air is the fascinating personal narrative by climate scientist Peter Stott, who heads the Climate Monitoring and Attribution team of the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research at the Met Office. He also is Professor of Detection and Attribution in the Mathematics Department at the University of Exeter, and is a world expert on natural and human causes of climate change.
In this informative book, Professor Stott presents a comprehensive history of the behind-the-scenes actions of numerous climate denialists he’s dealt with throughout the years, giving readers a real sense of the frustrations that scientists face when trying to make any climate progress at all, even as the climate emergency grows ever more dire. Almost perversely, whilst climate science is constantly being updated and improved, the denialists’ arguments have remained unchanged since the 1990s.
In Professor Stott’s meticulously researched and copiously cited narrative, you will learn about the nuances of climate science research as he shares some pivotal events in his career during the past 40 years, you will gain a deep appreciation for how rigorous climate science truly is and how many disparate disciplines it draws from, and you will understand the urgency with which we all must act — both personally and locally as well as nationally and globally. You also will see many of the disgraceful tactics used by climate change denialists, anti-science wingnuts and other lunatics to promote mountains of disinformation disgorged by global oil, gas and coal corporations, big agriculture companies, and the logging, mining and transportation interests who, along with politicians, elitists, fabulists and profiteers, seek to convince the public that burning alive in a barren hellscape is not as bad as we think it will be.
Shame, shame, shame on them all.
The truth is that it is relatively easy to dispute climate science because the data are often quite complicated. But in Hot Air, Professor Stott provides readers with clear examples that explain and illuminate these complex findings and make them comprehensible. The author’s discussions of “the hockey stick graph”, Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, Greta Thunberg and Trump were all insightful. The drama of conference presentations was interesting and, at times, surprising. But perhaps most surprising was that before each IPCC report is released, scientists and world delegates go through a painstaking process of approving each and every word in every sentence, words such as “substantial”, “likely” and “unequivocal” — despite the efforts of delegates from nations such as Saudi Arabia that have a vested interest in derailing or diluting the message to preserve the status quo. Such a difficult task faced by climate scientists in particular!
This perceptive and entertaining book is a must-read for everyone, but especially those who are inclined to believe the absurd, baseless claims of climate deniers and other anti-science nutters despite evidence to the contrary. For example, according to NASA, all ten of the hottest years on record have occurred since 2005 (ref); with the hottest five since 2015. But there is time — a tiny fleeting window of opportunity — to avert the worst effects of climate change, but we all must aggressively demand immediate action from our leaders — and from the world’s elites. This timely book is a clarion call to all of us to act to save our planet and ourselves and our grandchildren.
Award-winning singer-songwriter Mariah Carey recently sold out an upcoming show at Madison Square Garden. But she remembers times when she wasn’t quite as popular.
Her debut picture book, “The Christmas Princess,” features the theme of bullying, which she said was important because it was part of her childhood reality.
“And because I did not fit in with one specific group … because I wasn’t taught how to understand that I actually was okay to just be me,” Carey told CBS News.
The book, released November 1, begins with a letter to her younger self, who she calls “a wonderful, one-of-a-kind wonder.”
“I know you may not feel that way right now because you don’t have a ‘normal’ name like Katie or Julie,” the letter in the book reads, “and most people don’t even know how to pronounce Mariah (though it’s not even that hard).”
“I know a lot of people put you down because of your clothes, your house, and your hair, and try to make you feel ‘other.’”
“But I want to tell you this truth: no matter what things look like now, you are worthy and deserving of all the attention, love, protections, care, conditioner, and fancy dresses in the whole wide world,” it reads.
She added in the letter that “multitudes of people” will some day know her name and that little girls will actually be named after her, referencing times in her past when “Mariah” was mispronounced.
“You’d have a substitute teacher and they would come in, and they were taking attendance and everybody’s name was easy to pronounce, and mine was always a drama and I dreaded [it,]” she said. “It was that dreadful moment.”
The entertainer, dubbed by some as “the Queen of Christmas,” is returning to Madison Square Garden on December 13 and 16 this year for her newly announced show, “Merry Christmas to All.” The first night of the show sold out in an hour.
“I do need to take it in,” she said. “I’m doing a new couple of sections, things fans have been asking for that I haven’t performed yet.”
The show will be featured in another Christmas special titled “Mariah Carey: Merry Christmas to All” that will exclusively air on CBS on December 20.
