| | | |  | | So far this year, the most consequential publisher in America is the United States government. In the wee hours of Tuesday morning, the Justice Department posted online a grim PDF with a title that defies all marketing advice: “Final Report of the Special Counsel Under 28 C.F.R. § 600.8.” In clipped, dispassionate prose that matches the author’s unflappable demeanor, Jack Smith writes that former President Donald Trump “engaged in an unprecedented criminal effort to overturn the legitimate results of the election” (analysis). The report lays out how Trump allegedly pressured state officials to ignore vote counts and create fraudulent slates of presidential electors, urged Vice President Pence to ignore his oath, encouraged a mob of followers to stop Congress from certifying the election, and worked with co-conspirators to spread false information and pursue “sham election crime investigations.” “The throughline of all of Mr. Trump’s criminal efforts,” Smith writes, “was deceit.” Strangely, the once and future president fought hard to suppress publication of this report, though most of its details were already public knowledge, and tens of millions of Americans have demonstrated that they don’t believe Trump acted criminally or they don’t care. That plague of denialism doesn’t matter to Dennis Johnson, the co-publisher of Melville House in Brooklyn. As it has with previous government investigations — the 2014 torture report, the 2019 Mueller report — Melville is publishing Jack Smith’s report in book form. Anyone can read the government’s text online for free here, but Johnson knows a physical book has a presence that no PDF on a website can match. “Making a print book makes it more part of the permanent record, more accessible,” Johnson tells me. “It’ll be in libraries. It will be in schools and classrooms, as well as, we hope, in the bookstores.” We hope, indeed. In the new spirit of corporate obsequiousness, it remains to be seen if major book retailers will carry this book and others that Trump doesn’t like. “It’s a bad moment in American history,” Johnson says. “It’s an era of book burnings, and a president of the United States threatening to sue book publishers if they do books that are critical of him. The big publishers may be intimidated by this atmosphere, so we just thought we’d better do it.” “It’s got a hell of a narrative to it,” he adds, and he’s right. “It’s like reading a courtroom drama — the investigation behind a courtroom drama. Some of it you know already; some of it you don’t.” Johnson hopes to have the book in stores willing to carry it in about a month. I’m tempted to regard Johnson as hopelessly quixotic, but another report the U.S. government published this month reminds me how important it is to set down the legal facts — no matter how long it takes. “Review and Evaluation: Tulsa Race Massacre” was released last Friday by the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department (story). In 75 shocking pages, the report describes how a mob of as many as 10,000 White people obliterated a Black community in Tulsa’s Greenwood District in 1921. Incited by a racist newspaper story and assisted by law enforcement officers, the mob murdered hundreds of Black people and burned down a dozen churches, five hotels, 31 restaurants, dozens of grocery stores and more than a thousand homes. (The devastation of the Tulsa Race Massacre.) A few weeks later, the Tulsa Daily World reported, “Grand Jury Blames Negroes for Inciting Race Rioting: Whites Clearly Exonerated.” A Justice Department investigator at the time came to essentially the same fantastical conclusion. Thousands of Black survivors were rounded up in concentration camps. Their insurance claims were denied. Their legal complaints failed. And more quickly than you can imagine, White Americans forgot this atrocity and made sure no mention of it marred their children’s textbooks. (Victor Luckerson’s 2023 book, “Built From the Fire,” which the Civil Rights Division’s report frequently refers to, provides a vivid account of the Tulsa massacre and its aftermath.) “Legal limits may have stymied the pursuit of justice,” the report’s authors concede, “but the work to ensure that future generations understand the magnitude of the atrocity continues.” The events that this stoic document describes are horrific and shocking, but I encourage you to download and read it — not just for its historical illumination but for its insights into how effectively we can forget. Such an act of mass obscuration seems impossible, yet here we are, once again, caught in the throes of a fresh battle on the terrain of American memory. ❖ Books to screens: - “I’m Still Here,” directed by Walter Salles and starring Fernanda Torres, opens today in theaters. The movie is based on a memoir by Brazilian writer Marcelo Paiva about his mother’s struggle to raise a family and fight for human rights in the face of a brutal military dictatorship. At last week’s Golden Globe Awards, Torres won best actress in a motion picture, drama (story).
