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In Praise of the Telescopic Perspective: A Reflection on Living Through Turbulent Times

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In Praise of the Telescopic Perspective: A Reflection on Living Through Turbulent Times

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It has been a difficult year - politically, personally. Through it all, I have found solace in taking a more telescopic view - not merely on the short human timescale of my own life, looking back on having lived through a Communist dictatorship and having seen poems composed and scientific advances made under such tyrannical circumstances, but on far vaster scales of space and time.

When I was growing up in Bulgaria, a great point of national pride - and we Bulgarians don't have too many - was that an old Bulgarian folk song had sailed into space aboard the Voyager spacecraft, the 1977 mission NASA launched with the scientific objective of photographing the planets of the outer solar system, which furnished the very first portrait of our cosmic neighborhood. Human eyes had never before been laid on the arresting aquamarine of Uranus, on Neptune's stunning deep-blue orb, on the splendid fury of Jupiter's Great Red Spot - a storm more than threefold the size of our entire planet, raging for three hundred years, the very existence of which dwarfs every earthly trouble.

But the Voyager also had another, more romantic mission. Aboard it was the Golden Record - a time-capsule of the human spirit encrypted in binary code on a twelve-inch gold-plated copper disc, containing greetings in the fifty-four most populist human languages and one from the humpback whales, 117 images of life on Earth, and a representative selection of our planet's sounds, from an erupting volcano to a kiss to Bach - and that Bulgarian folk song.

Bulgaria is an old country - fourteen centuries old, five of which were spent under Ottoman yoke. This song, sung by generations of shepherdesses, encodes in its stunning vocal harmonies both the suffering and the hope with which people lived daily during those five centuries. You need not speak Bulgarian in order to receive its message, its essence, its poetic truth beyond the factual details of history, in the very marrow of your being.

Carl Sagan, who envisioned the Golden Record, had precisely that in mind - he saw the music selection as something that would say about us what no words or figures could ever say, for the stated objective of the Golden Record was to convey our essence as a civilization to some other civilization - one that surmounts the enormous improbabilities of finding this tiny spacecraft adrift amid the cosmic infinitude, of having the necessary technology to decode its message and the necessary consciousness to comprehend it.

But the record's unstated objective, which I see as the far more important one, was to mirror what is best of humanity back to itself in the middle of the Cold War, at a time when we seemed to have forgotten who we are to each other and what it means to share this fragile, symphonic planet.

When the Voyager completed its exploratory mission and took the last photograph - of Neptune - NASA commanded that the cameras be shut off to conserve energy. But Carl Sagan had the idea of turning the spacecraft around and taking one final photograph - of Earth. Objections were raised - from so great a distance and at so low a resolution, the resulting image would have absolutely no scientific value. But Sagan saw the larger poetic worth - he took the request all the way up to NASA's administrator and charmed his way into permission.

And so, on Valentine's Day of 1990, just after Bulgaria's Communist regime was finally defeated after nearly half a century of reign, the Voyager took the now-iconic image of Earth known as the "Pale Blue Dot" - a grainy pixel, "a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam," as Sagan so poetically put it when he immortalized the photograph in his beautiful "Pale Blue Dot" monologue from Cosmos - that great masterwork of perspective, a timeless reminder that "everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was... every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician" lived out their lives on this pale blue dot. And every political conflict, every war we've ever fought, we have waged over a fraction of this grainy pixel barely perceptible against the cosmic backdrop of endless lonesome space.

In the cosmic blink of our present existence, as we stand on this increasingly fragmented pixel, it is worth keeping the Voyager in mind as we find our capacity for perspective constricted by the stranglehold of our cultural moment. It is worth questioning what proportion of the news this year, what imperceptible fraction, was devoted to the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics, awarded for the landmark detection of gravitational waves - the single most significant astrophysical discovery since Galileo. After centuries of knowing the universe only by sight, only by looking, we can now listen to it and hear echoes of events that took place billions of lightyears away, billions of years ago - events that made the stardust that made us.

I don't think it is possible to contribute to the present moment in any meaningful way while being wholly engulfed by it. It is only by stepping out of it, by taking a telescopic perspective, that we can then dip back in and do the work which our time asks of us.

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In Praise of the Telescopic Perspective: A Reflection on Living Through Turbulent Times

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It has been a difficult year - politically, personally. Through it all, I have found solace in taking a more telescopic view - not merely on the short human timescale of my own life, looking back on having lived through a Communist dictatorship and having seen poems composed and scientific advances made under such tyrannical circumstances, but on far vaster scales of space and time.

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Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot, Animated in Motion Graphics

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Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot, Animated in Motion Graphics

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Over the years, I've enjoyed my share of animated adaptations of Carl Sagan's iconic Pale Blue Dot monologue, based on the seminal photograph of Earth taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1990.

Now comes a lovely motion graphics adaptation by animation studio ORDER - enjoy, and see if you can hold back the chills.

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'superstar,' every 'supreme leader,' every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity - in all this vastness - there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

Complement this spiritually electrifying ode to our corner of the cosmos with Carl Sagan on science and spirituality.

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Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot, Animated in Motion Graphics

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Over the years, I've enjoyed my share of animated adaptations of Carl Sagan's iconic Pale Blue Dot monologue, based on the seminal photograph of Earth taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1990. Now comes a lovely motion graphics adaptation by animation studio ORDER - enjoy, and see if you can hold back the chills.

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Need more about The Ship of Theseus? Find this concept interesting? Confusing? Visit the Khan Academy and watch this lesson from Jennifer Wang a Professor of Philosophy! Did this further clarify this concept? For even more, watch: The Paradox of Theseus's Ship from 90 second Philosophy!

Are you now wondering, " What is personal identity?" What makes you, YOU? That certainly is a question worth pondering! What if a person has an organ transplant? What if you uploaded your brain to a computer? Would you still be you? Would the computer be you? Read this article and get more to think about! Work your way through this series of notes on The Puzzle of Persisting Personal Identity and maybe you will come to a better understanding!

John Locke also addresses personal identity. Watch this video and get some insight into his ideas too! Follow it up with Part Two and Part Three: Philosophy: John Locke on Personal Identity.

TED Ed also addresses some questions about how you know you actually exist and who "you" really are. Watch the lesson: How do you know you're real? Find paradox's thought provoking? Then watch: What is Zeno's Dichotomy Paradox and The Infinite Hotel Paradox.

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Who am I? A philosophical inquiry - Amy Adkins

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Throughout the history of mankind, the subject of identity has sent poets to the blank page, philosophers to the agora and seekers to the oracles. These murky waters of abstract thinking are tricky to navigate, so it's probably fitting that to demonstrate the complexity, the Greek historian Plutarch used the story of a ship.

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"Which you is 'who'? The person you are today? Five years ago? Who you'll be in fifty years? And when is 'am'? This week? Today? This hour? This second? And which aspect of you is 'I'? Are you your physical body? Your thoughts and feelings? Your actions?"

Throughout our lives, we come to inhabit the seven layers of identity, often interpolating between them and constantly changing within each. And yet somehow, despite this ever-shifting seedbed of personhood, we manage to think of ourselves as concrete selves - our selves. Hardly any perplexity of human existence is more fascinating than the continuity of personal identity - the question of what makes you and your childhood self the "same" person, despite a lifetime of change, from your cells to your values. Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert captured this paradox perfectly: "Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they're finished."

Two millennia before modern psychologists came to tussle with this puzzlement, the great Greek historian and writer Plutarch examined it more lucidly than anyone before or since. In a brilliant thought experiment known as The Ship of Theseus, or Theseus's paradox, outlined (though not for the first or last time) in his biographical masterwork Plutarch's Lives ( | public library), Plutarch asks: If the ship on which Theseus sailed has been so heavily repaired and nearly every part replaced, is it still the same ship - and, if not, at what point did it stop being the same ship?

He writes:

The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same.

In this wonderful animation, the visual educators at TED-Ed - who have previously explored how you know you exist by way of Descartes and the nature of reality by way of Plato - examine the famous thought experiment and how it illuminates the perennial question of who we are:

Which you is "who"? The person you are today? Five years ago? Who you'll be in fifty years? And when is "am"? This week? Today? This hour? This second? And which aspect of you is "I"? Are you your physical body? Your thoughts and feelings? Your actions?

Complement with Hannah Arendt on being vs. appearing and where our thinking ego resides, then revisit other illuminating TED-Ed animations exploring what depression actually feels like, why some people are left-handed, how melancholy enhances creativity, and why playing music benefits your brain more than any other activity.

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The Ship of Theseus: A Brilliant Ancient Thought Experiment Exploring What Makes You You

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Throughout our lives, we come to inhabit the seven layers of identity, often interpolating between them and constantly changing within each. And yet somehow, despite this ever-shifting seedbed of personhood, we manage to think of ourselves as concrete selves - our selves.

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The Most Astounding Fact - Neil deGrasse Tyson

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The Most Astounding Fact - Neil deGrasse Tyson

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The Most Astounding Fact - Neil deGrasse Tyson

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How small are we in the scale of the universe? - Alex Hofeldt

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How small are we in the scale of the universe? - Alex Hofeldt

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Hubble Deep Field Image Credit: R. Williams (STScI), the Hubble Deep Field Team, and NASA.

The Hubble Deep Field images are some of the most iconic images ever taken. Visit NASA.gov for an in-depth and up-to-date reference regarding the image, the telescope, and the spinoff information. Science is a powerful tool to create personal and global changes in our collective society. Read this article from Leah Shafer to learn more about the importance of STEM.

Modern science tells a story. A story written by the grandest minds, people, and technologies. An understanding of images like the eXtreme Deep Field Image connects us to the Cosmos. As we learn more about immense the Universe is, it's natural to wonder about our place in it as a planet, as a species, and as individuals. After all, the probability of each of our existence is vanishingly small.

In closing, look to scientists like Carl Sagan, Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Brian Cox, and Neil deGrasse Tyson for more information. Some great videos to get you started are Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan and The Most Astounding Fact by Neil deGrasse Tyson. Go to Beautiful Dust Specks to listen to Alex Hofeldt's podcast about how ordinary moments of our lives are truly extraordinary.

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How small are we in the scale of the universe? - Alex Hofeldt

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In 1995, scientists pointed the Hubble Telescope at an area of the sky near the Big Dipper. The location was apparently empty, and the whole endeavor was risky - what, if anything, was going to show up? But what came back was nothing short of spectacular: an image of over 1,500 galaxies glimmering in a tiny sliver of the universe.

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Interesting DQ about access to info and how that is what ensures or equals democracy

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Interesting DQ about access to info and how that is what ensures or equals democracy

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I have composed a book. It only took twelve years of Brain Pickings and the most beautiful, difficult, disorienting experience of my personal life.

Figuring (public library) explores the complexities, varieties, and contradictions of love, and the human search for truth, meaning, and transcendence, through the interwoven lives of several historical figures across four centuries - beginning with the astronomer Johannes Kepler, who discovered the laws of planetary motion, and ending with the marine biologist and author Rachel Carson, who catalyzed the environmental movement. Stretching between these figures is a cast of artists, writers, and scientists - mostly women, mostly queer - whose public contribution has risen out of their unclassifiable and often heartbreaking private relationships to change the way we understand, experience, and appreciate the universe. Among them are the astronomer Maria Mitchell, who paved the way for women in science; the sculptor Harriet Hosmer, who did the same in art; the journalist and literary critic Margaret Fuller, who sparked the feminist movement; and the poet Emily Dickinson.

Emanating from these lives are larger questions about the measure of a good life and what it means to leave a lasting mark of betterment on an imperfect world: Are achievement and acclaim enough for happiness? Is genius? Is love? Weaving through the narrative is a set of peripheral figures - Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Darwin, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, Caroline Herschel, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman - and a tapestry of themes spanning music, feminism, the history of science, the rise and decline of religion, and how the intersection of astronomy, poetry, and Transcendentalist philosophy fomented the environmental movement.

Long ago, a kindly interviewer asked me why I routinely declined offers for the types of easy, marketable books I am frequently approached about doing. I told him (please suspend judgment: I was in my twenties) that I had no interest in putting into the world a book that has the shelf life of a banana. I hope Figuring has the shelf life of a shelf.

Here is the prelude - chapter 0 of 29:

All of it - the rings of Saturn and my father's wedding band, the underbelly of the clouds pinked by the rising sun, Einstein's brain bathing in a jar of formaldehyde, every grain of sand that made the glass that made the jar and each idea Einstein ever had, the shepherdess singing in the Rila mountains of my native Bulgaria and each one of her sheep, every hair on Chance's velveteen dog ears and Marianne Moore's red braid and the whiskers of Montaigne's cat, every translucent fingernail on my friend Amanda's newborn son, every stone with which Virginia Woolf filled her coat pockets before wading into the River Ouse to drown, every copper atom composing the disc that carried arias aboard the first human-made object to enter interstellar space and every oak splinter of the floor-boards onto which Beethoven collapsed in the fit of fury that cost him his hearing, the wetness of every tear that has ever been wept over a grave and the sheen of the beak of every raven that has ever watched the weepers, every cell in Galileo's fleshy finger and every molecule of gas and dust that made the moons of Jupiter to which it pointed, the Dipper of freckles constellating the olive firmament of a certain forearm I love and every axonal flutter of the tenderness with which I love her, all the facts and figments by which we are perpetually figuring and reconfiguring reality - it all banged into being 13.8 billion years ago from a single source, no louder than the opening note of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, no larger than the dot levitating over the small i, the I lowered from the pedestal of ego.

