Set aside a bit of time to read Isaac Butler and Dan Kois’ oral history of Tony Kushner’s play Angels in America. The duo interviewed more than 50 people—including Kushner, theater owners, dramaturgs, critics, and actors—and the result is pretty epic.
If you’ve been squinting at your TV for the past few years, muttering “ugh, why can’t I see anything?,” Matthew Dessem has good news: You’re not (just) aging; prestige television has gotten darker. Technologies have changed, and the cinematographers Dessem spoke with—who work on shows like Game of Thrones, Better Call Saul, and Jessica Jones—have been taking full advantage.
No, Sen. Elizabeth Warren could not just “take a DNA test” to show she has a Cherokee ancestor (contrary to Scott Brown’s recent suggestions). “DNA testing cannot definitively prove whether a person is Cherokee,” Matt Miller writes. “Or a member of any community, at least not reliably. To assume it can is to assume that there’s something inherently different in the genetic makeup of tribal members and that this thing is universal within that community. That’s not true.”
How did we get so fixated on credit scores—a mysterious number that feels like a moral judgment? “It helps to think of our credit score obsession as the end result of an epic sell job,” writes Helaine Olen, tracking the ways the Number has come to seem all-important. “For all our fascination and identification with our credit scores, the process by which they are determined remains mysterious. While we have the right to see our numbers, we don’t know much more than broad outlines about the proprietary formula by which they are calculated.”
Here are two explanations of confusing topics that you might find helpful (I did): Gabriel Roth, on British politics after Brexit; Leon Neyfakh, on the convoluted scandal currently gripping the Oakland Police Department.
For fun: Midcentury posters instructing kids in the use of the library.
Be a Library Champ,
Rebecca
