Free Republic

Really it should come as no surprise that the scientist and outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins is the latest public figure to have fallen victim to a disinviting mania. After all, if a darling of the left feminist like Germaine Greer can face a campaign to silence her over her views on transgenderism or a woman of color like Ayaan Hirsi Ali can face similar attempts to have her free speech on campus canceled, why should Dawkins be spared? The English geneticist was slated to give a talk in Berkeley, California in August on his new book Science in the Soul:...

Breitbart London Editor-in-Chief Raheem Kassam this weekend revealed the cover of his new book, No Go Zones: How Sharia Law Is Coming to a Neighborhood Near You. The book — available for pre-order now — details Kassam’s travels through European and American neighborhoods where Islamic law finds itself a part of local communities and ties together narratives between these new ghettos and Islamic radicalism. The book, published by Regnery, is due to be released on August 14 and is currently available on Amazon, as well as through Barnes and Noble, Books-a-Million, and iBooks/iTunes. The stark cover image — sure to...

Along with Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan is part of the triumvirate of classic jazz vocalists. Together they laid the foundation of contemporary jazz singing and as such, helped to shape all of popular music. Holiday has been the subject of several significant biographies, and there is at least one authoritative tome devoted to Fitzgerald, with another long-awaited one soon to follow. But Vaughan has not inspired the same attention, which makes “Queen of Bebop,” by Elaine M. Hayes, all the more necessary and exciting. This comprehensive examination of Vaughan’s life and work benefits from Hayes’s technical knowledge...

This facsimile of The Star Copy Style sheet is one of the most often-requested pieces of memorabilia relating to the history of The Kansas City Star.This is the document that Ernest Hemingway would have been given during his tenure writing police and emergency-room items at The Star in 1917 and 1918. <>p>Hemingway later remarked to a reporter that the admonitions in this style sheet were “then best rules I ever learned in the business of writing.” This early Star style sheet exists today in two different versions, but neither can be dated definitively. The version reproduced on the reverse of...

Sharyl Attkisson will be the guest discussing her book "Smear" on C-Span2's "After Words" tonight at 9 and midnight EDT. Attkisson was a journalist for CBS who resigned a few years back because she felt her reporting was being micromanaged and shaped by management there. Her book looks at how journalists use false and misleading information to push their agendas instead of reporting the story. Attkisson does not define a "smear" as necessarily being untrue, but rather as being a story which is amplified beyond it's normal importance and having an underlying political or financial agenda which is not revealed...

I recently picked up Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court for the first time. Finding the plot rather amusing, I began relaying it to my father over the weekend. Because he had never read the book, I was rather surprised when he began asking informed questions about the story. In no time at all, he was the one schooling me on plot elements I had not yet reached. “Wait a minute,” I asked. “Are you sure you’ve never read this book?”“No, never have,” he replied, “but I saw a cartoon version of the story when I was...

William Shakespeare may have been gay, the artistic director the Royal Shakespeare Company has suggested, and directors can no longer hide the sexuality of his homosexual characters.

Chapter 1 (The rest of the ebook at the source) THE CASE STATED The student of American sociology will find the year 1894 marked by a pronounced awakening of the public conscience to a system of anarchy and outlawry which had grown during a series of ten years to be so common, that scenes of unusual brutality failed to have any visible effect upon the humane sentiments of the people of our land. Beginning with the emancipation of the Negro, the inevitable result of unbribled power exercised for two and a half centuries, by the white man over the Negro,...

A Swedish council has admitted that local libraries have been throwing out copies of a popular children’s book because it contains racist expressions, with one local journalist even claiming the books are being burnt. Older versions of the Pippi Langstrumpf [Pippi Longstocking] book entitled ‘Pippi in the South Seas,’ have been discarded by libraries in the Botkyrka municipality.

She has small, unexceptional features and stares blankly into space. A lace bonnet keeps her dark curls in place, save for a few neat strands that frame her face. Behind her is a large country house and an illustration of Elizabeth Bennet, her most famous creation. This is the airbrushed image of Jane Austen on the new British £10 note which will be released on July 18th, the bicentenary of her death: just one example of how she has been reshaped and re-imagined on her path to becoming a global literary sensation. Austen was born on December 16th 1775, one...