How can we know this and still succumb to the illusion of separateness, of otherness? This veneer must have been what the confluence of accidents and atoms known as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., saw through when he spoke of our "inescapable network of mutuality," what Walt Whitman punctured when he wrote that "every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you."

One autumn morning, as I read a dead poet's letters in my friend Wendy's backyard in San Francisco, I glimpse a fragment of that atomic mutuality. Midsentence, my peripheral vision - that glory of instinct honed by millennia of evolution - pulls me toward a miraculous sight: a small, shimmering red leaf twirling in midair. It seems for a moment to be dancing its final descent. But no - it remains suspended there, six feet above ground, orbiting an invisible center by an invisible force. For an instant I can see how such imperceptible causalities could drive the human mind to superstition, could impel medieval villagers to seek explanation in magic and witchcraft. But then I step closer and notice a fine spider's web glistening in the air above the leaf, conspiring with gravity in this spinning miracle.

Neither the spider has planned for the leaf nor the leaf for the spider - and yet there they are, an accidental pendulum propelled by the same forces that cradle the moons of Jupiter in orbit, animated into this ephemeral early-morning splendor by eternal cosmic laws impervious to beauty and indifferent to meaning, yet replete with both to the bewildered human consciousness beholding it.

We spend our lives trying to discern where we end and the rest of the world begins. We snatch our freeze-frame of life from the simultaneity of existence by holding on to illusions of permanence, congruence, and linearity; of static selves and lives that unfold in sensical narratives. All the while, we mistake chance for choice, our labels and models of things for the things themselves, our records for our history. History is not what happened, but what survives the shipwrecks of judgment and chance.

Some truths, like beauty, are best illuminated by the sidewise gleam of figuring, of meaning-making. In the course of our figuring, orbits intersect, often unbeknownst to the bodies they carry - intersections mappable only from the distance of decades or centuries. Facts crosshatch with other facts to shade in the nuances of a larger truth - not relativism, no, but the mightiest realism we have. We slice through the simultaneity by being everything at once: our first names and our last names, our loneliness and our society, our bold ambition and our blind hope, our unrequited and part-requited loves. Lives are lived in parallel and perpendicular, fathomed nonlinearly, figured not in the straight graphs of "biography" but in many-sided, many-splendored diagrams. Lives interweave with other lives, and out of the tapestry arise hints at answers to questions that raze to the bone of life: What are the building blocks of character, of contentment, of lasting achievement? How does a person come into self-possession and sovereignty of mind against the tide of convention and unreasoning collectivism? Does genius suffice for happiness, does distinction, does love? Two Nobel Prizes don't seem to recompense the melancholy radiating from every photograph of the woman in the black laboratory dress. Is success a guarantee of fulfillment, or merely a promise as precarious as a marital vow? How, in this blink of existence bookended by nothingness, do we attain completeness of being?

There are infinitely many kinds of beautiful lives.

So much of the beauty, so much of what propels our pursuit of truth, stems from the invisible connections - between ideas, between disciplines, between the denizens of a particular time and a particular place, between the interior world of each pioneer and the mark they leave on the cave walls of culture, between faint figures who pass each other in the nocturne before the torchlight of a revolution lights the new day, with little more than a half-nod of kinship and a match to change hands.

Cover design by the brilliant Peter Mendelsund; more excerpts from the book here.

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I have composed a book. It only took twelve years of Brain Pickings and the most beautiful, difficult, disorienting experience of my personal life.

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I've spent the last week watching a lot of footage of violence by police officers, starting with the murder of George Floyd and continuing with attacks on protesters speaking out against his death and the deaths of many other black men and women like him. I've spent the last week feeling angry, sad, and desperate for a way to make some small difference. I've seen a lot of my friends and acquaintances, mostly white and liberal-leaning, making calls to various types of action: marching, voting, donating, reading, listening, and so on. One more form of action that I'd like to make the case for here, to the mostly white and liberal-leaning audience who might be reading, is a personal favorite of mine: arguing.

When I say arguing, I don't mean "fighting" or "getting angry" (which is hard for a lot of people, myself included). I don't mean "debating" (only assholes enjoy debates) or "agreeing to disagree". And I don't mean "lecturing" or "condescending". I mean arguing the way a lawyer means it: building a case and winning a tangible, measurable commitment (in this case, agreeing that eliminating police brutality is a worthy goal).

Because here's the harsh reality: new legislation is a start, but it will not fix this. Almost every major city already has a half-dozen anti-brutality measures on the books. The police regularly flaunt those rules and lie about it, knowing that they won't be investigated or prosecuted for breaking them. The "8 Can't Wait" campaign that has been circulating might be well-intentioned, but is fundamentally misguided: giving a group of people who delight in breaking rules a few new rules to follow is, as a public defender friend put it to me, "just giving them more things to lie about when they fill out a form."

Enhancing your own education on the topic of systemic racism and sharing it among friends is a start, but it will not fix this. Your friends who are reading what you're sharing mostly agree with you anyway. That's why they're your friends.

And voting for Democrats who make pleasant-sounding noises about ending police abuses is a start, but it will not fix this. The mayor of Minneapolis and the governor of Minnesota are both Democrats. It's been a solidly blue state for a decade. Six-year-old Gianna Floyd still had to bury her father. The elected leadership of most major American cities is solidly Democratic. They are still terrified of their own police unions and routinely pass budgets that give them absurd amounts of money while cutting spending on schools and social services. [1]

Voting is free and, if you're like most white people, easy to do, which should be your first clue that it's not going to solve a hard, intractable, and expensive problem like eliminating police brutality. Most really hard problems have equally hard solutions. [2]

The presence of elected officials who condone police brutality is just a symptom. Cultural racism is the disease, and racist voters elect city council members and prosecutors who pump up police budgets and refuse to charge cops who kill. Voting can help to treat the symptom, but it doesn't root out the disease.

That's where arguing comes in.

If the problem of police brutality is going to be defeated, it's going to require demilitarizing police forces and reducing local police department budgets. This is going to require changing the attitudes of the millions of people who tacitly or explicitly support an outsized, militarized police presence. This is where it gets really hard, which is why you know it's the crux of the solution: we have to argue with the people in our lives who don't agree with us that racist violence by police against black Americans is a problem deserving of protest and local government intervention.

This includes Republicans (the proverbial Fox News aunt/uncle with the "Blue Lives Matter" bumper sticker), Democrats (the "respectable" upper-class white liberal who will make tut-tutting noises about George Floyd's death but will get flat-out heated about what those protesters did to Target), and people who aren't particularly political (the casually racist coworker who has some red-hot Colin Kaepernick takes to share). [3] (This does not include the overt white supremacist grandparent, the Reddit neo-Nazi nephew, or anyone who owns a copy of The Bell Curve by Charles Murray. Pick the battles you have a chance of winning.)

It's critical to remember that, in our siloed, hyper-partisan media environment, they're not seeing or reading the accounts of police brutality that we are. They're watching Tucker Carlson warn them about the approaching Soros-funded Antifa hordes that are being bussed in to overrun the local Crate & Barrel. They're not watching the Buffalo PD slam a completely passive elderly man to the pavement ground so hard that he immediately beings to bleed from his ears while unconscious. They're not watching Austin PD firing pepper balls into the stomach of a pregnant woman. They're not watching Seattle PD blow a nine-year-old kid's thumb off with a "less lethal" round. But you can show them. (See this list for a handy starter.)

If you're like me, you've spent the last week (or month, or four years, or forty years) stockpiling a mountain of evidence with respect to police brutality against black Americans: videos, statistics, stories, and first-hand testimonies from people who have lived through violence and oppression at the hands of the police.

You know the people in your life who you need to win over. You have some sense of what combination of tactics will work to persuade them. If you don't, there's good old-fashioned trial and error. The important thing is to try. [4]

You are working to undo years or decades of mass media conditioning, from Fox News' well-funded white supremacist propaganda machine to the dozens of movies and primetime TV shows that uniformly depict police officers as superheroes and prioritize the enforcement of order over justice. [5] You are probably dealing with people for whom the police have never posed an existential threat. You might be dealing with people who exhibit "white fragility" - the inability of a white person to distinguish your request for empathy from an accusation of guilt - and will react explosively as a result.

You need to remember that the person you're talking to has probably never once encountered any of the evidence you're presenting or the concepts you're discussing, and that most people resolve the cognitive dissonance introduced by new information that conflicts with their prior beliefs by doubling down. Our caveman brains are in a constant state of warfare between the primal "fight-or-flight" emotional instincts generated by the amygdala in the mid-brain and the higher-order thinking that takes place in the frontal lobe. [6] Breaking in to that battle as it takes place in someone else's brain is a big challenge.

I don't claim to have the secret formula for putting together a winning argument. I think being considerate, staying calm, staying firm, and staying on topic are probably important, which is not to say that I've ever been great at any of those things. Factual evidence might work, or it might not - Trump's great gift as a politician is his ability to convince his base to ignore their own eyes and ears and reject all competing narratives to his own. Emotional appeals might work, or they might not - the core of right-wing messaging is to encourage the audience to reject empathy as a form of weakness and cruelty as a form of strength. Appeals to fairness might work, or they might not - conservative ideology is built on upholding existing hierarchies (white over black, male over female, rich over poor, straight over gay, Christian over Muslim, etc.), and so what we identify as unfair treatment of a vulnerable group of people reads as a feature and not a bug of the system to a committed conservative. But maybe one of these approaches will work, and it's up to you to try them all and find out.

I won't lie to you. Taking this step sucks. It is extremely uncomfortable. You may jeopardize relationships with people you love, temporarily or permanently. You will have moments where you want to scream, tear your hair out, or punch the wall. It is a small burden to bear compared to a knee on your neck.

P.S. Maybe you're not in a position to argue with friends, coworkers, or family members. Maybe you're only in close contact with liberal-minded people to begin with. Good news: you can still argue.

Protest is an extremely effective form of argument. By protesting, you argue with your government and your neighbors: "We will not get out of the streets and allow your life to return to normal until you acknowledge our pain and commit to doing something about it." It also has the effect of putting police behavior in the spotlight as they implement violent crackdowns on protesters, including elderly people, pregnant women, and children.

Donating to legitimate non-profits that fight for the cause of eliminating police brutality is also a form of argument. Those organizations are good at making the argument for you to many millions of people with ad campaigns, media relations, and community activism.

- -

[1] This isn't to say that we shouldn't vote for good Democratic candidates. We should! Not voting, voting Republican, or writing in Pee Wee Herman will not solve anything either. What I'm saying is that voting is necessary, but not at all sufficient.

[2] Opportunistic Democratic politicians have tried to obscure this recently by presenting themselves as the angel of vengeance for victims of police brutality, including many of the ones who also happily took credit for creating the problem back when it was popular to do so (see: Klobuchar, Amy). Every good politician follows the rule "identify a problem and offer a solution". Republican politicians are masterful at offering themselves as solutions to problems, usually entirely imaginary ones of their own invention (welfare queens, voter fraud, Antifa, caravans of bloodthirsty Mexican immigrants, reverse racism, and the national deficit). Democratic politicians typically counter this with a platform of "you'll get nothing and like it, but what choice do you have?" This may have something to do with why they lose so much.

[3] Van Jones made this point recently, in the context of the white woman (later identified as a frequent donor to Democratic politicians) in Central Park who threatened to order a black man's execution by police:
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/500158-van-jones-a-white-liberal-hillary-clinton-supporter-can-pose-a-greater-threat
And Martin Luther King, Jr., made this point a long time ago:

[4] I've found that a good entry point when arguing with a conservative is to open by trashing a Democratic politician you dislike. This is easy to do, because most Democratic politicians are trash. This signals that you can be taken seriously, because you're not a partisan hack, but it also has the added benefit of being true. Arguing with wealthy white liberals who condemn rioters more loudly than the police is much more difficult. I haven't cracked that one at all, but I'm trying.

[5] "Trump tweeting 'LAW AND ORDER!' is a racist trope designed to echo Nixon!", he shouted, before settling in to watch a "Law & Order: SVU" marathon.

[6] Or something like that. I'm not a neurologist.

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I've spent the last week watching a lot of footage of violence by police officers, starting with the murder of George Floyd and continuing with attacks on protesters speaking out against his death and the deaths of many other black men and women like him.

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When we are asked to make a moral choice, many of us imagine it involves listening to our hearts. To that, philosopher Peter Singer says, "nonsense." Singer believes there are no moral absolutes, and that logic and calculation are better guides to moral behavior than feelings and intuitions. This week, we talk with Singer about why this approach is so hard to put into practice, and look at the hard moral choices presented by the COVID-19 pandemic.

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When we are asked to make a moral choice, many of us imagine it involves listening to our hearts. To that, philosopher Peter Singer says, "nonsense." Singer believes there are no moral absolutes, and that logic and calculation are better guides to moral behavior than feelings and intuitions.

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USE: Universal lang of just being a human

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USE: Universal lang of just being a human

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You speak far more languages than you realize, says Poet Ali. In a profound talk, he reveals how the idea of "language" goes far beyond a lexicon of words, communicating universal experiences like love, laughter and loneliness -- and serving as a portal to cultures, feelings and thoughts that unite us all.

