The author, known as the “Lord of Misrule,” had the audacity to erect a maypole in Massachusetts, according to Matthew Taub of Atlas Obscura… Support our news coverage by subscribing to our Kindle Nation Daily Digest. Joining is free right now!

Apparently, Thomas Morton didn’t get the memo. The English businessman arrived in Massachusetts in 1624 with the Puritans, but he wasn’t exactly on board with the strict, insular, and pious society they had hoped to build for themselves. “He was very much a dandy and a playboy,” says William Heath, a retired professor from Mount Saint Mary’s University who has published extensively on the Puritans. Looking back, Morton and his neighbors were bound to butt heads sooner or later.

Within just a few short years, Morton established his own unrecognized offshoot of the Plymouth Colony, in what is now the town of Quincy, Massachusetts (the birthplace of presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams). He revived forbidden old-world customs, faced off with a Puritian militia determined to quash his pagan festivals, and wound up in exile. He eventually sued and, like any savvy rabble-rouser should, got a book deal out of the whole affair. Published in 1637, his New English Canaan mounted a harsh and heretical critique of Puritan customs and power structures that went far beyond what most New English settlers could accept. So they banned it—making it likely the first book explicitly banned in what is now the United States. A first edition of Morton’s tell-all—which, among other things, compares the Puritan leadership to crustaceans—recently sold at auction at Christie’s for $60,000.

The Puritans’ move across the pond was motivated by both religion and commerce, but Morton was there only for the latter reason, as one of the owners of the Wollaston Company. He loved what he saw of his new surroundings, later writing that Massachusetts was the “masterpiece of nature.” His business partner—slave-owning Richard Wollaston—moved south to Virginia to expand the company’s business, but Morton was already deeply attached to the land, in a way his more religious neighbors likely couldn’t understand. “He was extremely responsive to the natural world and had very friendly relations with the Indians,” says Heath, while “the Puritans took the opposite stance: that the natural world was a howling wilderness, and the Indians were wild men that needed to be suppressed.”

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by Cory Stieg from CNBC
Bill Gates is passionate about reading and recommending books he finds particularly thought-provoking… Support our news coverage by subscribing to our Kindle Nation Daily Digest. Joining is free right now!

During an Oct. 2 speech at his alma mater Lakeside School, the Seattle high school where he met Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, Gates pointed to two books he thinks are “pretty fundamental” to read for the people he hires to work at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Microsoft: “Factfulness” by Hans Rosling and Steven Pinker’s “Better Angels of Our Nature.”

Gates fans won’t be surprised that “Factfulness” is about “how life is getting better, and where the world still needs to improve,” according a Gates blog post from 2018, topics that are central to the work his foundation does — helping to improve the health and welfare of people in developing countries.

It’s one of Gates’ favorite books, and in 2018, he gave away a downloadable copy to anyone who graduated from college. “Although I think everyone should read it, it has especially useful insights for anyone who’s making the leap out of college and into the next phase of life,” Gates wrote on his blog, Gates Notes.

Similarly, “The Better Angels of Our Nature” “offers a really fresh perspective on how to achieve positive outcomes in the world,” Gates wrote in another blog post. The 700-page book is about violence, which Gates says is important to understand in order to “build more peaceful societies.”

“Steven Pinker shows us ways we can make those positive trajectories a little more likely,” Gates wrote. “That’s a contribution, not just to historical scholarship, but to the world.”

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As the story goes, eighteen-year-old Mary Shelley came up with the idea for Frankenstein one dreary summer night in 1816 while she and the poet Percy Shelley (her then lover, later husband), were vacationing in the Swiss Alps with Lord Byron, who suggested that they pass the time by each writing their own ghost story. “Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated,” mused Mary, and the rest is literary history, according to BookMarks… Support our news coverage by subscribing to our Kindle Nation Daily Digest. Joining is free right now!

When Mary Shelley unleashed Frankenstein upon the world two years later, she did so anonymously. Nevertheless, word got out that the book’s author was a woman (gasp), and the ensuing early reviews were incredibly critical. One particularly misogynistic critic wrote, “The writer of it is, we understand, a female; this is an aggravation of that which is the prevailing fault of the novel; but if our authoress can forget the gentleness of her sex, it is no reason why we should; and we shall therefore dismiss the novel without further comment.”

The year before it was released, in anticipation of the myopic critical backlash, Percy Shelley wrote a rave review (sadly unpublished until 1832, ten years after had Percy drowned in the Gulf of La Spezia) of his new wife’s remarkable debut.

