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Be Afraid

30 Years to Catastrophe—Bill McKibben’s Mission to Save Us

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That’s all the time we have to dramatically change our consumption of fossil fuels or face catastrophe. Mark Hertsgaard on the new UN report—and how Bill McKibben learned to do something about climate change.

Bill McKibben should feel vindicated today.The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s premier scientific body on the issue, has just endorsed the path-breaking argument he made last year in Rolling Stone that most of the Earth’s remaining fossil fuels must not be burned if civilization is to avoid catastrophic amounts of global warming.Humanity can burn no more than 1 trillion metric tons if it is to have a better than 50-50 chance of limiting average global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the IPCC declared today in the “Summary for Policymakers” of its Fifth Assessment Report on climate science.

When the Music’s Over

Music is My Religion

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Just try sticking a Doors song on an ad for a Buick or deodorant. The band’s drummer John Densmore explains why their music will never be a commodity.

At the risk of sounding grandiose, I will say that, to me, rock ’n’ roll is sacred. It started out mid-twentieth century, and when dirt-poor Elvis bought his first Cadillac, that was his way of “blinging” the uptight ’50s. Sixty years later, I said no to Cadillac, by vetoing the idea of a Doors song becoming the soundtrack to encourage folks to buy cruise mobiles. For all those years a tradition has been building. A tradition built on the idea that this music means something.

Having It All

When Mommy Track Leads To Dead End

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In her new book "Wonder Woman," Barnard president Debora Spar asks why so many women struggle to opt back in after taking time off for motherhood.

In 1989, Felice Schwartz wrote a wildly popular (or at least wildly well read) article in the Harvard Business Review. Entitled “Management Women and the New Facts of Life,” the article argued that if corporations wanted to retain their best and brightest female employees, they needed to create a more flexible and family-friendly workforce, one that offered young mothers a variety of ways to structure their working hours and their careers. High-potential women, Schwartz suggested, fell naturally into one of two camps.

Religious Studies

The Gospel According to Bill O’Reilly

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Jesus was killed because of taxes. That’s more or less the message of Bill O’Reilly’s new book. Professor Candida Moss on what else the Fox host gets wrong—and what he leaves out.

In Killing Jesus: A History, Bill O’Reilly and writing partner Martin Dugard bring us their long-awaited “accurate account of not only how Jesus died, but also the way he lived.” This should settle two millennia of Christian debate. Although it lacks suspense (SPOILER ALERT: he dies), it’s a pretty good read and it’s fleshed out with tidbits about the ancient world.But it should have been called The Gospel of Bill O’Reilly.Here are some of the reasons why.

Books

Leaning Out à la Francaise

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‘Having it all’ the French way means more Brie and less briefcase.

Literacy

How We Read Now

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Phew! The National Endowment for the Arts reports that more than half of all Americans are still reading—and even talking about books. Ten other facts about how we read today.

For those who fear that Americans are abandoning reading, the results of The National Endowment for the Arts 2012 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA), should be encouraging. Americans are reading just as much as they did four years ago, despite the new frontiers of digital media. More than half of all Americans can still find time to read a book, and some even still talk about books with their friends. It’s mostly good news from the NEA—unless you’re a poet.

Book Therapy

How to Cure Your Anxiety

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Always feeling anxious? There’s a cure, and it doesn’t involve drugs, medicinal herbs, or shock therapy. Ella Berthoud and Susan Elderkin recommend reading Henry James’s ‘The Portrait of a Lady.’

To live with anxiety is to live with a leech that saps you of your energy, confidence, and chutzpah. A constant feeling of unease or fearfulness—as opposed to the sense of frustration that characterizes stress—anxiety is both a response to external circumstances and an approach to life. While the external circumstances cannot be controlled, the internal response can. Laughter, or a big intake of oxygen (the former leading to the latter), usually relieves systems at least temporarily, as well as offering an encouragement to relax.

Victory

Board Overturns ‘Invisible Man’ Ban

After controversial decision earlier.

Good decision, it being Banned Books Week and all. The Randolph County school board in North Carolina, which represents some 16,000 students, overturned on Wednesday their controversial Sept. 16 decision to ban Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. The board members had to convene an emergency meeting after they were reportedly inundated with outraged emails.

Read it at The Los Angeles Times

On The Record

Canadian Author ‘Apologizes’ For ‘Women Writers’ Comment

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Says he’s not interested in teaching their books.

Canadian author and University of Toronto literature professor David Gilmour both apologized and defended his “I’m not interested in teaching books by women” comment that was published on Wednesday in the online magazine Hazlitt. Gilmour said he is “extremely sorry to hear that there are people who are really offended,” and characterized the statement as “a careless choice of words.” Gilmour said he was speaking to a French colleague while he was doing the interview, and remembered being more concerned about his French accent than what he was saying to the interviewer. He will not alter his syllabus because “I tend to teach people whose lives are a lot like my own, because that’s what I understand best, and that’s what I teach best.” During the Hazlitt interview he also said, "What I teach is guys. Serious heterosexual guys. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Chekhov, Tolstoy. Real guy-guys. Henry Miller, Philip Roth." Gilmour said that was a joke, and pointed out that he does in fact teach Truman Capote.

Read it at The National Post

No Reservations

Food Fight!

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‘From Scratch,” a new tell-all history of the Food Network, details the many egos that have clashed on the channel, from Anthony Bourdain trashing everyone to Guy Fieri’s alleged ‘minority’ problems. We speedread the book for the biggest fights.