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Grammar is a sticky subject for English teachers. On one hand, speaking and writing "proper" Standard English is an important real-world skill for students to learn. It can help them get into college, get good jobs, and be taken seriously as participants in civic institutions. On the other hand, elevating the importance of grammar rules obscures the way language is constantly changing and the arbitrary nature of "correct" grammar. It can lead young people to dismiss ideas presented in different dialects, like African American Vernacular English.

Rants offer a clear demonstration of how powerful people make judgments-often harsh ones-based on grammar.

English professors Kenneth Lindlom and Patricia A. Dunn present a different way teachers can approach the subject. They suggest starting with a "grammar rant." For example, they describe a 2002 Dear Abby column about the writer's irritation at double negatives and "improper" words like "irregardless." Lindlom and Dunn note that heated, emotional writing like this is more interesting to students than dry lists of rules to follow. More importantly, rants offer a clear demonstration of how powerful people make judgments-often harsh ones-based on grammar.

The authors suggest encouraging students to consider a number of questions about the rant. For example:

What does the author of the grammar rant think is important about language and communication?

Do the author's claims about what is right or wrong in language always hold true in any communication situation, or can you think of exceptions? Does the author acknowledge exceptions? What does the presence of exceptions do to the validity of the author's claim?

How do the author's claims about language relate to the socioeconomic class in which speakers and writers have been raised [or their race or cultural and geographical background]? Does the author acknowledge these connections?

Lindlom and Dunn outline a lesson using the Dear Abby column, examining the "errors" that bother her. Some, like double negatives, or the use of "youse" for the plural you, reflect clear class, racial, and regional differences in style. Others, like using "myself" instead of "me" or pronouncing "forte" as "for-tay," are attempts to sound more formal or correct. A discussion with students could reveal nuances of language use. For example, George W. Bush's "mispronunciation" of "nuclear" may have helped him create a folksy image despite his elite background.

In another example, Lindblom and Dunn suggest having students read a rant by Bill O'Reilly that includes a judgment about grammar: "If a working-class or poor child rejects education, does not learn to speak properly, does not respect just authority and does not understand that having babies at age 14 is a ticket to ruin, then that child's life will likely be tragic."

The authors suggest having students consider what O'Reilly means by "speak properly," how that relates to his other complaints, and how a particular speaking style could lead to tragedy.

Lindblom and Dunn write that grammar rants have been useful tools in their own classrooms in helping to students to understand both why "proper" English is an arbitrary idea and why it's so important.
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Grammar is a sticky subject for English teachers. On one hand, speaking and writing "proper" Standard English is an important real-world skill for students to learn. It can help them get into college, get good jobs, and be taken seriously as participants in civic institutions.

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This past summer, I booked a plane ticket to Los Angeles with the hope of investigating what seems likely to be one of the oddest legacies of our rapidly expiring decade: the gradual emergence, among professionally beautiful women, of a single, cyborgian face. It's a young face, of course, with poreless skin and plump, high cheekbones. It has catlike eyes and long, cartoonish lashes; it has a small, neat nose and full, lush lips. It looks at you coyly but blankly, as if its owner has taken half a Klonopin and is considering asking you for a private-jet ride to Coachella. The face is distinctly white but ambiguously ethnic-it suggests a National Geographic composite illustrating what Americans will look like in 2050, if every American of the future were to be a direct descendant of Kim Kardashian West, Bella Hadid, Emily Ratajkowski, and Kendall Jenner (who looks exactly like Emily Ratajkowski). "It's like a sexy . . . baby . . . tiger," Cara Craig, a high-end New York colorist, observed to me recently. The celebrity makeup artist Colby Smith told me, "It's Instagram Face, duh. It's like an unrealistic sculpture. Volume on volume. A face that looks like it's made out of clay."

Instagram, which launched as the decade was just beginning, in October, 2010, has its own aesthetic language: the ideal image is always the one that instantly pops on a phone screen. The aesthetic is also marked by a familiar human aspiration, previously best documented in wedding photography, toward a generic sameness. Accounts such as Insta Repeat illustrate the platform's monotony by posting grids of indistinguishable photos posted by different users-a person in a yellow raincoat standing at the base of a waterfall, or a hand holding up a bright fall leaf. Some things just perform well.

The human body is an unusual sort of Instagram subject: it can be adjusted, with the right kind of effort, to perform better and better over time. Art directors at magazines have long edited photos of celebrities to better match unrealistic beauty standards; now you can do that to pictures of yourself with just a few taps on your phone. Snapchat, which launched in 2011 and was originally known as a purveyor of disappearing messages, has maintained its user base in large part by providing photo filters, some of which allow you to become intimately familiar with what your face would look like if it were ten-per-cent more conventionally attractive-if it were thinner, or had smoother skin, larger eyes, fuller lips. Instagram has added an array of flattering selfie filters to its Stories feature. FaceTune, which was released in 2013 and promises to help you "wow your friends with every selfie," enables even more precision. A number of Instagram accounts are dedicated to identifying the tweaks that celebrities make to their features with photo-editing apps. Celeb Face, which has more than a million followers, posts photos from the accounts of celebrities, adding arrows to spotlight signs of careless FaceTuning. Follow Celeb Face for a month, and this constant perfecting process begins to seem both mundane and pathological. You get the feeling that these women, or their assistants, alter photos out of a simple defensive reflex, as if FaceTuning your jawline were the Instagram equivalent of checking your eyeliner in the bathroom of the bar.

"I think ninety-five per cent of the most-followed people on Instagram use FaceTune, easily," Smith told me. "And I would say that ninety-five per cent of these people have also had some sort of cosmetic procedure. You can see things getting trendy-like, everyone's getting brow lifts via Botox now. Kylie Jenner didn't used to have that sort of space around her eyelids, but now she does."

Twenty years ago, plastic surgery was a fairly dramatic intervention: expensive, invasive, permanent, and, often, risky. But, in 2002, the Food and Drug Administration approved Botox for use in preventing wrinkles; a few years later, it approved hyaluronic-acid fillers, such as Juvéderm and Restylane, which at first filled in fine lines and wrinkles and now can be used to restructure jawlines, noses, and cheeks. These procedures last for six months to a year and aren't nearly as expensive as surgery. (The average price per syringe of filler is six hundred and eighty-three dollars.) You can go get Botox and then head right back to the office.

A class of celebrity plastic surgeons has emerged on Instagram, posting time-lapse videos of injection procedures and before-and-after photos, which receive hundreds of thousands of views and likes. According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, Americans received more than seven million neurotoxin injections in 2018, and more than two and a half million filler injections. That year, Americans spent $16.5 billion on cosmetic surgery; ninety-two per cent of these procedures were performed on women. Thanks to injectables, cosmetic procedures are no longer just for people who want huge changes, or who are deep in battle with the aging process-they're for millennials, or even, in rarefied cases, members of Gen Z. Kylie Jenner, who was born in 1997, spoke on her reality-TV show "Life of Kylie" about wanting to get lip fillers after a boy commented on her small lips when she was fifteen.

Ideals of female beauty that can only be met through painful processes of physical manipulation have always been with us, from tiny feet in imperial China to wasp waists in nineteenth-century Europe. But contemporary systems of continual visual self-broadcasting-reality TV, social media-have created new disciplines of continual visual self-improvement. Social media has supercharged the propensity to regard one's personal identity as a potential source of profit-and, especially for young women, to regard one's body this way, too. In October, Instagram announced that it would be removing "all effects associated with plastic surgery" from its filter arsenal, but this appears to mean all effects explicitly associated with plastic surgery, such as the ones called "Plastica" and "Fix Me." Filters that give you Instagram Face will remain. For those born with assets-natural assets, capital assets, or both-it can seem sensible, even automatic, to think of your body the way that a McKinsey consultant would think about a corporation: identify underperforming sectors and remake them, discard whatever doesn't increase profits and reorient the business toward whatever does.

Smith first started noticing the encroachment of Instagram Face about five years ago, "when the lip fillers started," he said. "I'd do someone's makeup and notice that there were no wrinkles in the lips at all. Every lipstick would go on so smooth." It has made his job easier, he noted, archly. "My job used to be to make people look like that, but now people come to me already looking like that, because they're surgically enhanced. It's great. We used to have to contour you to give you those cheeks, but now you just went out and got them."

There was something strange, I said, about the racial aspect of Instagram Face-it was as if the algorithmic tendency to flatten everything into a composite of greatest hits had resulted in a beauty ideal that favored white women capable of manufacturing a look of rootless exoticism. "Absolutely," Smith said. "We're talking an overly tan skin tone, a South Asian influence with the brows and eye shape, an African-American influence with the lips, a Caucasian influence with the nose, a cheek structure that is predominantly Native American and Middle Eastern." Did Smith think that Instagram Face was actually making people look better? He did. "People are absolutely getting prettier," he said. "The world is so visual right now, and it's only getting more visual, and people want to upgrade the way they relate to it."

This was an optimistic way of looking at the situation. I told Smith that I couldn't shake the feeling that technology is rewriting our bodies to correspond to its own interests-rearranging our faces according to whatever increases engagement and likes. "Don't you think it's scary to imagine people doing this forever?" I asked.

"Well, yeah, it's obviously terrifying," he said.

Beverly Hills is L.A.'s plastic-surgery district. In the sun-scorched isosceles triangle between the palm trees and department stores of Wilshire and the palm trees and boutique eateries of Santa Monica, there's a doctor, or several, on every block. On a Wednesday afternoon, I parked my rental car in a tiny underground lot, emerged next to a Sprinkles Cupcakes and a bougie psychic's office, and walked to a consultation appointment I had made with one of the best-known celebrity plastic surgeons, whose before-and-after Instagram videos frequently attract half a million views.

I'd booked the consultation because I was curious about the actual experience of a would-be millennial patient-a fact I had to keep mentioning to my boyfriend, who seemed moderately worried that I would come back looking like a human cat. A few weeks before, I had downloaded Snapchat for the first time and tried out the filters, which were in fact very flattering: they gave me radiant skin, doe lashes, a face shaped like a heart. It wasn't lost on me that when I put on a lot of makeup I am essentially trying to create a version of this face. And it wasn't hard for me to understand why millennial women who were born within spitting distance of Instagram Face would want to keep drawing closer to it. In a world where women are rewarded for youth and beauty in a way that they are rewarded for nothing else-and where a strain of mainstream feminism teaches women that self-objectification is progressive, because it's profitable-cosmetic work might seem like one of the few guaranteed high-yield projects that a woman could undertake.

The plastic surgeon's office was gorgeous and peaceful, a silvery oasis. A receptionist, humming along to "I Want to Know What Love Is," handed me intake forms, which asked about stress factors and mental health, among other things. I signed an arbitration agreement. A medical assistant took photos of my face from five different angles. A medical consultant with lush hair and a deeply warm, caring aura came into the room. Careful not to lie, and lightly alarmed by the fact that I didn't need to, I told her that I'd never gotten fillers or Botox but that I was interested in looking better, and that I wanted to know what experts would advise. She was complimentary, and told me that I shouldn't get too much done. After a while, she suggested that maybe I would want to pay attention to my chin as I aged, and maybe my cheeks, too-maybe I'd want to lift them a little bit.

Then the celebrity doctor came in, giving off the intensity of a surgeon and the focus of a glassblower. I said to him, too, that I was just interested in looking better, and wanted to know what an expert would recommend. I showed him one of my filtered Snapchat photos. He glanced at it, nodded, and said, "Let me show you what we could do." He took a photo of my face on his phone and projected it onto a TV screen on the wall. "I like to use FaceTune," he said, tapping and dragging.

Within a few seconds, my face was shaped to match the Snapchat photo. He took another picture of me, in profile, and FaceTuned the chin again. I had a heart-shaped face, and visible cheekbones. All of this was achievable, he said, with chin filler, cheek filler, and perhaps an ultrasound procedure that would dissolve the fat in the lower half of my cheeks-or we could use Botox to paralyze and shrink my masseter muscles.

I asked the doctor what he told people who came to see him wanting to look like his best-known patients. "People come in with pictures of my most famous clients all the time," he said. "I say, 'I can't turn you into them. I can't, if you're Asian, give you a Caucasian face, or I could, but it wouldn't be right-it wouldn't look right.' But if they show me a specific feature they want then I can work with that. I can say, 'If you want a sharp jaw like that, we can do that.' But, also, these things are not always right for all people. For you, if you came in asking for a sharp jaw, I would say no-it would make you look masculine."

"Does it seem like more people my age are coming in for this sort of work?" I asked.

"I think that ten years ago it was seen as anti-cerebral to do this," he said. "But now it's empowering to do something that gives you an edge. Which is why young people are coming in. They come in to enhance something, rather than coming in to fix something."

"And it's subtle," I said.

"Even with my most famous clients, it's very subtle," the doctor said. "If you look at photos taken five years apart, you can tell the difference. But, day to day, month to month, you can't."

