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Awards & News

The Federal Trade Commission sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power.

Jorie Graham, To 2040 (Copper Canyon; LJ starred review), wins the Laurel Prize. 

Naomi Wood wins the 2023 BBC National Short Story Award. The Guardian has details. 

Finalists are named for the 2023 Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.

Hollywood Reporter goes behind the scenes during the final negotiations that ended the WGA strike. Variety explains the new contract. 

Reviews

NYT reviews Germany 1923: Hyperinflation, Hitler’s Putsch, and Democracy in Crisis by Volker Ullrich, tr. by Jefferson Chase (Liveright): “Ullrich can burrow so deeply into the granular details of the political squabbling that for readers who aren’t versed in Weimar’s numerous parties and their splintering factions, it can be tricky to keep track.” Plus, there is a paired review of Hillbilly Highway: The Transappalachian Migration and the Making of a White Working Class by Max Fraser (Princeton Univ.) and Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class by Blair LM Kelley (Liveright), “two views of the search for a better life by working-class migrants in the middle of the 20th century.”

NPR reviews People Collide by Isle McElroy (HarperVia): “People Collide’s Freaky Friday concept covers a deep exploration of marriage, love, and the ways we know one another—and don’t—as well as how slippery a sense of self can be when so much of how we navigate the world depends on how it sees us.” Washington Post also reviews: “The finale is so good, in fact, that it elevates the entire book, making it one of the year’s most compelling reads.”

Washington Post reviews American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15 by Cameron McWhirter & Zusha Elinson (Farrar): “The book elucidates how the AR-15 has stirred open-carry rallies and national school walkouts, enriched gun executives, armed extremist plots at the U.S. Capitol and elsewhere, and brought death and devastation to thousands of innocent people”; and The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time by Yascha Mounk (Penguin Pr.): “Mounk has told the story of the Great Awokening better than any other writer who has attempted to make sense of it.”

The Guardian reviews The Iliad by Homer, tr. by Emily Wilson (Norton): “Her translation, like many others, uses the time-honoured English poetic medium of the unrhymed iambic pentameter, but it stands out because her command of ancient Greek vocabulary, dialects, metres and even the manuscript tradition lends authority to every aesthetic decision she has made.”

Briefly Noted

LibraryReads and Library Journal offer read-alikes for The Running Grave by Robert Galbraith (Mulholland), the top holds title of the week.

LJ has new prepub alerts for thrillers, horror, and science fiction and fantasy titles.

USA Today has revelations from Kerry Washington’s memoir, Thicker than Water (Little, Brown, Spark).

Time has an interview with Brian Merchant, author of Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech (Little, Brown), about how the history of the Luddites can inform today’s grappling with AI. 

Entertainment Weekly shares details from the forthcoming Surely You Can’ Be Serious: The True History of Airplane! by David Zucker, Jim Abrahams & Jerry Zucker (St. Martin’s), including David Letterman’s audition story. 

LA Times talks with Alejandra Campoverdi about her new memoir, First Gen (Grand Central), and the “trailblazer toll.”

Jessica Knoll chats about her latest novel, Bright Young Women (S. & S./Marysue Rucci; LJ starred review), at Shondaland.

Lan Samantha Chang reflects on the 25th anniversary of her book Hunger in an interview with The Millions. 

CrimeReads celebrates 50 years of Spenser, Robert B. Parker’s iconic character.

Best-selling chess author Jeremy Silman dies at 69. NYT has an obituary. 

Authors on Air

C Pam Zhang discusses her new novel, Land of Milk and Honey (Riverhead), with NPR’s All Things Considered. 

NPR’s Fresh Air talks with Ben Goldfarb, author of Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet (Norton), about how “roadkill has created a ‘crisis for biodiversity.’"

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