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How White Crime Writers Justified Police Brutality

John Fram New York Times
We don't need any more novels or TV shows about cops who do the wrong thing for the "right" reason. Early crime fiction, to its credit, often viewed law enforcement with skepticism. This started to change in the 1950s.

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Insular, Controversial Picks for Nobel Literature Laureates

Jennifer Wilson The Nation
Next year, says the reviewer, the Nobel Committee for Literature should look beyond Europe. Despite the differences between awardees Olga Tokarczuk and Peter Handke, they both reflect a divided Europe as viewed only from within its borders.

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Brecht’s Poetry: Angry or Evil?

Michael Wood The London Review of Books
An extended ode to the revolutionary German playwright-genius Bertolt Brecht, whose exhaustive new collected poems exalt combating injustice while keeping faith in his fidelity to dissent.

Studs Terkel Made Oral History

Peter Dreier The Nation
Ten years after his death, Terkel’s voice is still a vivid part of our shared experience.

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A Postcard from Ursula LeGuin

John Crowley Boston Review
An homage to the then recently deceased, superlative science fiction writer who encouraged the author, an apprentice novelist adrift in the publishing world, to be a better reader as well as an accomplished scribbler of exemplary fiction.
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