Take note, literary couples: this is what supporting your spouse in their creative endeavors looks like:

“The novel of Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, is undoubtedly, as a mere story, one of the most original and complete productions of the age. We debate with ourselves in wonder as we read it, what could have been the series of thoughts, what could have been the peculiar experiences that awakened them, which conducted in the author’s mind, to the astonishing combination of motives and incidents and the startling catastrophe which compose this tale … it is conducted throughout with a firm and steady hand. The interest gradually accumulates, and advances towards the conclusion with the accelerated rapidity of a rock rolled down a mountain … We are held breathless with suspense and sympathy, and the heaping up of incident on incident, and the working of passion out of passion … The pathos is irresistible and deep … In this the direct moral of the book consists; and it is perhaps the most important, and of the most universal application, of any moral that can be enforced by example. Treat a person ill, and he will become wicked … It is impossible to read this dialogue—and indeed many other situations of a somewhat similar character—without feeling the heart suspend its pulsations with wonder, and the tears stream down the cheeks! … The general character of the tale indeed resembles nothing that ever preceded it … an exhibition of intellectual and imaginative power, which we think the reader will acknowledge has seldom been surpassed.” –Percy Shelley, Athenaeum, November 10, 1832

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Prince was never one to hide his distaste — especially in music. He was certainly no fan of the musical stylings of Ed Sheeran and Katy Perry, as revealed in a new book and reported on by Trace William Cowen from Complex… Support our news coverage by subscribing to our Kindle Nation Daily Digest. Joining is free right now!

“We need to tell them that they keep trying to ram Katy Perry and Ed Sheeran down our throats and we don’t like it no matter how many times they play it,” Prince is revealed to have written in a new book titled The Beautiful Ones, which marked a collaboration between the Purple One and the Paris Review’s Dan Piepenbring.

Speaking with the Guardian about the experience of working with Prince on the book, which kicked off with a letter in 2016 that was followed “less than a day later” by an invitation to Piepenbring to meet Prince at Paisley Park, the writer recalled the deep-rooted effect Prince’s death had on him as both a fan and a documentarian of the artist’s career.

“I’ve had dreams about Prince, where he’s still alive and his death was just a widely misreported thing,” Piepenbring said. “I’m still reluctant to handle those memories. They’re almost like something in a vitrine: the more you look, the more you get hot breath and fingerprints on the glass.”

The Beautiful Ones is out now and also includes previously unreleased photos, scrapbook excerpts, lyric sheets, and more.

Read full post on Complex

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Carrie Fisher’s family disavows ‘unauthorized’ new book. But its author is confused, according to Dorany Pineda of the L.A. Times… Support our news coverage by subscribing to our Kindle Nation Daily Digest. Joining is free right now!

The upcoming book “Carrie Fisher: A Life on the Edge,” by Sheila Weller, is being publicly disavowed by some of the late “Star Wars” actress’ family members.

Bryan Lourd, partner and managing director of Creative Artists Agency and father of Fisher’s daughter, Billie Lourd, sent Deadline a statement Thursday calling Weller’s book “an unauthorized biography” and claimed Weller sold the book without involving the family.

Bryan Lourd, who sent the statement on behalf of him and his daughter, said they learned of the book when they read an excerpt from it in a magazine, according to Deadline.

But in a statement to The Times, Weller said she contacted Fisher’s family representative a few times to inform them of the book and seek the family’s approval. She claims she first reached out in March 2017 and again several months later.

“I was turned down — but in a gracious email — the first time, and invited to re-inquire later. My two follow-ups met with no response,” Weller said.

In the Lourds’ statement, Fisher’s ex-partner writes: “I do not know Ms. Weller. Billie does not know Ms. Weller. And, to my knowledge, Carrie did not know her.

“For all the fans and friends of Carrie, I just thought it necessary that you know this information before you decided to purchase this book or consider what is being said in the upcoming press interviews Weller will do while trying to sell it,” he continued. “The only books about Carrie Fisher worth reading are the ones Carrie wrote herself. She perfectly told us everything we needed to know.”

Weller’s book explores Fisher’s 60-year life — from her start as the daughter of Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher and her career as a Hollywood actress, to her battles with bipolar disorder and drug addiction.

Fisher detailed some of her substance abuse struggles in “Postcards From the Edge,” a semiautobiographical novel published in 1987 about an actress fighting drug addiction.

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The White House staffer who wrote an anonymous opinion piece for the New York Times last year, in which he declared himself to be “part of the resistance,” is publishing a book, according to Rachel Deahl of Publishers Weekly…

The still-unnamed author’s A Warning was acquired by Twelve’s Sean Desmond who bought world English rights plus translation rights to France and Spain. The book will be released November 19.

The op-ed, titled “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration,” became one of the earlier talking points of the Trump presidency, as the author described working in a job where his goal was to limit, and at times thwart, his boss. The author proclaimed himself among a cohort of administration staffers “working diligently from within to frustrate parts of [President Trump’s] agenda and his worst inclinations.”

Twelve described the book as “an unprecedented behind-the-scenes portrait of the Trump presidency” that “offers a shocking, first-hand account of President Trump and his record.” The publisher also confirmed that the author’s identity will remain a secret and that the nameless scribe will not be earning any money from the book. Twelve explained that “Anonymous did not take an advance to write A Warning” and any royalties the book brings in will be donated to nonprofits that focus on government accountability.

Read full post on Publishers Weekly

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