Carey says Christmas time is “absolutely” her favorite of the year, and that her 11-year-old twins’ Monroe and Moroccan enjoy the holiday as well.
“They love it, too,” she said. “And they love, you know, the other times of the year that I try to make fun things happen. It’s all about me giving them what I really wanted, which was just to do all the things that the other kids got to do. So, I just want them to know that it’s special.”
Carey was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2020. She says writing music is “the greater gift.”
“I see myself as a songwriter first,” she said. “…Because it’s like hearing music and then being able to articulate it and create that. And I also love writing and being able to use it as a personal form of healing and expression.”
The author and musician over the years has also added another title to her career: “diva.”
“I thought it just meant fabulous,” she said, adding that she feels indifferent to the name.
“I understand it in the way it’s said, you know, in the context of what it is,” she said. “But if they’re like ‘diva Mariah Carey.’ I’m like, ‘Alright, whatever, yeah, great. That’s me,” she said.
While Amazon’s big Lord of the Rings show probably wasn’t the success anyone involved in bankrolling or promoting it might have been hoping for, there was still some good stuff there, and one of the big things that I wanted to focus on for this post was the work that went into designing its world.
While we’ve seen Middle Earth a bunch of times on the screen, from 70s cartoons to Peter Jackson’s six films, there were a bunch of places in this prequel series that we’d only ever heard of. From the island kingdom of Numenor to the Southlands to the Harfoot’s travelling village, the team of artists—headed by Rick Heinrichs and Ramsey Avery—working on Rings of Power were tasked with taking a world we thought we knew and showing us, well, you haven’t seen all of it, or at least not when it was this old.
In this slideshow you’ll find a selection of works from some of the artists responsible for this, primarily the ones working in 2D on stuff like concepts and environment design. There are links to each artist’s portfolios in their names, displayed at the top of each slide.
So, you want to write a novel. There’s a book (or ten thousand) for that. Some are bland, and dull, and formulaic. The ones on this list are none of those things. Most are memoirs and essay collections that sneak craft advice in through the back door: there’s literary criticism and personal narrative and close reading, and along the way theories of tone and narrative sink in as though by osmosis. But even the theoretically straight craft books here do much more than serve up packaged plot structures; they’re as pleasurable to peruse as they are useful. They use published work as examples—Russian classics, contemporary poetry, slick crime thrillers—to nudge one into better reading and writing. (I have yet to find something more consistently inspiring than reading books so good they make me jealous.) Most are books to which I referred during the long, solitary slog of writing my own first novel, or ones I wish I’d had. There’s also one on the art of creative nonfiction, and one that tackles everything that comes after the actual writing of the manuscript. As one might say but should never write: variety is the spice of life.
All products featured on Vanity Fair are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
This is an opinion editorial by James Collins, a financial professional with experience in various asset classes.
As I sit here writing this piece, I search for the words to best describe my thoughts on the present state of the world. I couldn’t seem to find words to express my vantage point until I landed on Clockwork Orange. Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 dystopian crime thriller, “A Clockwork Orange,” presents ranging views of individualism and freewill to authoritarianism and force. The parallels between some people’s idea that we are headed toward a global totalitarian state known as the “Great Reset” and the intense level of response to the blatant use of force by The State and power in numbers expressed in the counterforce of the “Great Awakening” fit firmly in the scripting of “A Clockwork Orange.” We have a heightened global awareness of these buzz words like Great Reset and Great Awakening, but what I believe is the best descriptor of these connected, yet conflicting, ideas of global magnitude is the “Great Confusion.”
The Great Confusion stems from an underlying absence of the inverse, which is clarity. I believe if we as humans desire to grow as a species, we must sync to a global baseline level of objective truth or 100% clarity.
“Bitcoin, Clockwork Orange” is my musing on how clarity through money removes us from the “Great Confusion.”
To find clarity, we must sync to a global baseline of objective truth. What can we use as the baseline? It must be something that everyone can agree on, regardless of spoken language and geographical location, like mathematics and physics. Whether in the United States or El Salvador, two plus two will always equal four, and there is no place on earth where humans can jump off a building and fly; gravity will win. These objective truths are the perfect baseline for humans to build upon as a strong base layer.