I felt that I was being listened to very carefully. I thanked him, sincerely, and then a medical assistant came in to show me the recommendations and prices: injectables in my cheeks ($5,500 to $6,900), injectables in my chin (same price), an ultrasound "lipofreeze" to fix the asymmetry in my jawline ($8,900 to $18,900), or Botox in the TMJ region ($2,500). I walked out of the clinic into the Beverly Hills sunshine, laughing a little, imagining what it'd be like to have a spare thirty thousand dollars on hand. I texted photos of my FaceTuned jaw to my friends and then touched my actual jaw, a suddenly optional assemblage of flesh and bone.

The plastic surgeon Jason Diamond was a recurring star of the reality show "Dr. 90210" and has a number of famous clients, including the twenty-nine-year-old "Vanderpump Rules" star Lala Kent, who has posted photos taken in Diamond's office on Instagram, and who told People, "I've had every part of my face injected." Another client is Kim Kardashian West, whom Colby Smith described to me as "patient zero" for Instagram Face. ("Ultimately, the goal is always to look like Kim," he said.) Kardashian West, who has inspired countless cosmetically altered doppelgängers, insists that she hasn't had major plastic surgery; according to her, it's all just Botox, fillers, and makeup. But she also hasn't tried to hide how her appearance has changed. In 2015, she published a coffee-table book of selfies, called " Selfish," which begins when she is beautiful the way a human is beautiful and ends when she's beautiful in the manner of a computer animation.

I scheduled an interview with Diamond, whose practice occupies the penthouse of a building in Beverly Hills. On the desk in his office was a thank-you note from Chrissy Teigen. (It sat atop two of her cookbooks.) As with the doctor I'd seen the day before, Diamond, who has pool-blue eyes and wore black scrubs and square-framed glasses, looked nothing like the tabloid caricature of a plastic surgeon. He was youthful in a way that was only slightly surreal.

Diamond had trained with an old guard of top L.A. plastic surgeons, he told me-people who thought it was taboo to advertise. When, in 2004, he had the opportunity to appear on "Dr. 90210," he decided to do it, against the advice of his wife and his nurses, because, he said, "I knew that I would be able to show results that the world had never seen." In 2016, a famous client persuaded him to set up an Instagram account. He now has just under a quarter million followers. The employees at his practice who run the account like that Instagram allows patients to see him as a father of two and as a friend, not only as a doctor.

Diamond had long had a Web site, but in the past his celebrity patients didn't volunteer to offer testimonials there. "And, of course, we never asked," he said. "But now-it's amazing. Maybe thirty per cent of the celebrities I take care of will just ask and offer to shout us out on social media. All of a sudden, it's popular knowledge that all these people are coming here. For some reason, Instagram made it more acceptable." Cosmetic work had come to seem more like fitness, he suggested. "I think it's become much more mainstream to think about taking care of your face and your body as part of your general well-being. It's kind of understood now: it's O.K. to try to look your best."

There was a sort of cleansing, crystalline honesty to this high-end intersection of superficiality and pragmatism, I was slowly realizing. I hadn't needed to bother posing as a patient-these doctors spent all day making sure that people no longer felt they had anything to hide.

I asked Diamond if he had thoughts about Instagram Face. "You know, there's this look-this Bella Hadid, Kim Kardashian, Kylie Jenner thing that seems to be spreading," I said. Diamond said that he practiced all over the world, and that there were different regional preferences, and that no one template worked for every face. "But there are constants," he said. "Symmetry, proportion, harmony. We are always trying to create balance in the face. And when you look at Kim, Megan Fox, Lucy Liu, Halle Berry, you'll find elements in common: the high contoured cheekbones, the strong projected chin, the flat platform underneath the chin that makes a ninety-degree angle."

"What do you make of the fact that it's much more possible now for people to look at these celebrity faces and think, somewhat correctly, that they could look like that, too?" I asked.

"We could spend two whole days discussing that question," Diamond said. "I'd say that thirty per cent of people come in bringing a photo of Kim, or someone like Kim-there's a handful of people, but she's at the very top of the list, and understandably so. It's one of the biggest challenges I have, educating the person about whether it's reasonable to try to move along that path toward Kim's face, or toward whoever. Twenty years of practice, thousands and thousands of procedures, go into each individual answer-when I can do it, when I can't do it, and when we can do something but shouldn't, for any number of reasons." I told Diamond that I was afraid that if I ever tried injectables, I'd never stop. "It is true that the vast majority of our patients absolutely love their results, and they come back," he said.

We talked about the word "addiction." I said that I dyed my hair and wore makeup most days, and that I knew I would continue to dye my hair and spend money on makeup, and that I didn't consider this an addiction but a choice. (I thought about a line from the book " Perfect Me," by the philosopher Heather Widdows: "Choice cannot make an unjust or exploitative practice or act somehow, magically, just or non-exploitative.") I asked Diamond if his patients felt more like themselves after getting work done.

"I can answer that in part because I do these things, too," he said, gesturing to his face. "You know when you get a really good haircut, and you feel like the best version of yourself? This is that feeling, but exponential."

On the way to Diamond's office, I had passed a café that looked familiar: pale marble-topped tables, blond-wood floors, a row of Prussian-green snake plants, pendant lamps, geometrically patterned tiles. The writer Kyle Chayka has coined the term " AirSpace" for this style of blandly appealing interior design, marked by an "anesthetized aesthetic" and influenced by the "connective emotional grid of social media platforms"-these virtual spaces where hundreds of millions of people learn to "see and feel and want the same things." WeWork, the collapsing co-working giant-which, like Instagram, was founded in 2010-once convinced investors of a forty-seven-billion-dollar vision in which people would follow their idiosyncratic dreams while enmeshed in a global network of near-indistinguishable office spaces featuring reclaimed wood, neon signs, and ficus trees. Direct-to-consumer brands fill podcast ad breaks with promises of the one true electric toothbrush and meals that arrive in the mail, selling us on the relief of forgoing choice altogether. The general idea seems to be that humans are so busy pursuing complicated forms of self-actualization that we'd like much of our life to be assembled for us, as if from a kit.

I went to see another Beverly Hills plastic surgeon, one who had more than three hundred thousand Instagram followers. I told the doctor that I was a journalist, and that I was there for a consultation. He studied my face from a few angles, felt my jaw, and suggested exactly what the first doctor had recommended. The prices were lower this time-if I had wanted to put the whole thing on my credit card, I could have.

I took the elevator down to the street with three very pretty women who all appeared to be in their early twenties. As I drove back to my hotel, I felt sad and subdued and self-conscious. I had thought that I was researching this subject at a logical distance: that I could inhabit the point of view of an ideal millennial client, someone who wanted to enhance rather than fix herself, who was ambitious and pragmatic. But I left with a very specific feeling, a kind of bottomless need that I associated with early adolescence, and which I had not experienced in a long time.

I had worn makeup at sixteen to my college interviews; I'd worn makeup at my gymnastic meets when I was ten. In the photos I have of myself at ballet recitals when I was six or seven, I'm wearing mascara and blush and lipstick, and I'm so happy. What did it mean, I wondered, that I have spent so much of my life attempting to perform well in circumstances where an unaltered female face is aberrant? How had I been changed by an era in which ordinary humans receive daily metrics that appear to quantify how our personalities and our physical selves are performing on the market? What was the logical end of this escalating back-and-forth between digital and physical improvement?

On Instagram, I checked up on the accounts of the plastic surgeons I had visited, watching comments roll in: "this is what I need! I need to come see you ASAP!", "want want want," "what is the youngest you could perform this procedure?" I looked at the Instagram account of a singer born in 1999, who had become famous as a teen-ager and had since given herself an entirely new face. I met up with a bunch of female friends for dinner in L.A. that night, two of whom had already adopted injectables as part of their cosmetic routine. They looked beautiful. The sun went down, and the hills of L.A. started to glitter. I had the sense that I was living in some inexorable future. For some days afterward, I noticed that I was avoiding looking too closely at my face.

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This past summer, I booked a plane ticket to Los Angeles with the hope of investigating what seems likely to be one of the oddest legacies of our rapidly expiring decade: the gradual emergence, among professionally beautiful women, of a single, cyborgian face. It's a young face, of course, with poreless skin and plump, high cheekbones.

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692: The Show of Delights - This American Life

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In these dark, combative times, we attempt the most radical counterprogramming we could imagine: a show made up entirely of stories about delight.

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What Makes Life Worth Living and Nature’s Beauty as a Lifeline to Regaining Sanity

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What Makes Life Worth Living and Nature’s Beauty as a Lifeline to Regaining Sanity

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Half a century before Walt Whitman considered what makes life worth living when a paralytic stroke boughed him to the ground of being, Mary Shelley (August 30, 1797-February 1, 1851) placed that question at the beating heart of The Last Man ( | public library) - the 1826 novel she wrote in the bleakest period of her life: after the deaths of three of her children, two by widespread infectious diseases that science has since contained; after the love of her life, Percy Bysshe Shelley, drowned in a boating accident.

From that fathomless pit of sorrow, on the pages of a novel about a pandemic that begins erasing the human species one by one until a sole survivor - Shelley's autobiographical protagonist - remains, she raised the vital question: Why live? By her answer, she raised herself from the pit to go on living, becoming the endling of her own artistic species - Mary Shelley outlived all the Romantics, composing prose of staggering poetic beauty and singlehandedly turning her then-obscure husband into the icon he now is by her tireless lifelong devotion to the posthumous editing, publishing, and glorifying of his poetry.

Shelley had set her far-seeing Frankenstein, written a decade earlier, a century into her past; she sets The Last Man a quarter millennium into her future, in the final decade of the twenty-first century, culminating in the year 2092 - the tricentennial of her beloved's birth.

The novel's narrator, Lionel Verney - an idealistic young man, more porous than most to both the deepest suffering of living and the most transcendent beauty of life - is the closest Mary Shelley, stoical and guarded, came to painting a psychological self-portrait. As the pandemic sweeps the world and vanquishes his loved ones one by one, Shelley's protagonist returns home to seek safety "as the storm-driven bird does [to] the nest in which it may fold its wings in tranquillity." There, in the strange stillness, stripped of the habitual busynesses and distractions of social existence, he finds himself contemplating the essence of life:

How unwise had the wanderers been, who had deserted [the nest's] shelter, entangled themselves in the web of society, and entered on what men of the world call "life," - that labyrinth of evil, that scheme of mutual torture. To live, according to this sense of the word, we must not only observe and learn, we must also feel; we must not be mere spectators of action, we must act; we must not describe, but be subjects of description. Deep sorrow must have been the inmate of our bosoms... sickening doubt and false hope must have chequered our days... Who that knows what "life" is, would pine for this feverish species of existence? I have lived. I have spent days and nights of festivity; I have joined in ambitious hopes...: now - shut the door on the world, and build high the wall that is to separate me from the troubled scene enacted within its precincts.

In consonance with Whitman - "After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, love, and so on - have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear - what remains?" the American poet would ask across space and time, then answer: "Nature remains." - Shelley's protagonist finds the meaning of life not in the whirlwind of the human-made world with its simulacra of living but in the simple creaturely presence with nature's ongoing symphony of life:

Let us... seek peace... near the inland murmur of streams, and the gracious waving of trees, the beauteous vesture of earth, and sublime pageantry of the skies. Let us leave "life," that we may live.

At the height of the deadly pandemic, nature seems all the more quietly determined to affirm the resilience of life - spring arrives with its irrepressible bursts of beauty, untrammeled by human suffering and a supreme salve for it. It is by observing nature's unbidden delirium in its littlest expression, by surrendering to its sweep, that Lionel regains his faith not only in survival but in the beauty, the worthiness of life.

A generation before the young Emily Dickinson delighted in the poetry of spring, Shelley writes:

Winter passed away; and spring, led by the months, awakened life in all nature. The forest was dressed in green; the young calves frisked on the new-sprung grass; the wind-winged shadows of light clouds sped over the green cornfields; the hermit cuckoo repeated his monotonous all-hail to the season; the nightingale, bird of love and minion of the evening star, filled the woods with song; while Venus lingered in the warm sunset, and the young green of the trees lay in gentle relief along the clear horizon.

From this open presence with the non-human world, Shelley's protagonist extracts the essence of what it means to be human:

There is but one solution to the intricate riddle of life; to improve ourselves, and contribute to the happiness of others.

Complement with Rebecca Elson's stunning poem "Antidotes to Fear of Death," Shelley's contemporary Elizabeth Barrett Browning - a trailblazing poet who was dealt an inordinate share of suffering and who made of it inordinate beauty - on what makes life worth living, and the story of how young Isaac Newton's plague quarantine fomented humanity's greatest leap in science, then revisit the gorgeous advice on life Shelley's mother, the trailblazing political philosopher and founding feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, never lived to give her daughter, having died in giving her birth.

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Spring in a Pandemic: Mary Shelley on What Makes Life Worth Living and Nature's Beauty as a Lifeline to Regaining Sanity

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Half a century before Walt Whitman considered what makes life worth living when a paralytic stroke boughed him to the ground of being, Mary Shelley (August 30, 1797-February 1, 1851) placed that question at the beating heart of The Last Man ( | public library ) - the 1826 novel she wrote in the bleakest period of her life: after the deaths of three of her children, two by widespread infectious diseases that science has since contained; after the love of her life, Percy Bysshe Shelley, drowned in a boating accident.

