Male authors outweigh female writers on President Obama’s summer reading list. What terrific books by women do you recommend the president—and all men readers—give a try?...

Bookmarked this week: Not the end of the world but a change in human consciousness; The people behind a long history of chemical pollution; And friendship beyond borders.

One man’s obsessive hobby is to write the world’s longest, most complex palindromes...

Check out the best zines at this year’s gathering of the underground publishing community...

Allen Ezell and John Bear investigate the $500 million fake diploma industry, and what's being done to stop it.

Read the fascinating story of Jack Earle (real name, Jake Erlich), whose 8-foot-6-inch frame supported a uniquely courageous soul that proved to be giant in more ways than one.

Eager to get writing—and willing to be a little daring? History’s most prolific authors provide effectively eccentric tips for curing writer’s block. Think rotten apples and no clothes….

This week: Pete Seeger's letters, Rome's last citizen, and living with dementia.

We may not know where the Libyan dictator is hiding or what he’s doing to keep busy, but we sure can imagine...

This week: a history of the sea, creativity in the face of climate change, and the urban population bomb.

A grassroots project to build 2,510 two-foot by two-foot libraries (one more than Andrew Carnegie) promotes community and literacy in equal measure…

We love to share writing that connects us with our core, but what happens when others don't get it?

This week in Bookmarked: a Spiritual Renegade's Guide to the Good Life, a Brief History of Plant Domestication, Shareholder Values, Dispatches from Afghanistan, and a Forecast for Our Future

Remembering lost love and hoping they remember you, too.

Minnesota publishers take a cue from coffee shops with a new Literary Punch Card...

This week in Bookmarked: averting global collapse, New Orleans on the rebound, and the West's resurgent war on Islam.

Author Rachel Eddey shares how her struggle to find an editor for her first book coincided with her father's heart attack and emergency sextuple bypass surgery.

Poet Bei Dao complains that modern literature is uninspired—and calls for a new generation of smart readers to reignite the art....

Bestselling author Julia Alvarez fulfills "One of those big-hearted promises you make that you never think you'll be called on to deliver someday."

When it comes to mansplaining, don't let facts get in the way.

This week in Bookmarked: dispatches from the frontlines of the food revolution, how the rich starve the poor, and insights into the nature of our universe.

Journalist Will Potter delves into the social, political, legal, and ethical issues raised by the war on “ecoterrorism”...

Katherine Cole dispels the alchemy of biodynamic wine growing...

A new essay collection examines the 9/11 tragedy from a philosophical distance...

A writer explores how fact and fiction might profitably be collided together...

This week in Bookmarked: India's innovators, life without cars, and Palahniuk's take on fashion magazines.

Half a century later, can the legacy of Ernest Hemingway escape his suicide?...

Independent booksellers may begin charging admission for author events. But should they?...

Read excerpts from Richard C. Carrier's Proving History, Stephen Grace's Dam Nation, and David Talbot's Season of the Witch.

The next issue of Longshot is about to go into production, and they need your help...

Is it possible for an American novelist to write an authentic 9/11 novel?...

For 23 years, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp family has included the leading seller of the best-selling book in history...

A 1969 letter from a mother and graduate student to a college friend betrays the dueling roles of homemaker and careerist—and the unguarded intimacy of the epistolary genre.

Get lost in the stacks of a bookstore on the down low in New York’s Upper East Side…

 

Uncover the mystery of why a national treasure, the Aleppo Codex, was smuggled from Syria to Jerusalem and how some of the most important pages went missing.

Learn about Chuck Palahniuk’s creative revision of “Invisible Monsters” in this excerpt of the introduction to “Invisible Monsters Remix.”

Cursive handwriting is at a crossroads, with Indiana canceling it from the state curriculum in favor of keyboarding. But researchers say handwriting stimulates the brain and increases reading ability in a way touch-typing does not.

The Academy of American Poets presents poems for the 4th of July...

When his girlfriend’s grandparents’ have wireless router problems, a young computer buff turns a lesson in how to fix wi-fi into an epic tale.

What does it mean when a famous contemporary novelist — often praised for the precision of his prose — makes careless errors in his depiction of the natural world?...

The Etymologicon offers up a witty dose of insight into the curiosities of the English Language.

Margot Page's educational family trip to Nicaragua may be a lesson for us all.

The main character of this unique book finds himself obsessing over trees.

How negotiable is a fact in nonfiction?

At the last almshouse in the United States, health care is almost unrecognizably hospitable.

In 1927, a woman named Lillian Alling supposedly began traveling from New York City to Russia by foot and by boat with her only friend, a stuffed Tahltan Bear Dog.

The Canadian writer’s richly poetic story collection about the radical anti-establishment of the 1970s comes to life in a celebrated first U.S. printing.

Mark Phillips tries to understand the fleeting nature of time, looking particularly to his daughter and grandmother for answers. (Don’t miss Grandma’s spot-on response.) Do you belong to the “time has slipped away” camp or the “don’t carpe diem me” camp?...

Michael Huesemann & Joyce Huesemann believe technology won't save us or the environment, but rather hastens collapse.

Pick up J. D. Salinger’s teenage classic as an adult. No, really, it’s worth it.

Some tips and humorous insights for reentering the workforce after long-term unemployment

After growing up in a house of hoarders, a young woman channels her inner neat-freak.

Telling the truth sounds easy, but social and professional expectations increasingly dictate how honest we can be with one another.

An essayist writes the most beautifully vivid description of a pre-seizure aura that we have ever read: “In those weird seconds…everything that was happening, every detail, every sight, sound and smell, seemed to have happened before in the exact same order and sequence. I became intensely aware of things: the trees, the angle of sun, the curvature of the road….”