- “Grand Theft Hamlet,” a documentary starring Sam Crane and Mark Oosterveen, opens today in theaters (trailer). The film presents a staging of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” entirely within the video game “Grand Theft Auto” during the covid pandemic. I haven’t played a video game since “Pong” in the early ’80s, but I’m dying to see this weird movie. The heist’s the thing to catch the king!
- “Wish You Were Here,” starring Isabelle Fuhrman and Mena Massoud, opens in theaters today (trailer). The movie is based on Renée Carlino’s 2017 novel about a waitress in L.A. who falls instantly for a painter who brushes her off the next morning. But wait — there’s more to the story!
|  | | The fires incinerating Los Angeles are difficult for most adults to grasp. Children may find the destruction even more incomprehensible. Chances are they have questions and fears they can’t articulate. (L.A. fires burned down their schools. Now they’ve returned to class.) For some inquisitive children, a book by science writer Dan Paley is perfect: “They Hold the Line: Wildfires, Wildlands, and the Firefighters Who Brave Them” (ages 7-10). With vivid illustrations by Molly Mendoza, “They Hold the Line” explains how courageous and well-trained firefighters — men and women — respond to wildfires, sometimes working “18 to 24 hours per day.” Readers learn how smokejumpers work, what tools they use and what threats they face. Annotated drawings introduce lots of terms like “swamper,” “faller” and “anchor point.” The pictures of forests in flames and injured people being rescued are dramatic, but not overwhelming. The emphasis throughout is on clear, accessible information. Paley notes, for instance, that “some animals are very good at avoiding fire,” while slow-moving creatures are “more likely to die in large, fast-moving blazes.” The narrator jumps from the firefight to houses that people must evacuate immediately. “Some planned ahead. Others are awakened in the middle of the night,” Paley writes. “They escape with only their pets and the clothes on their backs. They say goodbye to their homes, not sure what will be left when they return.” The inspiration for this book came to Paley in 2018 as the Holy Fire burned through the Cleveland National Forest. His sons asked him, “Who protects us from those fires?” This book, he writes, “is an answer to that complicated question.” ❖ |  | | The new audiobook narrators work around the clock without complaint. (Photo illustration by Ron Charles/The Washington Post) | | “So say we all.” Two dramatic trends seem destined to collide at warp speed in the audiobook universe. On one side, publishers are producing celebrity narrated audiobooks and full-cast productions that surpass the golden days of radio. (The 10 best audiobooks of 2024.) On the other side, AI is creating audiobooks without vibrating a single vocal cord. The savings in time, money and labor sound irresistible. Who will win this full-throated battle between humans and cylons? (You’re right to be worried.) A new survey conducted by Library Journal and School Library Journal in partnership with the Audio Publishers Association addresses a host of issues around audiobook collections and usage. But I was particularly struck by one point near the end: Librarians don’t want robots narrating audiobooks. According to the survey editors, “Librarians seem pretty resolute that human audiobook narrators are preferred over digital or ‘AI’ readers — one-third would not purchase an audiobook with a nonhuman narrator, while a further 38 percent would only purchase it if there were no other choice.” One librarian quoted in the report captured the beating heart of this argument: “AI is a violation of the expected human connection between narrator and listener. In any audiobook where the listener will find meaning, personal or emotional connection, AI has no way to convey that and should be entirely avoided.” I agree. And yet...every day, AI “reads” articles to me from The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and Some Other East Coast Newspaper. These voices are artificial, yes, but sufficiently lifelike for me to get more news while I’m walking to and from work. Of course, consuming information or listening to short features is a different activity than immersing yourself for hours in a novel or biography. But at the lickety-split rate AI is improving, it surely won’t be long before we can choose any celebrity we want to read us any book we choose with the same inflection, emphasis and passion as a flesh-and-blood narrator. (My chat with soulless AI Judi Dench.) This feels sad and creepy — and ruinous for thousands of talented audiobook narrators — but I’m left wondering if librarians’ resistance is futile. ❖ |  | | A new £2 coin commemorates the 75th anniversary of George Orwell’s death. (© The Royal Mint Limited) | | The Royal Mint has unveiled a coin commemorating George Orwell. This new £2 coin is being issued to coincide with the 75th anniversary of Orwell’s death, on Jan. 21, 1950. The coin, approved by the Orwell Foundation, features several haunting allusions to the dystopian novel “1984,” which experienced a dramatic surge in sales in 2017 when