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““What story have you heard? About my scar?” Yaw asked, smiling still, hoping, now, to ease some of the child’s growing fear. Peter cleared his throat and looked at the ground. “They say you were born of fire,” he started. “That this is why you are so smart. Because you were lit by fire.” “Anyone else?” Timidly, a boy named Edem raised his hand. “They say your mother was fighting evil spirits from Asamando.” Then William: “I heard your father was so sad by the Asante loss that he cursed the gods, and the gods took vengeance.” Another, named Thomas: “I heard you did it to yourself, so that you would have something to talk about on the first day of class.” All of the boys laughed, and Yaw had to stifle his own amusement. Word of his lesson had gotten around, he knew. The older boys told some of the younger ones what to expect from him. Still he continued, making his way back to the front of the room to look at his students, the bright boys of the uncertain Gold Coast, learning the white book from a scarred man. “Whose story is correct?” Yaw asked them. They looked around at the boys who had spoken, as though trying to establish their allegiance by holding a gaze, casting a vote by sending a glance. Finally, once the murmuring subsided, Peter raised his hand. “Mr. Agyekum, we cannot know which story is correct.” He looked at the rest of the class, slowly understanding. “We cannot know which story is correct because we were not there.””

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Theme for English B by Langston Hughes | Poetry Foundation

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We will have a discussion question set up for free reading books

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We will have a discussion question set up for free reading books

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What does the universe sound like? A musical tour

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What does the universe sound like? A musical tour

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Matt Russo: What does the universe sound like? A musical tour

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Is outer space really the silent and lifeless place it's often depicted to be? Perhaps not. Astrophysicist and musician Matt Russo takes us on a journey through the cosmos, revealing the hidden rhythms and harmonies of planetary orbits. The universe is full of music, he says -- we just need to learn how to hear it.

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The end of summer is traditional coming of age time. Your new best friend is going home. Your new boyfriend starts pretending not to know you. Your parents discover your secret hiding place and turn it into a mudroom. You move to a new town. Your dog dies. You pushed your best friend out of a tree and he broke his leg and now you're dealing with the guilt. When you're young, you don't measure time in calendar years-you measure it in school years. So, as we embark on a new one, the Literary Hub office put their heads together to consider some of the greatest coming-of-age novels ever written, for discussing in the halls and reading under the covers.

First: what exactly is a coming-of-age novel? Of course, it's a novel in which someone becomes an adult, literally or metaphorically. But does a coming of age novel require demonstrable maturity in the end? Does said coming of age need to be the primary focus-in plot, in emotional weight-of the novel? Does the main character have to be a literal adolescent in the beginning? Under 21, maybe? The answer to all of these, I decided, was "usually, but not always." Like you-know-what, we all know coming of age when we see it. Or at least we know it once we're on the other side.

However, I do have some rules for this list. I decided to discount anything written for children or young adults, which eliminates a few classics like The Outsiders, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, among others (but does not eliminate, say, The Catcher in the Rye, which Salinger wrote for adults). I rejected short story collections (even linked ones like Melissa Bank's The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing) and stuck to one novel per writer (though sometimes I can't help myself from throwing in an extra mention). I also skewed towards "great" rather than "coming of age"-that is, if a novel was a perfect example of a genre, but just not that good, I might have eliminated it for one that was brilliant but less platonically correct.

Finally, even though the headline declares these 50 coming-of-age novels The Greatest, please remember that this is really only the compiled opinions of a few well-read editors. As such, feel free to disagree, amend, or (the best choice) add on to this list in the comments section.

Torres' slim, elegant, intense 2011 bildungsroman carries us deftly from the mania of childhood and brotherhood to the alienation of young adulthood and the self-knowledge that comes with it-or inspires it, as it were. This is a novel with a poetic soul; I'll never forget the opening passage of this book, which should give you some idea of the whole:

We wanted more. We knocked the butt ends of our forks against the table, tapped our spoons against our empty bowls; we were hungry. We wanted more volume, more riots. We turned up the knob on the TV until our ears ached with the shouts of angry men. We wanted more music on the radio; we wanted beats; we wanted rock. We wanted muscles on our skinny arms. We had bird bones, hollow and light, and we wanted more density, more weight. We were six snatching hands, six stomping feet; we were brothers, boys, three little kings locked in a feud for more.

If you read this space, you'll know that I'm a fan of Call Me By Your Name, a perfect, deeply interior novel, steeped in desire, about a young man who falls in love with an older visitor, and discovers quite a bit about himself-and love, and family-in the process. Which sounds a little trite, as I look at it. But this book is not-it's too intensely felt for that.

A coming of age story that is also a coming of self story, as Callie becomes Cal, and the world becomes modern. See also: The Virgin Suicides, which rivals this one fiercely in my heart and is also in some ways a purer bildungsroman, though for a faceless chorus of boys instead of a single one.

So much more than a coming of age novel, of course, and not usually designated as such-and yet still it fits, as Olympia tells the monstrous story of her childhood (while endeavoring to protect her own daughter from the woman who would "normalize" her). Plus, honestly, for many, reading this book is a coming-of-age experience-it's shocking, to look so directly at raw human experience, ambition, and pain, even in an inhuman package.

While Mitchell is still best known for Cloud Atlas, readers should not sleep on his semi-autobiographical 2006 novel, which covers a year-well, thirteen months, to be precise, each recounted in a single chapter-in the life of a thirteen year old boy with a stammer. This is a quiet book, especially as compared to the rest of Mitchell's oeuvre, but it captures a very specific, ever-changing moment in life with clarity and empathy-and not a small interest in the language that makes it all fit together.

Duras' originally conceived of her classic autobiographical novel as an annotated book of photographs; though it has no images, it retains that feel, jumping from moment to indelible, distilled moment. It is, as you probably know, about a young white girl and her older Chinese lover in 1920s French Indochina, but it is about much more than that: class, race, mental health, money, family, beauty, rage, growing older. It is not salacious. It's barely sexy. Instead it is a strange and humid ode to self-discovery.

Carson's novel in verse features an unlikely subject for coming-of-age: Geryon, the giant monster of Greek mythology (metaphorically, at least) who, tormented by an abusive brother and a mother too weak to protect him, falls in doomed love with a dashing young man named Herakles. But despite the strange form, obscure translations, and magical thinking of this book, few coming of age tales are more affecting.

Not only does this novel feature the best opening paragraph of all time (or at least one of them; see the entry for We The Animals on this very list), but it also features a very compelling young protagonist coming to terms with what I'll gingerly describe as a . . . unique family situation.

With Catcher in the Rye, probably the first title that comes to mind (at least for Americans) when someone mentions "coming-of-age" novels. After all, what's not to love: knightly father, tomboy daughter, mysterious neighbor, personal growth! A classic among classics.

A beloved coming of age and coming out novel about a young evangelical girl (her name is Jeanette) who dreams of being a missionary-until she falls in love with another girl.

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The end of summer is traditional coming of age time. Your new best friend is going home. Your new boyfriend starts pretending not to know you. Your parents discover your secret hiding place and turn it into a mudroom. You move to a new town. Your dog dies.

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Sophomore Honors Selected Reading Assignments

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Sophomore Honors Selected Reading Assignments

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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Discussion Question #1

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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50 Books Every Man Should Read Once in His Life

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50 Books Every Man Should Read Once in His Life

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The Odyssey - Homer

Teachers like to think they're introducing their students to Greek history with this book, but really what they're giving them is one of the most violent, ridiculously unscholarly books ever written. People are bitten in half, smashed on rocks, lured to death by women things with sexy voices, do so many drugs they stop caring about existing, and have sex with goddesses. This isn't history, it's HBO in tunics. Link

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy - J.R.R. Tolkien

There's a reason Middle Earth has stuck around as long as it has. Its history is almost as rich as our own real Earth's, which is impressive, since it took billions of people to make ours and, like, two (mostly one) to make Middle-Earth's. Tolkien's linguistic expertise is the reason the books feel as rich as they do, seeing as how he invented one whole speakable language and pieces of half a dozen others. Instead of the cobbled together feeling of lazy fantasy, Middle-Earth has rhyme and reason as its bedrock. Not only is the trilogy and amazing piece of writing, but by the end of your time with it, you'll have a much greater appreciation for history, fiction or non. Link

Dubliners - James Joyce

Joyce is hard to get into if you don't have the patient guidance of a tenured literature professor to lead you through the rough patches. Dubliners is on the list because it's a great introduction to Joyce's major themes and characters, plus reading it will make it that much easier to pick up Ulysses and/or Finnegans Wake, if they'd be something you're into. Not that Dubliners is any slouching steppingstone. There's some pretty heavy shit hiding behind the friendly Irish facade of early 20th century Dublin and Joyce isn't afraid to explore it. Link

Jurassic Park - Michael Crichton

It's surprising that a novel that relies on science as much at this one doesn't show its age. Crichton knows his stuff, but one of his smarter moves is only giving as much sciency talk as we need to suspend disbelief. That way, we're not distracted from the real substance of the story, the struggle between capability and culpability. Just because mankind can do something doesn't mean mankind should do something. The book makes a pretty solid argument for ethical science, especially since not-ethical science means having your intestines pulled out by velociraptors. Link

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey

Watching R.P. McMurphy antagonize his way through a mental hospital is as glorious as watching a train crash into a dying star. Everyone knows this won't end well for anyone, but there it goes happening anyway. If there's a moral here, it's gotta be "buck the system, but don't buck it too hard and know when to lay low. You can always come back for more later." Which, knowing what we do about the 60s and how they turned out, sounds like a decent way to sum it all up. Link

The Road - Cormac McCarthy

If you can find a better father/son relationship in literature, tell us, because we haven't seen one that beats the one between the Man and the Boy. They are the spine of the story, and everything that happens in the book is viewed through the lens of their relationship. Yeah, there's a movie and yes, the movie is very good, but pick the book up. It'll stick with you in a way the movie doesn't. Link

1984 - George Orwell/Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

We put both of these in the same entry because everyone likes to talk about them as if they're mutually exclusive, but we like to stay open minded with our crushingly depressing alternate history global dystopias. Both make timeless observations about the public's relationship with its government and itself and it's easy to think of them happening in the same world in different cities. We would also suggest reading them as loose warnings and not explicit predictions. It gets a little bleak otherwise, and don't think the world's all that bad, no matter how hard it tries to convince us otherwise. Link Link

Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury

Fahrenheit 451 could be dismissed as the writings of a technophobe, but that wouldn't be entirely correct. Bradbury saw the potential for abuse and placation present in television and, after seeing what's become of popular programming and a good deal of the internet these days, it's hard not to agree with him. We're not saying it's all bad, but maybe we could have listened a little better and been more discerning about what we made popular. We'll keep it in mind going forward. Link

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater - Kurt Vonnegut

A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

Ignatius Reilly is refreshing because he's awful in so many ways. He's unintelligent, cocky, fat, ugly, bull headed, verbose, repressed, and mean and makes sure everyone knows it. You'll find a thousand ways to hate him and everyone around him by the end. One of our favorite parts is when he gets his hot dog cart because he brings his signature awfulness to one of the best food delivery systems in the world. More than maybe any other book, Toole's frustration with the world burns straight through this novel. This wasn't a book written by a happy man. Link

Hard Times - Charles Dickens

Utilitarianism comes in different forms, though often not as obvious the one Dickens' Mr. Gradgrind employs. While not Dickens' most well-known work, it is the one that feels like it has the most to teach us in a time when economic hardship and ingrained old world prejudices keep people from exploring their potential. Dickens' presentation of it makes it clear exactly who the victim of Utilitarianism is and it's hard not to have even a small bit of personal reevaluation by the end. Link

The Complete Calvin and Hobbes - Bill Watterson

The Plot Against America - Philip Roth

Roth's novel explores an alternate history of the 1940s, one where FDR loses his reelection bid to the charismatic Charles Lindbergh and anti-semitic sentiment goes from whispers to official US policy. Roth's he takes you step by step to the logical conclusion of a Lindbergh presidency and it's a scary, highly relevant warning about the dangers of allowing prejudice to dictate who's in public office. We're not trying to push a political agenda here, but the similarities are too close to ignore, especially seeing how the 2016 election is shaping up. Link

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Series - Douglas Adams

The Hitchhiker's Guide series reads like one giant novel rather than the series of five books it actually is, which is why we're recommending all of them. There are a thousand vignettes scattered through the series, all of them filling out what becomes a galaxy brimming with life and bureaucracy and doing it in a way that completely meshes with what we've all suspected of the universe in the first place. That nothing really makes sense and it was never supposed to, so let's all just do the best we can, shall we? Link

Preacher - Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon

Preacher is unapologetically what it is, and that's a drug, sex, and violence fueled tear through the continental United States. There are Irish vampires, angels and demons, miracles, weird undead sex cults, Louisiana swamp people, and one hell of a twisted Saint. But somehow, none of that distracts from the central plotline, which is one man trying to do the right thing in a world that really, really doesn't want him to. If anything, it enhances it, making Jesse Custer's struggle all the more human, despite him having a god in him. Link

Catch-22 - Joseph Heller

"War is hell," is the old adage we all know, but Catch-22 looks to modify that a bit. Instead, war becomes super goddamn weird. The book follows a bomber squadron in the Second World War whose collective sanity is slowly being eroded by whatever passes for power. Throughout it all, the main character keeps trying to prove himself insane enough to be kicked out of the Navy, which is precisely why he can't be kicked out. Which is a catch 22 and yes, this is where the phrase comes from. It's a great extrapolation of quirks and idiosyncrasies we see in day to day life, only this time, they're affecting war. Link