The Infinite Resource comprehensively offers the facts of our crisis, emphasizes its criticality, and moves along toward crafty innovation ideas, encouraging the employment of our most powerful resource: our minds.

Learn how the history of the westward expansion will never be accurate due to the differing accounts of historical giants, literary figures and the common people.

Read about one author’s intertwining relationships between women and cats.

Read this clear-sighted social critique on karaoke culture by Dubravka Ugresic

Check out this breakdown of US economic relationships and a subsidized market by Thomas M. Kostigen

The beauty industry is campaigning to eradicate breast cancer while including chemicals in beauty products that may be contributing to the rise of the disease.

An expert describes how to make a sno-cone—safely.

Minister Steven Greenebaum calls to unite religions through our common belief in social justice.

The first person to reach the South Pole lived an extraordinary life, now highlighted in a thrilling literary biography. 

In this how-to on building genuine wealth, economist Mark Anielski examines our current measures of wealth and develops a more practical model encompassing health, relationships, and meaningful work.

The Blackwing 602 pencil made by Eberhard Faber won a legion of devoted fans including John Steinbeck, Stephen Sondheim, and Chuck Jones, but disappeared in 1998. The legend lives on, though, through the Palomino Blackwing 602, a pencil many enthusiasts say is the next best thing to a vintage example.

While reading “1Q84,” one man realizes how great fiction revitalizes us

A newly debuted online bookstore for men relies on a doofus vision of masculinity (fart jokes, oddball mustaches, and sexy comic women). What literary novels or memoirs do you recommend for real men readers?...

Reminiscing on an adolescence of fishing Cape Cod with Great-Uncle Eddie.

The founder of the first Arabic erotic magazine urges the wider world to rethink their ideas about Arabic feminity...

William Ian Miller draws on his academic career to pick apart America's mythology around growing old...

Cynthia Barnett warns of our impending water crisis—and suggests how we might avoid it...

Revisit five of the best articles that we gleaned from the alternative press this year...

A not-so-serious tutorial on the art of seductive verse...

Avant-garde poet Kenneth Goldsmith’s modest mission in life is to completely uproot our understanding of literature...

Remembering Harlem, when a sense of community trumped corporate greed...

When it comes to modern-day correspondence, the mystery is gone...

Love letters reveal the inner spirit of Norway’s greatest humanitarian...

Author Stéphane Gerson discusses the life of "the modern prophet of doom" and traces the varied interpretations of Nostradamus' writing across the centuries.

Welcome to the weird world of dictator lit. Originally published in the January-February 2005 issue of Utne Reader...

This week in Bookmarked: The Monks and Me, Fierce Medicine, and You Can Buy Happiness (and It's Cheap)

This week in Bookmarked: Arctic Voices and Civic Empowerment in an Age of Corporate Greed.

A family’s river farm struggles to survive as a strained relationship between father and son becomes more bitter.

This week in Bookmarked: At Liberty to Die, The Long Shadows, and MAO: The Real Story

Stephanie Barber writes verse in an unexpected, sensuous medium: grass...

Civil War ghosts collide with memories of a high school friend...

A travel writer tours the Libyan heartland during the Arab Spring...

This week in Bookmarked: The Endless Crisis: How Monopoly-Finance Capital Leads to Economic Stagnation and Killer Stuff and Tons of Money: Appreciating Finds at a Flea Market.

Why do our favorite progressive writers flock to corporate publishers? Originally published in the May-June 2005 issue of Utne Reader…

A rant about teeth, dentists, jealous love, and sweet revenge.

Having grown up living on welfare with an alcoholic mother in a nonreligious household, Andrea Kott struggles with her Jewish identity.

Passionate love letters between feminist author Brenda Ueland and Norwegian hero explorer Fridtjof Nansen form the heart of Eric Utne’s new book. The private nature of the letters, along with nude photos of Nansen, have set off a scandal in Norway….

If you’re quick to dismiss The Lizard King as nothing more than “a hokey caricature of male rock stardom” an essay by author Daniel Nester may change your mind. Maybe...

 

This week in Bookmarked: Teaching in the Terrordome, Live a Good Life in a Nursing Home, and Mr. President.

Peter Toohey's history of melancholy demonstrates that boredom’s roots are primal—and not just existential whining...

Maya Roads witnesses the history of a people and reveals the determination of Maya descendants to live in and of the rainforest...

There are plenty of people who wear morbidity and fatalism as an aesthetic pose, but most are mere dabblers when compared to the 1880s literary movement known as decadence…

Michael Bronski analyzes everything from the construction of U.S. masculinity and white supremacy to shifts in gender roles from 1492 to the present...

A literary team has collected—and cleared permission to reprint—6,000 of Hemingway’s previously unpublished letters. The first volume reveals an intimate portrait of the writer far more accurate than any biography….

Poets resist anti-immigration laws with defiance, beauty, and social media...

Topics bookmarked this week: the trials of voting while Hispanic and a portrait of unemployment during the Great Depression.

Experience the disheartening first impressions of Southwestern High School, a.k.a. the “Terrordome,” through the eyes of a Teach For America member.

Censorship is only fun when it’s well-deserved...

Acclaimed author Susan Orlean explains her many reasons for being a writer.

Differences in common phrases and censorship from communist Romania to capitalist New York reveal a link between language, thought, and the power of words.

Every story has a beginning. This is the origin story of one of the greatest literary voices of his generation.

At the turn of the 20th Century, the great race was on to uncover ancient knowledge on the Silk Road.

On a bright blue Saturday in 2003, 4 peacemakers and their driver have nowhere to hide as they race out of Baghdad on the East-West Highway.