then-presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway coined the phrase “alternative facts” (story). The reverse side shows a giant eye — or a camera lens — encircled by the phrase “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU.” The coin’s edge is inscribed with the principle that Winston Smith clings to in the ethically vacuous world of Oceania: “THERE WAS TRUTH AND THERE WAS UNTRUTH.” For all his prophetic insight, could Orwell have predicted that 75 years later, we’d be told that fact-checking is partisan? (story) This new release from the Royal Mint recalls an unnerving moment in “1984” when Winston takes a quarter out of his pocket. On one side are the phrases “WAR IS PEACE,” “FREEDOM IS SLAVERY,” “IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.” “On the other face of the coin,” Orwell writes, is “the head of Big Brother. Even from the coin the eyes pursued you.” The Orwell commemorative coin, which is not intended for general circulation, is available in a variety of metals, ranging from about $21.50 all the way to $1,850 (details). All the coins are equal, but some are more equal than others. Starting next week, proles visiting the Royal Mint in Llantrisant, South Wales, will be able to strike their own Orwell coin for an extra fee of about $9. ❖ Review Jonathan Russell Clark | | | |  | | “Mark Twain, America’s Best Humorist,” by Joseph Keppler, from Puck, 1885. | | “Mark Twain” was more than just a writer’s pseudonym. It was a carefully crafted persona that made Samuel Clemens the most popular literary celebrity in America. “A First-Class Fool,” a new exhibit at the Grolier Club in New York, invites viewers to follow Clemens’s extraordinary journey from a kid in Hannibal, Missouri to a white-suited star on the world stage. Although he’s long been one of the most studied authors in the country (a new biography of Twain is coming this May from Ron Chernow), the Grolier show offers a chance to reconsider Twain in the presence of holy relics: first editions of his many books, along with letters — he wrote about 50,000 — manuscripts, photographs, magazines, volumes from Clemens’s personal library and one of his typewriters. Twain’s genius lay in his peculiar blending of childlike humor and adult wit — along with a journalist’s attention to detail and an inexhaustible work ethic. The exhibit also explores Twain’s commercial appeal far beyond literature. According to the curator, his name and popular portrait were used to sell cigars and foods. In 1888, Parker Brothers produced a board game called “The Good Old Game of Innocence Abroad.” Other games would follow far into the 20th century. (Conan O’Brien to receive Twain Prize for humor on March 23.) The title of the Grolier exhibit — “A First-Class Fool” — comes from a remark Twain made at a dinner in his honor in London. After Sir John MacAlister tried to make a witty comment about how few successful jokes Twain had told, the American guest replied, “Perhaps I am not a humorist, but I am a first-class fool — a simpleton; for up to this moment I have believed Chairman MacAlister to be a decent person whom I could allow to mix up with my friends and relatives.” This free exhibit, drawn from the private collection of Susan Jaffe Tane and the New York Public Library, closes on April 5, 2025 (details). If you can’t ride a steamboat to New York in time, get the marvelous exhibit catalogue edited by Kevin Mac Donnell. “First-Class Fool: Mark Twain and Humor” contains more than a dozen accessible essays by Twain scholars about his comedy, journalism, travel, stage performances and more. And it’s a joy to look at: Almost all the pages contain large color photos. In the afterword, Declan Kiely rightly compares Twain to the fools in Shakespeare’s plays. They share, he writes, “an innate ability to outwit others, to sniff out and puncture pomposity, vanity, and hypocrisy in all its forms and, above all, to entertain. In doing so, the fool speaks a vital truth to power.” ❖ |  | | American Short Fiction, ZYZZYVA and the Paris Review are among several dozen literary journals and arts organizations that received grants this week from the National Endowment for the Arts. The federal agency announced 1,474 awards totaling more than $36 million to support arts organizations, publishers, writers, dance troupes, museums, music groups, theaters and more (full list). What strikes me is how relatively small the grants are and yet how crucial they are to each of these organizations. Moral of the story: Your willingness to make a donation, buy books and subscribe could decide whether these little cultural engines rev up or sputter out. Speaking of sputtering out: During his first term, President Trump repeatedly called for the elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts, and that proposal will surely be in his next budget blueprint. In the past, enough Republican leaders appreciated the value of arts funding in their states to rescue the NEA, but given the influence of government-funded anti-government zealot Elon Musk, the department’s future looks grim. But for now, here’s a sampling of how your tax money is supporting literary nonprofits around the country in 2025: | | | |