“Mathematics is the base layer of language” — @FossGregFoss
On January 3, 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto released a decentralized system of peer-to-peer electronic cash in the form of Bitcoin, and that has changed our world forever, giving humanity clarity in the form of money. The Bitcoin network and its unit of account, bitcoin, flips upside down everything we once knew about finance. The time-value of money is the core principle of finance — that money today is worth more than money tomorrow. The current time-value of money only exists because a central authority can alter the volume of currency within an economic system at any time. Due to the central control of money creation, the saying is that governments can always print more money to handle their debts, so they have a risk-free rate. This risk-free rate is the base rate added when layering other risk factors when analyzing an investment in other bonds or equities. A central authority’s ability to alter the underlying money supply and affect these rates means they can affect everything in an economy and completely distort price signals. If looked at through its most sinister lens, controlled issuance of money supply in traditional finance is how central authorities keep their population on the road to serfdom; people work exponentially more onerous for a currency growing exponentially weaker, thereby being robbed of their time expressed through destroyed purchasing power.
“Finance is the time value of money. Bitcoin is the monetary value of time.” — @Lisa_Hough_
Satoshi Nakamoto solved the ills associated with time theft through currency debasement by discovering absolute scarcity using technologies that leverage the objective truth of mathematics and physics to back a natively digital supply by time itself, the only absolutely scarce asset we possess. Paraphrasing the work outlined in Chapter 2, Bitcoin is Time in Gigi’s “21 Lessons,” the Bitcoin Network is a decentralized timestamping server that uses asymmetric cryptography to create causality in cyberspace. Those causal events (known data needed to create a hash of that known data which is linked to the next block) link together by giving them meaning through entropy or the randomness, in the form of no one in a decentralized system knowing who is going to win the next block reward and which transaction will be hashed into a block to create the particular Merkel root defining a point in time that resembles an absolute now in the digital realm. Discovering a method of determining the “now” or “time” in a decentralized adversarial system is what allowed Satoshi Nakamoto to solve the centralization of time-keeping of the ledger to prevent double spending, as well as definable “time” in cyberspace, which is necessary for the determination of “when” transactions occurred.
(Bitcoin is simply a transaction-based ledger where the transactions are the spreading of ownership of the units of time encapsulated in bits called satoshis by signing continuous digital signatures to this append-only distributed timestamp server). The entropy of asymmetric cryptography creates an irreversible arrow of this “now” time, creating a legitimate past, present and unknown future. As mentioned, the objective truth of physics also comes into play through the unpredictability expressed through the same asymmetric cryptography in mathematics applied to the physical exertion of energy within proof-of-work consensus to solve the cryptographic puzzle, therefore emitting more bitcoin into circulation. Proof-of-work is essential to the underlying value of bitcoin because it runs physical computation, the only native form of energy transfer in the digital realm with no way to cheat it. Through an asymmetric cryptographic function, proof-of-work creates a scenario where the time taken to brute force the answer over the almost nonexistent time to verify the findings is expressed via computationally time-derived bits.
Finally, Nakamoto utilized the difficulty adjustment in block height or Bitcoin’s native clock to connect this computational work of time-exertion back to our physical world by using a cryptanalytically stable problem, allowing for a speed limit on the time expressed between our physical world (an average 10-minute block time) and the digital realm (a difficulty adjustment every 2016 blocks). The finality of this time-derived speed limit connecting our physical world to the digital world allows the absolutely scarce hard-cap of 21 million bitcoin expressed in the Bitcoin Core source code to be upheld.
No matter how much energy or computation you throw at the network, you can not speed up the emission schedule, and more energy does not mean more bitcoin; bitcoins underlying value is not computation through energy intensity but computation through energy exertion measuring the time asymmetry made possible through one-way cryptography.
“When you have scarcity in money, you have abundance in everything else.” — @JeffBooth
In conclusion, humanity is in the midst of the Great Confusion — some people think we are headed towards a Great Reset while others believe we are in a Great Awakening — and some don’t care. This lack of focus and attention is due to overwhelming noise and misdirection.
The signal we are looking for can be found at the depths of our oldest social structure, money, which has now been transformed through objective truth in mathematics and physics into the perfect signal. Bitcoin leverages that perfection to invert everything we know about finance and money. Satoshi Nakamoto used objective truth in mathematics and physics to bridge a synthetic digital time and space to our physical time and space in a decentralized manner allowing for coordination of when an absolute volume of costly unforgeable bits of digital time interlock with our physical efforts of computation.