All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarqu

Post-WW1 Europe was an increasingly disillusioned place and All Quiet on the Western Front was one of the first books to reflect that. Up until its publication, the generally accepted way to talk about war was as a gentlemanly pursuit not unlike polo, the theAtre, or other rich-people stuff. This book came around and was one of the first to openly admit that getting shot isn't fun and that mustard gas can really put a damper on your weekend. Also, rats are terrible roommates, as are corpses. Link

Maus - Art Spiegelman

Maus is a hard book to forget once you've read it. It's something of a saga, tracing Spiegelman's father's journey through both the invasion of Poland and the Holocaust. Spiegelman uses various animals to represent different groups, the Nazis as cats and the Jews as mice, making it a suspenseful game of literal cat and mouse. It's absolutely one of the more poignant and emotional renditions of the Jewish struggle of the 1930s, 40s, and after, and the impact it had on survivors and their children. One of the few happy notes, the Americans are drawn as dogs. Link

Candide - Voltaire

Candide is an 18th century French satire, in which Candide the optimist, student of the philosophy that he lives in the best of all possible worlds, travels all over the place and bad things happen to him the whole time. There's death, assault, disease, confusion, kidnapping, and slavery, all based on real world historical examples. The book doesn't actually propose an alternate to optimism, so we have to assume it just doesn't want people blinded by some cheap mantra like "best of all possible worlds." Which, to be fair, is a decent lesson to take away and one that more people could benefit from. Link

Two Pints - Roddy Doyle

We're convinced most guys' ultimate goal is to be regulars at a local bar. Two Pints is the book version of that. It's Roddy Doyle's imagined transcriptions of the conversations of two Irishmen down at their local and takes you through most of the major developments of 2011-2012. It's a short one and you could probably down two pints in the time it takes to read it. In fact, do exactly that. Make sure they're imperial. Link

The Virginian - Owen Wister

We've had so many movies, books, comics, and TV shows, it's easy to forget why the western genre was popular in the first place. But if you read The Virginian, you'll see how the genre earned its popularity. It was the first of its kind and everything you'd expect from a western is present, from shootouts to love to matching wits with the villain. Despite being more than a hundred years old, the book remains exceptionally readable and compelling and reminds you that there's no excuse for not being a gentleman. Link

Guards! Guards! - Terry Pratchett

The Discworld series of novels is hard to start and more than one person's been intimidated right out of exploring. Consider this your introduction to the world, as Guards! Guards! is the first in the Night's Watch series. You get a really solid starting point that gives you everything you need to know about the world, wrapped up in a funny, genuine, and unexpectedly exciting story. Link

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal - Christopher Moore

You'd think it wasn't possible to avoid blasphemy and sacrilege while writing a postmodern interpretation of the Gospels, but Moore does it. This book is both exceptionally funny while staying respectful of its source material. An argument would be made that this book actually enhances the Christian Messiah's character, since we get to see him at every stage of his life, exhibiting an excellent understanding of the human condition. What's more, Moore's rendition of the crucifixion is so well-crafted and legitimately heart wrenching that we had to remind ourselves this was a story we'd heard before. Link

That Thing You Do With Your Mouth - Samantha Matthews and David Shields

It's difficult to be as open about yourself as Matthews is in this book, but we should all be thankful she was. It serves as an extended monologue, so basically Matthews talking, which is where the title comes from, about her sexual past, a past that wasn't the fairytale most people hope for. There's a lot to learn from what she has to say, and it's never hurt to get some different points of view. And believe us, this is a different point of view. Link

No Matter the Wreckage - Sarah Kay

Sarah Kay's second collection of poetry is something special. We could make the excuse that her poetry reads more like fiction or that she's using particularly traditional poetry, but the real reason she's on this list is that she's just good. She constructs some of the most relatable and accessible poetry this side of postmodernism, while never sacrificing substance for style. What's more, Kay makes a genuine to connect with her reader, something that it seems a lot of other poets gave up a long time ago. Link

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson

"We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold." So begins Hunter S. Thompson's most famous work of gonzo journalism. Based on two trips the good doctor took with his attorney to Sin City, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas blends fact and fiction into one hazy tale. You can get a contact high just from reading it. Link

My Struggle (Series) - Karl Ove Kausgård

To the uninitiated, Karl Ove Kausgård's 6-book series can seem like a joke. We mean, okay, here's a guy who's led, for the most part, a pretty normal life. There were troubles, yes, but none that would make you take pause and feel incredibly sorry for him. And yet, he went ahead and wrote close to 4,000 pages on that fairly standard life. Then you read it. Drawing comparisons to Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, Kausgård's books highlight the mundane, the relatable, and the business of being a human. It's brilliant, and it will make you want a cigarette. Link

The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

This is one of the few that forced school summer reading gets right, so if you skipped it in school, find yourself a copy now. It's not a long read, if that makes a difference to you, but man is it dense. At the surface, it's an interesting story about a guy's cool but manipulative neighbor. Further down, it has something to say about almost every single human vice. Reading it, The Great Depression seems completely unavoidable. Past that though, since we have this book, we probably should have known better. Link

The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger

The Catcher in the Rye is one of those books that should be read once every ten years, at least, thanks to the changing way the reader views the main character, Holden Caulfield. When you read it at 14, Caulfield is a visionary and one of the only characters to truly understand what you're going through. At 24, he's a stupid, whiny kid who then makes you angry at the stupid whiny kid you used to be. At 34, you hope that you never have kids like him, and at 44 you're just happy your eyesight is still good enough to read this without glasses. Link

The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway

The Things They Carried - Tim O'Brien

Tim O'Brien's collection of short stories focuses on the men involved in the Vietnam War rather than the political division of the American homefront. There's a deep sense of tragedy about the book that O'Brien pushes one step further by making the reader constantly question how much of the book is true and whether or not it even matters. If these aren't true events, are they still tragic? Or does the tragedy become true through the reader's emotional response? It's a great tool for dispelling some of the more venomous myths about the Vietnam War while also humanizing the guys who were sent over. Link

Naked Pictures of Famous People - Jon Stewart

My Documents - Alejandro Zambra, translated by Megan McDowell

International authors aren't talked about a lot in the broad American audience, but Zambra's work makes a compelling argument for seeking out translated work. My Documents is a book of short stories, written originally in Spanish and translated flawlessly by McDowell, and allows American readers to explore the similarities and differences, both more subtle than you'd think, between life in the US and Chile. While reading, you often have to remind yourself that the stories are taking place in South America and not the more residential sections of New York City or the like. Link

To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

Harper Lee's most famous book is often people's first introduction to race relations, criminal justice (or lack thereof), and the neighborhood weird guy. It may also be a slight indictment of modern America that most of the specific problems the characters face are still present today, especially since the story is set in the 30s, was published in 1960, and feels like it could have been written yesterday. It's unlikely that you haven't read it, seeing as how it's one of the most widely-read books in the country, but if you haven't, it's not too late to catch up. Link

The Táin - Translation by Ciaran Carson

Seamus Heaney, a name you'll recognize from your favorite version of Beowulf, loved this translation of The Táin, the ancient Irish epic, so that alone should be enough for you to pick up a copy. If you need more, the text starts with an Irish king and queen bragging about their kingdoms post-coitus and when they find out one has a better bull than the other, they start a land war which is repelled by a single 17 year old and his charioteer. So it gets weird. It also shows that ancient poets might not have taken themselves as seriously as we thought. They were entertainers, after all. Link

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Díaz

One of the reasons The Wire is often considered the greatest television show of all time is the fact that the dialogue feels authentic. It's an incredibly difficult thing for a writer to master. Junot Díaz conducts a clinic on it in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Set in Paterson, New Jersey, the story centers on the struggles of a nerdy, overweight Dominican boy as he grows up in Jersey. The story is narrated by a character named Yunior, who-and this is where Díaz shines-speaks in an eloquent yet street-wise manner. Slang can often feel fake and dated if the author is not plugged into the culture, but Díaz proves that, when done right, it adds a level of believability that can make a story soar. Link

The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen

Few novels capture the anxiety and despair of what many would call a fairly standard life like The Corrections. In it, Jonathan Franzen paints the picture of a family that, while not exactly the same as yours, feels recognizable enough. Then, through the actions of each of the Lamberts, he takes a microscope to the fears and troubles that reside deep inside you. The Lambert children are trying to make it on their own in East Coast cities far from their parents, but each encounters issues either financially or in their relationships. Back home things aren't much better. It's the pre-9/11 anxiety book that nailed it better than many post-9/11 anxiety books. Link

Walden - Henry David Thoreau

We didn't want to include too many nonfiction works on this list, but Walden is such a fitting selection for a Cool Material list that we couldn't leave it off. There has been renewed interest in Henry David Thoreau's classic, thanks to the rise of the modern-day outdoorsman. Walden is a meditation on life, simplicity, and growth. It documents the slightly-more-than two years Thoreau spent secluded in a cabin by Walden Pond. During that time he connects with nature, ponders the direction civilization is going, and lives a life like a hermit. Even if you only have a good-looking axe on display, the book is thought-provoking and inspiring, perhaps even more now than when it was originally published. Link

A Good Man Is Hard to Find - Flannery O'Connor

Flannery O'Connor might have the finest throne in the pantheon of great short story writers, and the work that best explains why is A Good Man Is Hard to Find. Obviously it includes the legendary story of the same name, but it also includes nine other stories just as good. A theme of spirituality ties all the tales together, as many of the main characters question their beliefs when confronted with horror and abrupt change. In each of the flawed characters you can find a little bit of yourself, and O'Connor was beyond skilled at driving that home. Link

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay - Michael Chabon

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is a sprawling historical novel packed with heavy topics-the plight of being Jewish in certain parts of pre-WWII Europe, the struggles of being gay in America at the same time, big business swindling. What makes it so brilliant, so enjoyable to read, however, is the air of levity Michael Chabon applies. It's done, in part, by the childlike innocence of the main characters and also by the fact that it's a story about superheroes, comic books, and the age of wonder. Link

East of Eden - John Steinbeck

Steinbeck is probably best known for The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men, both of which were strong contenders for this list. In our opinion, however, East of Eden is his finest work. In fact, Steinbeck would probably agree. Upon completion of the 690-page tome, he wrote to a friend, "This is 'the book.' If it is not good I have fooled myself all the time. I don't mean I will stop but this is a definite milestone and I feel released. Having done this I can do anything I want. Always I had this book waiting to be written." Link

White Teeth - Zadie Smith

Books like White Teeth don't come around often. First of all, it deftly handles complex themes like race and immigration. The feelings, emotions, and challenges the characters face in relation to these things feel real, powerful, and, at times, excruciatingly brutal. Second, while it's moving for that reason, it's also a joy to read. Zadie Smith's writing is stunning and witty. There is a bit of humor throughout, a bit of fun that makes the sorrow cut even deeper. By using multiple viewpoints, Smith not only displays her skills for fleshing out characters, but also gives you, the reader, different vantage points on assimilation. It's the rare ambitious novel that really works. Link

Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Between the World and Me - Ta-Nehisi Coates

Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace

Here are a list of things you may find less difficult than reading Infinite Jest: solving a Rubik's Cube, beating Joey Chestnut in an eating contest, The New York Times Saturday crossword puzzle, teleportation. Yes, Infinite Jest can be challenging, at time laborious, and often confounding, but there is beauty in all of this. In fact, the "postmodern encyclopedic novel," as it has been described, is best consumed as a meditation on such things as addiction, mental illness, depression, family, and much more. The story(s) take place in a dystopian future, where the United States, Canada, and Mexico have joined one large North American nation. Each year is sponsored by a specific corporation, resulting in things like the Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad and the Year of the Whopper. There's tennis. Lots of tennis. Like we said, it's weird, it's confusing, but it's also brilliant. Link

Pastoralia - George Saunders

There are few short story writers working today more revered than George Saunders. He builds stories around down-and-out characters who find themselves in ludicrous scenarios. But the true brilliance of Saunders is the way he uses these stories as a means to comment on contemporary life. It's satire, yes, but it feels unique and distinctly Saunders. It's like he sucks the emotion off the page and allows you to insert it yourself. In Pastoralia, his collection released in 2000, he gave us six stories that all originally saw publication in The New Yorker. Four of those six stories won an O. Henry Award, which is given to stellar short stories. It's the ideal place to start on your wonderfully weird and poignant George Saunders journey. Link

Dune - Frank Herbert

2666 - Roberto Bolaño

Roberto Bolaño's final novel is not for the impatient. At over 900 pages, it isn't exactly a beach read. What 2666 is, however, is Bolaño's magnum opus, a final work that adheres to only the writer's rules. Yeah, it gets a bit wild and surreal. At its most basic, though, the novel, which Bolaño wrote during the final years of his life as his health declined, is about the murders of women in a city named Santa Teresa, based on the real-life city Ciudad Juárez. Broken down into five parts (Bolaño originally planned on releasing five separate books to provide more wealth for his offspring), the novel showcases Bolaño's skills at creating the hostile atmosphere and anxiety of a place, much like he did in The Savage Detectives. The slang is smart, the unease painful, and the words a joy to consume. Link

A Visit from the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan

Existing in a world somewhere between novel and short story collection, Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad is truly a unique work, though you probably could have guessed that upon hearing her two sources of inspiration for it: Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, and the HBO series The Sopranos. Though the stories feature a collection of main characters that appear, disappear, and then reappear again, each chapter/story has its own distinct feel, though almost involve some aspect of the music scene. What Egan accomplishes is something special-a "novel" that feels as free and loose and beautiful as a Woodstock jam session. Link

I am Legend - Richard Matheson

You almost definitely recognize the title from the 2007 Will Smith movie based loosely on the book. And we'll emphasize loosely. Not that the movie wasn't good (up to a point) in its own right, but the book gets much more into the philosophy of Robert Neville's actions and convictions, the world feels more fleshed out, and the line between hero and villain isn't so bold. Plus, in the book, the title makes way more sense. Though, we will give it to the movie in that Will Smith was a great choice for Neville and, if you've seen the movie, it's hard to picture anyone else as you read the book. Link

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50 Books Every Man Should Read Once in His Life

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We're decently active readers here so we thought we'd compile and share a list of books we think every man should read at least once in his life. They're not presented in any particular order, so feel free to jump around, but try to get to these before you die.

