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Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.
In The Shack with Robert Caro
Good long read on Robert Caro, The Power Broker at 50, and his progress on the next book. Spending decades on a multi-volume biography feels like a relic of a former world, and I do hope we see his like again. There is an exhibition on The Power Broker up at the New Historical Society through Feb 2, 2025 if you find yourself there. I have a trip to New York coming up next week, and I hope to find a time to sneak over and take a look.
I will take an illustrated animal cover over the color blob any day. This piece notices a trend, but does little to unpack what this strategy might be trying to convey. It may well just be the next popular way to get around some book design truisms (don’t use human faces, don’t represent characters, etc) in literary fiction, while also saving a buck (the older the illustration, the less likely you have to pay to use it). For my part, I think it is connected to historical fiction’s popularity and a certain studied old-fashionedness, especially among print book buyers, for reading as a timeless activity. And nothing says timely like a lounging cougar or inverted parrot, no?
I have been waiting for a in-depth piece on Steve Silberman, and I finally got one to link to. I hadn’t honestly kept up with Silberman’s work since I read NeuroTribes when it came out in 2015, but I have recommended it dozens of times over the last decade. It changed my understanding and thinking–and perhaps most importantly my feeling about what neurodiversity really means. I can’t say that about too many books. When Silberman died last month, the outpouring of remembrances suggested I am not alone in that.
