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We Know About Bad Books, But Are There Bad Readers, Too?

Merve Emre Boston Review
The author queries the existence of bad readers, linking causes not to illiteracy or injuries of class or the diffusion of mass culture, but to a Cold War literary trend sporting "an abundance of paraliterary works," such as memoirs, diaries, biographies, diplomatic studies, and feature reports as primers for engaging with literary texts as seemingly historically accurate yet stressing outcomes and expectations consonant with systemic social ends.

Acting Natural

J. Hoberman The New York Review of Books
The camera, just by its presence, altered human behavior. The motion picture camera changed the nature of acting. Among other things, it created that apparent oxymoron, the non-actor, the subject of an unusually rich and stimulating series now at the Film Society of Lincoln Center entitled "The Non-Actor".

How Food Packaging Claims Can Fool You

Sally Wadyka Consumer Reports
Food manufacturers use language to magnify the desirability of a product and can lead you to believe it’s something to make you healthier—even though what’s inside that box may not be all that good for you.

Negatives

Jeannette Ferrary Samisdat Magazine
As part of the so-called second wave of feminism, Jeannette Ferrary’s “Negatives” captures a woman’s sense of awakening during the 1970s, much as women today raise their voices with renewed anger about male chauvinism.

A Modern Greek Tragedy Foretold

Bennet Baumer The Indypendent
Greece's former finance minister under the radical Syriza government offers a revealing tell-all about modern capitalism through his battles over Greece’s debt with the “Troika”: the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and the European Central Bank (ECB), and eventually with his own prime minister.

4-H: Indoctrination Nation

Sarah McColl Modern Farmer
The nonprofit National 4-H Council accepts donations from a veritable who’s who of Big Ag: Monsanto, ConAgra, DuPont, and Altria each gave at least a million dollars in 2015. A lot of cultural norms around gender and sexuality are directly illustrated by the history of 4-H.

Is Netflix's Godless Actually Feminist?

Anne Cohen Refinery29
Godless, Netflix's new Steven Soderbergh-produced six-part series set in a New Mexico mining town governed mainly by women, has been touted as a feminist Western, two words that typically mean opposite things.

That’s How It Is

Jared Smith Chiron Review
From the beginning of a day, any day, writes Colorado poet Jared Smith, taking a continental view of people at work, we all go through “the motions” and “the same work has to start and be filled each day…”