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Awards & News

President Biden awarded the 2021 National Humanities Medals yesterday. Recipients included authors Colson Whitehead, Amy Tan, Ann Patchett, Bryan Stevenson, Walter Isaacson, Tara Westover, and more. Watch the ceremony here. PBS Canvas also has coverage.

Linda Villarosa, Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation (Doubleday; LJ starred review), Deborah Cohen, Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: The Reporters Who Took on a World at War (Random House; LJ starred review), and others, are named winners of the 2023 J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project Awards.

Nadia Mikail wins the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize for The Cats We Meet Along the Way. The Guardian has details. 

Questlove launches a new publishing imprint, AUWA Books at MCD. NYT has details.

Author Sim Kern launches #TransRightsReadathon, which runs through March 27th. PW reports. 

A coalition is pressuring S&S to halt distribution of the forthcoming book, The Real AIDS Epidemic: How the Tragic HIV Mistake Threatens Us All by Rebecca V. Culshaw (Skyhorse). Publishers Weekly reports. 

In a press release, Pearson announced the sale of its International Online Program Management Business, Pearson Online Learning Services to a private equity firm.

The city of Newark posthumously celebrated Philip Roth’s 90th birthday to “honor and debate his legacy.” The Washington Post covers the event. 

Reviews

NYT reviews Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry (Viking; LJ starred review): “Kettle is Job—the put upon, the tested, the long-suffering—though we learn only quite late in the novel the full extent of his misfortunes.” NPR also reviews: “Old God's Time is a powerful, painful novel, another excellent offering from Barry, who is clearly one of the best Irish writers working today. It's also a book suffused with a deep moral anger that refuses to let go of the crimes that destroyed the lives of so many.”

The Washington Post reviews Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says about the End by Bart D. Ehrman (S. & S.; LJ starred review): “he addresses what might be the most high-impact dream of all: John’s Apocalypse, or the Book of Revelation. Professor Ehrman is not a fan”; The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War by Jeff Sharlet (Norton): “This is journalism-as-art, attempting to capture the mood of the nation at this fraught moment, that others in the future may know how it felt to live through the present. Hopefully there will still be readers then”; Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right by Matthew Dallek (Basic): “Dallek joins a chorus of historians who have insisted, since Donald Trump’s victory in 2016, that the contemporary Republican Party, with its nationalist, isolationist, nativist and conspiratorial inclinations, can be understood only by looking back to far-right mobilizations of earlier eras…”; and Getting Out of Saigon: How a 27-Year-Old Banker Saved 113 Vietnamese Civilians by Ralph White (S. & S.; LJ starred review): “Recounting his brief stint as head of the Chase Manhattan Bank’s Saigon branch, White unfolds a rollicking if ultimately depressing tale of American incompetence during the days leading up to the communist takeover of Saigon at the end of April 1975, the final defeat of Washington’s 20-year effort to defend an independent South Vietnam.”

Briefly Noted

LibraryReads and Library Journal offer read-alikes for The White Lady by Jacqueline Winspear (Harper; LJ starred review), the top holds title of the week. 

LJ’s Barbara Hoffert has new prepub alerts for mysteries, memoir, and social science.

LA Times highlights the new essay collection, Boom Times for the End of the World by Scott Timberg (Heyday).

Author Jack Carr talks with FoxNews about the legacy of Louis L’Amour, who was born on March 22, 1908.

LitHub has a cover reveal for Bryan Washington's forthcoming book, Family Meal (Riverhead), which publishes in October. 

CrimeReads shares the best international fiction for March.

ElectricLit offers 8 books with characters that go to therapy. 

“Patrick French, Unsparing Biographer of V.S. Naipaul, Dies at 56.” NYT has an obituary. 

Authors On Air

Matthew Desmond discusses his new book, Poverty, by America (Crown), on NPR’s Fresh Air.

NPR's Morning Edition talks with Iraqi novelist and poet Sinan Antoon about the legacy of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. 

Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart (Atlantic Monthly; LJ starred review), will be adapted as a TV series. Deadline reports. 

James Patterson signed an exclusive first-look deal with Skydance Television, and will adapt the “Women’s Murder Club” and “Michael Bennett” series among others. THR has the story. 

J. Newman will adapt her thriller Falling (Avid Reader; LJ starred review), for film and will also shop her forthcoming title, Drowning: The Rescue of Flight 1421 (Avid Reader: S. & S.), due out in May. Deadline has details.

Apple Studios acquired rights to adapt Cesca Major’s latest novel, Maybe Next Time (Morrow), for film. Reese Witherspoon’s company, Hello Sunshine, will produce. Deadline reports. 

Claire Keegan’s novel Small Things Like These (Grove; LJ starred review), will be adapted for film with Cillian Murphy to star. Deadline reports. 

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