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Personality tests -» What book should I read?

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Personality tests -» What book should I read?

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What book should I read? - What is your real personality?

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What book should I read? - Do you know yourself? Check it by taking these numerous tests and quizzes

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Reading list: 23 female TED speakers tell us about the books that shaped them

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Reading list: 23 female TED speakers tell us about the books that shaped them

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Here are the books that profoundly influenced women from our speaker community, and they're just as wonderfully diverse as TED itself.

When I read this book for the first time as a deeply odd fifth-grader (or, as Jane says, "poor, plain, and little"), it felt like grasping onto a life raft that had been flung to me through the folds of time. Feeling such a kinship with Jane and with Charlotte Brontë herself made me feel, quite suddenly, less alone. I still re-read this book every couple of years, and it still speaks to something primal and yearning in me - the outsider woman who is finally seen, finds love, but also has the strength and self-possession to reject that love until she is able to accept it from a place of her own power and dignity. If you haven't read it, do so immediately; if you read it a long time ago, it is well worth reading again; and if you, like me, can't get enough of it, may I also recommend Wide Sargasso Sea, which is a prequel by Jean Rhys centered on the story of the mad wife in the attic.

- Naomi McDougall Jones (TED Talk: What it's like to be a woman in Hollywood)

I read this collection of poems at a time of life when I was extremely outwardly successful yet, as I later came to learn, mired in self-loathing. Clifton's poems on blackness, femaleness, mothering and the body were the catalyst of my journey to self-love. Reading Clifton, I felt, "If these words are possible, if she is possible, maybe I am possible."

The book that shaped me was a biography of Marie Curie, written by her daughter Eve Curie. I read it when I was a pre-teenager, and it motivated me to become a scientist. I was inspired by how she felt that scientific research was a deeply worthwhile, even noble, calling and that she also had a family (two daughters) and was a devoted parent as well as an iconic researcher.

- Elizabeth Blackburn (TED Talk: The science of cells that never get old)

Nichiren Daishonin was a Japanese philosopher (1222-82) who wrote at a time when women were dismissed and faced a life and future of woe. In this book, he encourages men and especially women to make possible the impossible. He addresses women with powerful phrases like, "Even if one were to meet a person who could cross the ocean carrying Mount Sumeru on his head, one could never find a woman like you. Even though one might find a person who could steam sand and make boiled rice of it, one could never meet a woman like you." This kind of courage really shaped me in showing me the infinite value and dignity of life.

- Wanda Diaz-Merced (TED Talk: How a blind astronomer found a way to hear the stars)

Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman

I read this book, a linked collection of short stories about dreams Einstein had, when I was a teenager, and it helped me see the world through different eyes. The scenarios that the author describes in succinct and beautiful prose are imaginary - in one, time is a circle, endlessly repeating itself - but reading them increased my awareness of how extremely narrow a framework of time and space we live in.

- Karen Lloyd (TED Talk: This deep-sea mystery is changing our understanding of life)
Any Pippi Longstocking book by Astrid Lindgren
Lately, in the context of the #metoo movement, I found myself reflecting upon the outsized influence that the children's book character Pippi Longstocking has had on me. Growing up in the Netherlands, I was not surrounded by traditional stories created by Disney. The one character that was, was Pippi. A girl my age, Pippi was extraordinarily strong - strong enough to toss policemen off her veranda (hence my work today to hold the police around the world accountable for human-rights violations?). She was independent and lived in a big house by herself with a monkey and a horse (this was refreshingly different from dominant-gender narratives that involved futures created by princes and proposals), loyal, principled (she espoused sticking with your values over obeying rules), and anti-authority (she defied all formal structures of authority, from parents to educators - a key quality that I look for in leading a group of human-rights defenders). Last but not least, she was economically self-sufficient - she had a treasure trove of gold coins hidden in a tree trunk and taught me early on to be fiscally independent.

- Yvette Alberdingk-Thijm (TED Talk: The power of citizen video to create undeniable truths)

This book had an immense impact on me as I was developing the Runway of Dreams Foundation. It explores what it means to successfully create "blue oceans," untapped market spaces ripe for growth and innovation. My middle son, Oliver, was born with a rare form of muscular dystrophy, which makes it hard for him to find fashionable and functional clothing. Through my experiences with him, I realized that millions of people around the globe were also struggling to access stylish clothing and that the fashion industry was not addressing their needs. Mainstream adaptive clothing was a wide-open "blue ocean" of opportunity, and the book gave me the tools and framework I needed to take action.

Ah, how this book has impacted me! First and foremost, it was the first non-schoolbook which I read fully from end to end. While I've started reading many books, I never finished any. Many people say reading is for some people, not for all, but reading this book gave me another perspective - we just need the right book for us to fall in love with reading! This book is what got me into reading, and what a blessing that has been. Second, for those who love running, who are training for their next marathon, or who feel freed when they run, this book is a gem in allowing us to connect with the belief that humans were born to run, and most important, to consider that we were born to run barefoot. This book made me appreciate living barefoot. It has made me remind myself to take off my shoes and let my feet live freely whenever I can.

- Lana Mazahreh (TED Talk: 3 thoughtful ways to conserve water)

I read this memoir when I was in my 20s, and to this day it remains one of the most powerful human survival stories I have read. The author endured a harrowing childhood and adolescence in Dublin and, later, a violent marriage. As an adult, she traveled to Vietnam, where she turned her attention to helping the impoverished and vulnerable street children in Ho Chi Minh City. She went on to establish her own foundation, which now has programs in Vietnam and Mongolia. Her ability to survive and succeed has always stayed with me. I realized that self-determination and courage are innate qualities that no one can take from you and should never be underestimated. The book isn't easy to read; I cried a lot but I could not put it down. If you like to read about strong, real women, this book is a must.

- Michelle Knox (TED Talk: Talk about your death while you're still healthy)

I adored this novel from its first sentence. It is a portrait of a marriage seen through the eyes of an unnamed woman. It explores desire and its loss, the fears and hopes of birth and parenthood, and the terrors of things falling apart - all things that resonated deeply with me. I am also in awe of the apparently effortless way Offill weaves philosophy and history into her fictional narrative, rightly linking the intimate and domestic - traditionally seen as feminine spheres - to fundamental questions about the nature of knowledge and existence. This is a slender book (and as a mother of very young children, that is certainly a plus for me!), but each time I re-read it, I experience the kind of emotional connection with its protagonist that leaves me feeling listened to - which is what I value most in reading.

Roy's novel remains one of my favorites of all time. Her complex tale of an Indian family in Kerala unfolds masterfully through a series of flashbacks and side stories, and her writing is nothing short of stunning. It is an incredibly intricate work of fiction that touches on a myriad of sensitive themes in Indian culture and society, ranging from forbidden love to politics and the complexities of the caste system. The book came out in 1997, when I was in law school in Boston, and I was transported to another time and place while reading it. I was raised in the United States as a first-generation Indian, and this was one of the first times I read a story set in a backdrop that was culturally familiar to me, even though the story itself was completely unfamiliar. The critical and commercial global success of The God of Small Things made me realize that culturally diverse stories mattered, and it planted the seed in my mind that perhaps there was room for my story among those voices.

- Anjali Kumar (TED Talk: My failed mission to find God - and what I found instead)

This nonfiction book opened my eyes to the power that multinational corporations have over our food systems and the dangers and risks this poses to human health as well as livestock health. It puts into perspective how destructive consumerism is, and it made me question the power of marketing. It will make you think about the future of all food through a milky lens.

Just Kids reads like a poem, as Smith's wordcraft transports you to the bohemian New York of the late 1960s and '70s. While her memoir recounts the relationship she nurtured with her lover and friend, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, what resonated with me was the way it depicts the insatiable drive that the two artists had to express and refine their art and creations. I was struck by their commitment to and faith in their inner artistic voice, a message that inspired me to be more creatively courageous, both in my scientific work and in my personal life.

This manifesto is as close to a come-to-Jesus moment as I'll ever get. Thomashauer, who goes by the name Mama Gena (think: sexy, hilarious, take-no-prisoners, feminist, Jewish mother - the one who all your friends want to hang out with), has been working with women for 20 years to flip the script on our patriarchal culture. As women, we've ingested so much about sacrifice, suffering, working harder, working smarter, enduring, and sucking it up. She's teaching us to stand for our pleasure and to stand for one another. Here's what she says: when a woman is in her full pleasure, or - in Pussy parlance - "turned on," everyone is taken care of. The first thing a turned-on woman does is turn to her sisters to bring them higher; her bright light illuminates her family and her community. She brings pleasure to her own life and to the world around her. Who doesn't want that?

My family immigrated to America when I was 11, and this book was the first real literature that I read after I learned English. It helped me understand that life is meant to have a villain or two, that failure often leads to the climax, and that people, like characters, develop, so even the most unlikely hero can save the day. And even though every great story must come to an end, there's always a sequel - all you have to do is to get out of your Hobbit hole and embrace your curiosity to go on an adventure.

In her 1974 essay, "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens, The Creativity of Black Women in the South," which is part of this collection, Walker challenges us to imagine the experiences of our creative female ancestors and calls upon Black women to define their own identity as Black women artists throughout history: "How was the creativity of the Black woman kept alive, year after year and century after century, when for most of the years Black people have been in America, it was a punishable crime for a Black person to read or write? And the freedom to paint, to sculpt, to expand the mind with action did not exist. Consider, if you can bear to imagine it, what might have been the result if singing, too, had been forbidden by law." When I first read these words, I wanted to explore the possibilities of these experiences and reinvest in the work of other Black female artists as a way of locating my own identity as an artist. Ever since I was a child, art has played a large part in my life. I am fascinated by the work of 19th-century artists and equally intrigued by the photographic images in my family album of the women that came before me.

- Deborah Willis (TED Talk, given with her son Hank Willis Thomas: A mother and son united by love and art)

It was important to me that I give my mother the best possible experience in the very difficult and precious time when she was dying. But I had no idea how; I had no experience. I researched this topic as much as I researched cancer itself and how to fight it, and this book was the most helpful I read. Halifax is truly a gift to our world. She is the ultimate role model of how to be with someone who is going through the dying process. In understanding how to be present to the letting go of life, we can learn how to live more presently.

- Alyssa Monks (TED Talk: How loss helped one artist find beauty in imperfection)

Mothers and Others by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy

This nonfiction book is an eye-opening exploration into how children are raised around the world and how child-rearing can inform the understanding of human nature more broadly. I relied heavily on it when writing my own book, which explores the brain mechanisms that enable us to care about other people's welfare. As it turns out, the same brain networks that support caring for children also support care more broadly, an idea that builds on the author's most essential point: one of the things which makes humans special as a species is that we don't limit care to our own children. We can expand our circles of care and compassion outward to encompass nearly anyone, and it's all because of the way our brains were set up to parent.

- Abigail Marsh (TED Talk: Why some people are more altruistic than others)

Just a few pages into this book, I realized Anne Shirley was a kindred spirit. An orphaned girl with no material advantages but a richness of soul, imagination and ambition, Anne was wonderfully imperfect and extraordinarily real. I met her in sixth grade: She taught me that different doesn't mean bad, smart beats pretty, and tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it - yet. Her courage to try and her willingness to hope inspired some of my own leaps and softened the thuds too. When you've got a friend who doesn't just see a lake but the Lake of Shining Waters, you can find the silver lining in just about anything.

- Kate Adams (TED Talk: 4 larger-than-life lessons from soap operas)

This great feminist novel, which is set in the Caribbean, blew me away at 18. Hypnotic and mesmerizing and sensuous, with the weight of the tropics, sin and loneliness, it was exhilarating because of the author's psychological bravery and insight. I hope people are still reading her - she changed the lives of all the young women I knew.