The discovery of absolute mathematical scarcity with an intrinsic value of inescapable costliness in the real physical world linked to the heartbeat of a synthetic time in block height controlled by the cryptanalytic stability of the difficulty adjustment, a physical world time-based adjustment, is the most crucial discovery in monetary application of all time. Bitcoin is the unstoppable march of time-derived money wrapped in mathematics and physics, defining a pure price signal. Tick tock next block.
This is a guest post by James Collins. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
LONDON — She’s already been forced to resign as U.K. home secretary once this fall.
And now scandal-hit Suella Braverman — controversially restored to her role by new PM Rishi Sunak just last week — is clinging to her job for a second time over claims she broke the law by holding thousands of undocumented migrants in bleakly unsuitable conditions at a former military base in southeast England.
In a statement to the House of Commons Monday, the Tory hard-liner denied widespread reports that she personally prevented officials from mass-booking hotel rooms for hundreds of asylum seekers who could no longer be hosted at the overcrowded Manston processing facility in Kent. Experts said if proven this could amount to a breach of the ministerial code — a resigning matter.
“Like the majority of the British people I am very concerned about hotels, but I never blocked their usage,” Braverman insisted, as opposition MPs called for her to resign. “As a former attorney general, I know the importance of taking legal advice into account.”
The Manston site is currently holding about 4,000 people, more than three times its maximum capacity of 1,600. Many are being forced to stay far longer than the legally permitted 24 hours. Reports suggest hundreds are sleeping on bare floors, and that disease is rife.
David Neal, the U.K. government’s independent chief inspector of borders and immigration, told MPs last week he was left speechless by the “wretched conditions.” He revealed some migrants from Afghanistan had been held in a marquee for 32 days, though the facility is designed only to host people for a maximum 24 hours while they undergo checks before being transferred to detention centers or hotels.
The crisis has been triggered by a huge increase in the number of undocumented migrants attempting to cross the English Channel — numbering nearly 40,000 so far this year, according to Ministry of Defense figures. On Sunday alone some 468 people made the dangerous journey in eight boats, the MoD said.
Since leaving the EU, the U.K. has been asking for a bilateral deal with France and the wider EU bloc to return those crossing the Channel to the first country deemed safe they enter into. So far, none has been forthcoming.
“The system is broken,” Braverman admitted. “Illegal migration is out of control and too many people are more interested in playing political parlor games, covering up the truth, rather than solving the problem.”
She said the Home Office is currently negotiating extra accommodation for undocumented migrants with private providers and considering “all available options” to tackle overcrowding at processing centers in the U.K.
She also told MPs she was “appalled” to learn, on her first appointment as home secretary in September, that there were “over 35,000 migrants” staying in hotels around the U.K. at an “exorbitant cost” to the British taxpayer. She instigated an urgent review into alternative options, she said, but that the department has continued procuring hotel rooms in the meantime.
But earlier Monday, local Conservative MP Roger Gale described the overcrowding at the Manston facility as “wholly unacceptable” and suggested the situation may have been allowed to happen “deliberately.”
“I was told that the Home Office was finding it very difficult to secure hotel accommodation,” he said. “I now understand this was a policy issue, and that a decision was taken not to book additional hotel space.”
The accusations add to the pressure on the home secretary, whose return to the Cabinet last week was widely questioned given she had been forced to quit only six days earlier after being caught using her personal email account to share sensitive government documents.
A Home Office review published Monday found Braverman sent six Home Office documents to her personal email address between September 15 and October 16. One was then forwarded on to a backbench ally for his perusal — a clear breach of security rules.
Striking a defiant tone, Braverman admitted to having made mistakes but insisted the broader claims about her conduct were a conspiracy to keep her out of high office. She told MPs that some people would like to “get rid” of her, adding: “Let them try.”
A Braverman ally conceded the home secretary is “in great difficulty” but warned she had “deliberately put in an impossible position by those who would rather her not to hang around.”
“The pressure is not easing in any way, and I think it may be too much for her.”
The publication date for Prince Harry’s long-anticipated memoir has been revealed – but sadly, you won’t be able to add it to your Christmas list.
The memoir – which was originally pencilled in for autumn 2022 – was delayed following the death of the Queen in September. It is now due for publication on January 10, 2023.
Now, the publisher Penguin Random House has revealed the title of the book, Spare, and the cover, which shows an up-close image of the Duke of Sussex.
