Summer Reading
As we enter our hiatus, here are some books--and conversations about books--that can help you improve the hour
Your friends at Public Seminar are resting for the next four weeks, but we want to use this time to remind you about all the work we did last year. This week’s issue feature books and literary criticism. Enjoy! And please share this issue with a friend who might want to join our community.
Drawings of whales in the log of a whaling ship kept by Thomas R. Bloomfield (1842–1844). Courtesy of Public Domain Review
July 29, 2021
Featured Essays
Russ Castronovo, “According to Nathaniel Hawthorne, We Should All Be Wearing Face Masks.” (July 1, 2020)
Anthony Grafton, “Re-reading C. P. Snow: What the mid-century novelist and man of letters understood about being human in an uncertain world.” (July 30, 2020)
Book Excerpts
Anne L. Buttenwieser, “The Floating Pool Lady: A quest to bring a public pool to New York City’s waterfront.” (May 12, 2021)
Susan Yelavich, “Thinking Design Through Literature: Identity: The cultural politics of things and places.” (May 5, 2021)
Josh Ireland, “Winston Churchill’s North American Tour: In the summer of 1929, the future prime minister almost quit politics.” (March 30, 2021)
Conversations
Alexandra Délano Alonso and Macushla Robinson, “What Can’t be Contained: A conversation.” (May 13, 2021)
Claire Potter and Martha S. Jones, “How Black Women Fight for Our Democracy: A conversation about her book, Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All.” (January 17, 2021)
Natalia Petrzela, Nicolę Hemmer, and Neil J,. Young, “The Controversy over Dr. Seuss: Past Present Podcast, Episode 270.” (March 9, 2021)
Reviews
McKenzie Wark, “Cis Lit and the Trans Writer: On Torrey Peters and the possibilities for trans girl fiction.” (January 12, 2021)
Hannah Leffingwell, “More Misandry, Please! France Needs More Man-Haters—but Pauline Harmange doesn’t seem to be one of them.” (April 28, 2021)