- Anne Lamott (TED Talk: 12 truths I learned from life and writing)

This seminal work changed my life in more ways than one. It distills ancient and profound Tibetan wisdom in a manner that is comprehensible to the Western mind. The two parts of the book - Life and Death - are naturally related to each other. While I am not an assiduous meditator, some of the advice and techniques explained in the Life section have stayed with me after just one reading. I learned how to calm the mind, even in situations that would otherwise cause a panic attack. But I found the section on dying even more powerful and useful. In Western societies we fear death and don't talk about it much. Here, we learn how to prepare for our own end and how to help others transition. This was of immense value at a time when so many young people, friends and contemporaries were decimated by AIDS in the 1990s. Later on, as I grew older, so did my aunts, uncles and father. Facing up to their departures in ways practiced by advanced spiritual leaders takes away some of the pain, fear and sadness - theirs and ours. Unreligious and truly transformational, this book continues to inspire and provide endless wisdom on the great mysteries and challenges of our human existence.

- Philippa Neave (TED Talk: The unexpected challenges of a country's first election)

For the past couple of years, I've had this collection of poems at my bedside. It's brutal and love-filled at the same time, and I always find something that speaks to what I am feeling at the moment. Today, it's this one ...
knowing your power is what creates Humility. not knowing your power is what creates Insecurity. -ego
- Sayu Bhojwani (TED Talk: Immigrant voices make democracy stronger)

This novel really influenced my thinking. The writing is so visual - gritty and sublime at the same time. It allows you to engage with vastness and wonder and the itchy curious experience of having your feet in mud. I also like the back story of the author, Jeanette Winterson. She is a difficult character to peg, one who is courageous, compassionate, intelligent, violent, proud, and argumentative, a fighter with a flair for love stories. She has definitely influenced my connection with multifaceted ideas of "female," "queer" and "independent."

- Emily Parsons-Lord (TED Talk: Art made of the air we breathe)

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23 unmissable books recommended by female TED speakers

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When I read this book for the first time as a deeply odd fifth-grader (or, as Jane says, "poor, plain, and little"), it felt like grasping onto a life raft that had been flung to me through the folds of time. Feeling such a kinship with Jane and with Charlotte Brontë herself made me feel, quite suddenly, less alone.

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From Asimov to Bradbury - discover AbeBooks' list of 50 must-read science fiction books

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Personality tests -» What book should I read?

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Personality tests -» What book should I read?

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Find out what kind of reader you are and the books you should check out now.

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Discover Horror Stories, Gothic Literature | AbeBooks

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Browse & Buy: If you're looking for great horror stories to read, you'll enjoy browsing AbeBooks' collections of horror books. Here you'll find lots of gothic literature and scary books filled with the macabre and supernatural, including ghosts, vampires and werewolves. Authors in the selection include Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker and Stephen King.

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The Best Female Authors of All Timeby Jessica Doyle

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The Best Female Authors of All Timeby Jessica Doyle

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Since its inaugural year in 1948, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction has been awarded to a woman 18 times. America's National Book Award, launched in 1950, shares the same number, while the Man Booker, beginning in 1969, boasts 16. As of February 2018, that makes the number of times one of these prestigious literary awards has been awarded to a woman just one in four (or, a whopping 26.9% of awards granted, to be exact).

Something I noticed while tallying the winners is that, for the most part, the share of female winners is densely packed into the last 20 years. While that could be seen as a sign of promise, the imbalance is still glaringly obvious which strikes me as odd considering the wealth of literary talent among women. I set out to create a list of 50 essential female authors, and upon hitting 50 in under five minutes I decided to shoot for 100. It wasn't a hard list to fill - what was hard was choosing just 100. I cringe to think of the names that were omitted (please, tell us in the comment section).

How do we change this? We start with the obvious - we read women. In 2014 writer Joanna Walsh launched The Year of Reading Women (#readwomen2014). What started as a nudge encouraging friends to read female authors became a powerful movement to raise awareness in the book industry and encourage publishers, distributors, and promoters to pull women writers into the spotlight so readers like you and I could better discover them. If step one is to read women, then step two is to talk about them - to review them, to critique them, to press their books into the hands of our book-loving friends.

Whatever stage you're at in the endeavor to read more women, here are 100 talented female authors to get you started or keep you going. We suspect the list will grow longer in the comments section, so please do give those a read and leave your own suggestions!

Which outstanding female authors did we miss?
Book shelf illustration by Jane Mount of Ideal Bookshelf.

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Since its inaugural year in 1948, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction has been awarded to a woman 18 times. America's National Book Award, launched in 1950, shares the same number, while the Man Booker, beginning in 1969, boasts 16.

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Personality tests -» What book should I read?

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Personality tests -» What book should I read?

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Reading personality quiz: What should you read this summer?

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Need some help building your summer reading list? Take our quiz to find out which books would most suit your personality.

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Personality tests -» What book should I read?

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Personality tests -» What book should I read?

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Whichbook | A new way of choosing what book to read next

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Shop Art, Books & Collectibles - Curated Collections | AbeBooks

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Browse & Buy: Browse and shop books and collectibles ranging from vintage paperbacks and signed first editions to antique maps and art and photography.

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Discover Crime Fiction, Mystery Novels | AbeBooks

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Browse & Buy: Welcome to AbeBooks' collections of crime fiction and mystery novels, a seedy underworld of thrillers and murder mysteries where detectives, sleuths and private eyes are on the case. Here you'll find hard-boiled and suspenseful crime fiction, as well as mystery novels from some of literature's best detective writers, such as Agatha Christie.

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Sneak peeks at great reads, behind-the-scenes insights from authors, lively and provocative reader's guides and fabulous free books.

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50 Essential Non-Fiction Books (You'll Actually Read)

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50 Essential Non-Fiction Books (You'll Actually Read)

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50 Essential Non-Fiction Books You'll Actually Read

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This is by no means a complete list, but our selection of 50 essential non-fiction books you'll actually read.

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Books that Feature Iconic, Relatable Protagonists

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Books that Feature Iconic, Relatable Protagonists

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Gmail is email that's intuitive, efficient, and useful. 15 GB of storage, less spam, and mobile access.

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Villains and Monsters | The Great American Read | PBS

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Villains and Monsters | The Great American Read | PBS

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How do novels featuring our favorite villains and monsters help us understand why people behave badly? We examine the evil characters in our favorite novels, to find out why we go to the dark side. We also meet authors who have created some of our best-loved villains.

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The Great American Read is made possible by the Anne Ray Foundation and public television viewers. Additional engagement funding for The Great American Read is made possible by CPB.

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The “Other Side” Is Not Dumb Sean Blanda

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The “Other Side” Is Not Dumb Sean Blanda

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This story is part of the Internet Time Machine, a collection about life online in the 2010s.
T here's a fun game I like to play in a group of trusted friends called "Controversial Opinion." The rules are simple: Don't talk about what was shared during Controversial Opinion afterward and you aren't allowed to "argue" - only to ask questions about why that person feels that way. Opinions can range from, "I think James Bond movies are overrated," to, "I think Donald Trump would make an excellent president."

Usually, someone responds to an opinion with, "Oh my god! I had no idea you were one of those people!" Which is really another way of saying "I thought you were on my team!"

Illustration: Tom Gauld/TwitterSource

In psychology, the idea that everyone is like us is called the "false-consensus bias." This bias often manifests itself when we see TV ratings ("Who the hell are all these people that watch NCIS?") or in politics ("Everyone I know is for stricter gun control! Who are these backward rubes who disagree?!") or polls ("Who are these people voting for Ben Carson?").

Online it means we can be blindsided by the opinions of our friends or, more broadly, America. Over time, this morphs into a subconscious belief that we and our friends are the sane ones and that there's a crazy "Other Side" that must be laughed at - an Other Side that just doesn't "get it," and is clearly not as intelligent as "us." But this holier-than-thou social media behavior is counterproductive, it's self-aggrandizement at the cost of actual nuanced discourse and if we want to consider online discourse productive, we need to move past this.

What is emerging is the worst kind of echo chamber, one where those inside are increasingly convinced that everyone shares their worldview, that their ranks are growing when they aren't. It's like clockwork: An event happens and then your social media circle is shocked when a non-social media peer group public reacts to news in an unexpected way. They then mock the Other Side for being "out of touch" or "dumb."

Fredrik deBoer, one of my favorite writers around, touched on this in his Essay " Getting Past the Coalition of the Cool." He writes:

Illustration: Esquire/NBC News poll

[The Internet] encourages people to collapse any distinction between their work life, their social life, and their political life. "Hey, that person who tweets about the TV shows I likealso dislikes injustice," which over time becomes "I can identify an ally by the TV shows they like." The fact that you can mine a Rihanna video for political content becomes, in that vague internety way, the sense that people who don't see political content in Rihanna's music aren't on your side.

When someone communicates that they are not "on our side" our first reaction is to run away or dismiss them as stupid. To be sure, there are hateful, racist, people not worthy of the small amount of electricity it takes just one of your synapses to fire. I'm instead referencing those who actually believe in an opposing viewpoint of a complicated issue, and do so for genuine, considered reasons. Or at least, for reasons just as good as yours.

This is not a "political correctness" issue. It's a fundamental rejection of the possibility to consider that the people who don't feel the same way you do might be right. It's a preference to see the Other Side as a cardboard cut out, and not the complicated individual human beings that they actually are.

What happens instead of genuine intellectual curiosity is the sharing of Slate or Daily Kos or Fox News or Red State links. Sites that exist almost solely to produce content to be shared so friends can pat each other on the back and mock the Other Side. Look at the Other Side! So dumb and unable to see this the way I do!

It's a preference to see the Other Side as a cardboard cut out, and not the complicated individual human beings that they actually are.

Sharing links that mock a caricature of the Other Side isn't signaling that we're somehow more informed. It signals that we'd rather be smug assholes than consider alternative views. It signals that we'd much rather show our friends that we're like them than try to understand those who are not.

It's impossible to consider yourself a curious person and participate in social media in this way. We cannot consider ourselves "empathetic" only to turn around and belittle those who don't agree with us.

On Twitter and Facebook, this means we prioritize by sharing stuff that will garner the approval of our peers over stuff that's actually, you know, true. We share stuff that ignores wider realities, selectively shares information, or is just an outright falsehood. The misinformation is so rampant that the Washington Post stopped publishing its internet fact-checking column because people didn't seem to care if stuff was true.

Where debunking an Internet fake once involved some research, it's now often as simple as clicking around for an "about" or "disclaimer" page. And where a willingness to believe hoaxes once seemed to come from a place of honest ignorance or misunderstanding, that's frequently no longer the case. Headlines like " Casey Anthony found dismembered in truck " go viral via old-fashioned schadenfreude - even hate.

...

Institutional distrust is so high right now, and cognitive bias so strong always, that the people who fall for hoax news stories are frequently only interested in consuming information that conforms with their views - even when it's demonstrably fake.

The solution is, as deBoer says, "You have to be willing to sacrifice your carefully curated social performance and be willing to work with people who are not like you. " In other words, you have to recognize that the Other Side is made of actual people.

But I'd like to go a step further. We should all enter every issue with the very real possibility that we might be wrong this time.

Isn't it possible that you, reader of Medium and Twitter power user, like me, suffer from this from time to time? Isn't it possible that we're not right about everything? That those who live in places not where you live, watch shows that you don't watch and read books that you don't read, have opinions and belief systems just as valid as yours? That maybe you don't see the entire picture?

Think political correctness has gotten out of control? Follow the many great social activists on Twitter. Think America's stance on guns is puzzling? Read the stories of the 31% of Americans that own a firearm. This is not to say the Other Side is "right" but that they likely have real reasons to feel that way. And only after understanding those reasons can a real discussion take place.

Isn't it possible that you, reader of Medium and Twitter power user, like me, suffer from this from time to time? Isn't it possible that we're not right about everything?

As any debate club veteran knows, if you can't make your opponent's point for them, you don't truly grasp the issue. We can bemoan political gridlock and a divisive media all we want. But we won't truly progress as individuals until we make an honest effort to understand those that are not like us. And you won't convince anyone to feel the way you do if you don't respect their position and opinions.

A dare for the next time you're in discussion with someone you disagree with: Don't try to "win." Don't try to "convince" anyone of your viewpoint. Don't score points by mocking them to your peers. Instead, try to "lose." Hear them out. Ask them to convince you and mean it. No one is going to tell your environmentalist friends that you merely asked follow-up questions after your brother made his pro-fracking case.

Or, the next time you feel compelled to share a link on social media about current events, ask yourself why you are doing it. Is it because that link brings to light information you hadn't considered? Or does it confirm your world view, reminding your circle of intellectual teammates that you're not on the Other Side?

I implore you to seek out your opposite. When you hear someone cite "facts" that don't support your viewpoint don't think "that can't be true!" Instead consider, "Hm, maybe that person is right? I should look into this."

Because refusing to truly understand those who disagree with you is intellectual laziness and worse, is usually worse than what you're accusing the Other Side of doing.

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This story is part of the Internet Time Machine , a collection about life online in the 2010s. T here's a fun game I like to play in a group of trusted friends called "Controversial Opinion."

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You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

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You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

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Chimamanda Adichie's The Dangers of a Single Story

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Chimamanda Adichie's The Dangers of a Single Story

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The danger of a single story

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Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice -- and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.

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7 CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: The Danger of a Single Story (Transcript)

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7 CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: The Danger of a Single Story (Transcript)

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2a The Final Speech from The Great dictator

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2a The Final Speech from The Great dictator

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The Greatest Speech Ever Made - [Original]

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2b: The Great Dictator Script and Background Info

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2b: The Great Dictator Script and Background Info