In today’s issue: Savage is fed up with the media’s fixation, including the talk-radio world, on the ongoing Twitter war between the president and liberal cable channels MSNBC and CNN. “Everyone’s either on vacation or doing the same garbage about CNN. How can you listen to that?” Savage asked. (From the Savage Newsletter)

NEW YORK — Books of Obama photographs will be in the news this fall. A collection of White House pictures of Michelle Obama is coming out Oct. 17, Ten Speed Press told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “Chasing Light” will feature 150 color shots and personal commentary by White House photographer Amanda Lucidon. “Mrs. Obama is a source of light and inspiration in my life,” Lucidon said in a statement issued through Ten Speed, a Penguin Random House imprint. “She was a mentor to me and so many people around the world. The work she has done with young people,...

Fresh off her spat with President Donald Trump, Mika Brzezinski has landed new a three-book deal with Weinstein Books, which published her 2011 book “Knowing Your Value.” The “Morning Joe” anchor has signed a deal with Harvey and Bob Weinstein’s publishing imprint said to be worth “in the high six figures,” sources exclusively tell Page Six. The newly closed deal will include a revised edition of “Knowing Your Value: Women, Money, and Getting What You’re Worth,” which will be released next spring with fresh interviews from female trailblazers about getting recognition in the business space and in personal relationships.

2 July 2017 marked the 40th anniversary of Vladimir Nabokov's death, the trilingual writer best known for his controversial work Lolita. A substantial anniversary as such is a fitting occasion to remember the man whose legacy will perhaps forever be inseparable from the image of a red lollipop and heart-shaped glasses. But with Nabokov, the question of an afterlife takes on an additional significance. Art as a vessel for spiritual transcendence was arguably Nabokovs principal preoccupation, the foundations to his literary temple. Many of his fictional characters take on this pursuit, to varying degrees of success, while his own nuanced...

aside from the occasional paper cut or perhaps killer litter, books aren't typically a source of danger. But for a family living in Taizhou in China's Jiangsu province, their love of reading was slowly poisoning them - literally. At the end of last year, the family- which consists of a couple and their child- developed symptoms of formaldehyde poisoning, according to a report from Jiangsu Television. The adults suffered from constant coughing, while their child had rhinitis, an inflammation of the mucous membrane. Books in the family's home were to blame. The couple spent about 8,000 yuan (S$1,630) on medical...

Almost exactly 200 years to the day of Jane Austen’s death in 1817, a masterly comic letter written by the author to her favourite niece will come to sale for the very first time at Sotheby’s London on 11th July with an estimate of £80,000-100,000. The celebrated novelist, whose own literature has remained the subject of critique for over two centuries, is here seen exercising her own critical opinion of another writer’s work in a light-hearted jeu d’espirit which exudes not only Austen’s supreme intellect, but also her comic charm, Art Daily said. Dating from 29-30 October 1812, a critical...

I recently met the good people of St. Benedict Elementary School in South Natick, Massachusetts, which offers classical Catholic education to some very fortunate youngsters. The extensive summer reading lists the school suggests to those kids’ parents put me in mind of my high school English teacher, the late Fr. W. Vincent Bechtel—who did not, however, do suggestions, but made sure that his charges kept their noses to the grindstone from June through August by assigning us at least a half-dozen novels. Some of them—like Paul Horgan’s Things As They Are—I still reread with pleasure, a half-century later. So herewith,...

Chelsea Clinton is on tour promoting her children’s book, She Persisted, but all anyone wants to talk about is her mom – and it’s starting to drive her a little batty. (snip) But unfortunately for Chelsea, most people coming to her book events aren’t looking for a jobless daughter, selfishly capitalizing on the warm, fuzzy feeling progressive women have for the former Presidential candidate now that she’s been relegating to Broadway audiences and celebrity appearances in her local woodlands. “Maybe she’ll make a surprise appearance,” one kid at Chelsea’s most recent book signing said about Hillary. Another began the Q&A...

ESPN the Magazine has unveiled the covers for its annual "Body Issue." The five different covers will feature Chicago Cubs second baseman Javier Baez, MMA fighter Michelle Waterson, Dallas Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott, tennis player Caroline Wozniacki, and Boston Celtics guard Isaiah Thomas. The cover for Baez is the first in which the photo was shot using an iPhone, with photographer Dylan Coulter using an iPhone 7 Plus. In all, 23 athletes will appear in this year's issue, including Julian Edelman of the New England Patriots, New Zealand All Blacks center Malakai Fekitoa, Joe Thornton of the San Jose...