From journalist Allen Salkin comes From Scratch, a new tell-all history of the Food Network that details the egos, and feuds of the people that made a fledgling upstart a cable TV empire. The precipitous fall of Paula Deen earlier this year wasn’t the first time celebrity chefs found themselves in the midst of scandal. It wasn’t even the first time for Deen. As messy as making food is, making food on TV is messier. Anthony Bourdain vs. Paula Deen After Deen’s 2012 diabetes scandal, an audience member at a food festival asked Anthony Bourdain if the constant smoking on his own program was comparable to Deen’s gratuitous use of butter.

TWITTER LOSSES

In Defense of Jonathan Franzen

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Jonathan Franzen is in a fracas over his comments deploring our literary culture, Amazon, and social media. Michelle Goldberg defends the novelist—and says we should admit we’re losing something important to the Internet.

The Internet gets very angry if you criticize it. Earlier this month, as you probably know, Jonathan Franzen published a nearly 6,500-word lament, modestly titled “What’s Wrong With the Modern World,” about the eclipse of literary culture by a digital swarm of “yakkers and tweeters and braggers.” The reason you probably know this is because the piece was so widely mocked and reviled. “Jonathan Franzen Misses the Old Days, When Women Couldn’t Tweet Back,” Amanda Hess wrote in Slate.

Serious Gaming

Can Videogames Heal Soldiers?

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The military has a major investment in ‘serious’ videogames and is using them to treat PTSD. Corey Mead writes about the treatment’s successes and the benefits of gaming.

The game goes like this: You are Spc. Kyle Norton, a 19-year-old Midwesterner whose life has begun to spiral downward following a bomb-disposal assignment in Iraq. Already beset by financial difficulties, you receive a surprise email from your fiancée, who announces that she has become pregnant by another man. Still reeling from this news, you learn that your best friend has just been killed in an ambush. As these scenarios unfold, questions appear on your videoscreen, prompting you to decide whether, as Norton, you should seek help for these issues.

Book of the Dead

‘One Relishes the Pain’

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The English novelist Julian Barnes lost his wife several years ago, and in ‘Levels of Life’ he writes his way through grief. Adam Begley on an unconventional memoir/story/essay.

Joan Didion wrote The Year of Magical Thinking in the twelve months following the death of her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne; Antonia Fraser was nearly as speedy with Must You Go? My Life with Harold Pinter; and Joyce Carol Oates’ A Widow’s Story was mostly composed of raw journal entries from the early weeks and months after the death of her editor husband. Julian Barnes is the outlier in the mini-trend of grieving writers lamenting late literary spouses: He waited a full four years before offering us Levels of Life, a memorial to his wife of three decades, Pat Kavanagh, a London literary agent.

Video

Philippa Gregory: What Are You Reading?

‘The White Queen’ author Philippa Gregory usually doesn’t read historical fiction, a genre she’s mastered. But she’s making an exception for two books.

Yikes

‘Real Housewives’ Star’s Book Condones Rape

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Called ‘Love Italian Style.’

Melissa Gorga, star of the reality show Real Housewives of New Jersey, has published a relationship-advice book based on her marriage to fellow housewife Teresa Giudice’s brother, Joe, and her recipes for “love Italian style” sound more like a nightmare. Jezebel got its hands on a copy and excerpted it, and the result is a portrait of a near-abusive relationship. Gems from her husband include: “Men, I know you think your woman isn't the type who wants to be taken. But trust me, she is. Every girl wants to get her hair pulled once in a while. If your wife says ‘no,’ turn her around, and rip her clothes off. She wants to be dominated.” Gorga also writes, “If it's a hard ‘no,’ I try to be nice about it. Don’t swat him away, or say with a tone, ‘Leave me alone!’ Eventually he will leave you alone at more than you wish he would.” Mamma mia.

Read it at Jezebel

Nostalgia

Aristotle in the Summertime

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The seasons are changing, but let’s linger for a moment on those books that capture one summer day. From Bellow to Woolf, Matt Seidel on the mystical workings of just 24 hours.

Summer is slipping from our grasp, but before turning our back on those lazy, reading-filled hours, we should take one last, elegiac look at those radiant works structured around summer’s essence: the long, seemingly unending day. That summer’s lease hath all too short a date is all the more reason to memorialize its incomparable days. One such memorial is The Infinities, John Banville’s playful take on Greek myth and multiverse theory. “God…is there anything duller than a summer afternoon?” says the beautiful actress Helen.

Solitude

How I Write: Jonathan Lethem

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The author of the new novel ‘Dissident Gardens’ talks about the MacArthur ‘genius’ grant, being a Mets fan, and working in a walk-in closet.

NC: Describe your morning routine. JL: OK, so my morning routine. Well, my life is totally dictated by the presence of these two wonderfully little boys. I have a 6-year-old and a 3-year-old. They are insane early risers, which forces me to trump them. When I was writing Dissident Gardens, which was the last really good roll I got on, when I was in the full grip of it and needed to work substantially on it every day, I’d get up at 3 or 4 in the morning.

Oops

MacArthur ‘Genius’ Grant Winners Leak

Accidentally by Mississippi’s Sun Herald.

It’s Christmas come early for recipients of the MacArthur “genius” grant. Ahead of the foundation’s press embargo, The Sun Herald accidentally published the list of this year’s “genius” grant recipients, a glaring mistake made even more obvious by the caption under their photo, which reads “hold for release at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday.” All of the 24 winners, which vary from jazz composers to organic chemists, will receive $625,000 over the course of the next five years—money that they can spend on, virtually, whatever they want. Among the winners is the 32-year-old author of Swamplandia!, Karen Russell. 

Read it at Gawker

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The Big Idea

Philippa Gregory: What Are You Reading?

The White Queen author Philippa Gregory usually doesn’t read historical fiction, a genre she’s mastered. But she’s making an exception for two books.

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