“With its raw, unflinching honesty, Spare is a landmark publication full of insight, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief,” the newly-launched website for the book reads.
Harry is described as “a husband, father, humanitarian, military veteran, mental wellness advocate, and environmentalist.”
“He resides in Santa Barbara, California, with his family and three dogs,” his author bio adds.
There’s been wild speculation about what the book will include, with a recent article from the Daily Mail predicting it will voice “bombshell after bombshell”. Here’s what else we know so far.
What can we expect from the book?
The memoir was first announced by publisher Penguin Random House last summer, who described it as “an intimate and heartfelt memoir from one of the most fascinating and influential global figures of our time”.
“Prince Harry will share, for the very first time, the definitive account of the experiences, adventures, losses, and life lessons that have helped shape him,” they said in a press release at the time.
“Covering his lifetime in the public eye from childhood to the present day, including his dedication to service, the military duty that twice took him to the frontlines of Afghanistan, and the joy he has found in being a husband and father, Prince Harry will offer an honest and captivating personal portrait, one that shows readers that behind everything they think they know lies an inspiring, courageous, and uplifting human story.”
At the time, Harry said he was writing the book “not as the prince I was born but as the man I have become”.
“I’ve worn many hats over the years, both literally and figuratively, and my hope is that in telling my story—the highs and lows, the mistakes, the lessons learned—I can help show that no matter where we come from, we have more in common than we think,” he added.
“I’m deeply grateful for the opportunity to share what I’ve learned over the course of my life so far and excited for people to read a firsthand account of my life that’s accurate and wholly truthful.”
It’s been widely speculated that the publication of the memoir was delayed due to the death of the Queen on September 8. It’s thought the memoir will now include extra writing where Harry reflects more specifically on the life and legacy of his grandmother.
The world of ecommerce is increasingly lucrative and is one of the best ways to be your own boss, pursue your passions and connect with others. However, it can be difficult to know where to start — or if you have started, how to scale.
The Ultimate Guide To Shopify by Jason R. Rich from Entrepreneur Press provides all the tools, resources and step-by-step guidance needed to jumpstart and run your own ecommerce business that’s built to thrive. The book walks you through how to get started and shares proven marketing strategies to boost sales, exclusive interviews from industry experts and dozens of other resources to facilitate a successful online business.
The Ultimate Guide To Shopify breaks down the process every step of the way — from getting started to ultimately running the business successfully — so that no matter where you are in your entrepreneurial journey, you can excel with tools, strategies and insight from those who have cracked the code of utilizing Shopify to expand their brands.
POWAY, Calif., October 24, 2022 (Newswire.com)
– Before 1997, transgender workers were routinely fired when their employers found out they were changing their sex. That changed on Oct. 28, 1997, when Lucent Technologies became the first Fortune 500 company to formally commit that it would not discriminate based on “gender identity, characteristics, or expression”. Dr. Mary Ann Horton, who instigated the change, has written a memoir, Trailblazer: Lighting the Path for Transgender Inclusion in Corporate America. “When I led transgender-101 workshops, my personal story was people’s favorite part. They wanted more, and Trailblazer is the result,” said Horton. “It will be released on the 25th anniversary, Oct. 28.”
Horton was a software technology worker at Lucent in Columbus, Ohio, when Lucent added the language. It allowed Mary Ann, then known as Mark, to come out in the workplace without fear of reprisal. When she didn’t need to spend energy hiding part of herself, her productivity soared, and she was promoted. Three years later, she persuaded Lucent to cover gender-confirming medical care in their health insurance. She blazed the trail for Apple, Avaya, Xerox, IBM, Chase, and other companies to follow.
Nokia, who acquired Alcatel-Lucent in 2015, will celebrate the 25th anniversary of their groundbreaking policy this Oct. 28, with a flurry of social media announcements.
Dr. Mary Ann Horton is a transgender activist, author, internet pioneer and computer architect. She earned her PhD in Computer Science from UC Berkeley, where she invented the email attachment for binary files. She spent 20 years with Bell Labs/Lucent and retired from San Diego Gas & Electric, where she helped protect the power grid from hackers. Her 1997 work with Lucent Technologies adding trans-inclusive language and health benefits earned her the Trailblazer Outie Award from Out & Equal. Visit her website at maryannhorton.com.
