When David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest) committed suicide last September, he left behind family, friends and an unfinished third novel, The Pale King. This week, The New Yorker takes a long look at Wallace’s life, career, bouts with depression, and the novel he began in 1997. The magazine has also posted an excerpt of The Pale King (which will be published next year by Little, Brown) and some actual pages from the manuscript. Definitely worth a look.
Kindle on iPhone
Just a quick fyi that Amazon has released a free app on iTunes that lets you download Amazon ebooks to the iPhone. This means that you don’t necessarily have to buy a Kindle in order to purchase & read ebooks from the largest vendor of ebooks– although I find the Kindle reader to be considerably preferable to the iPhone’s small screen. But that is just me. One nice feature built into the new Amazon app is the ability to keep text in sync on the two devices. So, for example, if you’re reading Anna Karenina on the iPhone, your Kindle will know where you left off and automatically start you at the right place the next time that you pick it up. A nice idea. But will I use it? Not sure. You? For more details on the new app, see Lifehacker’s coverage.
Update: Visit our collection of Free eBooks, and load free books right to your PC, Smart Phone or Kindle.
10 Classic Films from the Internet Archive
Our hunt to find universally accessible Hitchcock films brought us back to the Internet Archive yesterday, and it now seems worth highlighting some of the other gems buried in this collection. This archive of feature films contains some important classics from the 1920s, 30s, 40s and 50s. We’ve featured ten good ones below, and don’t forget to see our collection of Free Movies Online.
Visit the Internet Archive for more feature films.
Hitchcock Round II
For those of you who couldn’t see the Hitchcock films posted yesterday (down with Joost for geoblocking!), I’ve hopefully found an alternative resource. The Internet Archive hosts some classic films, and there you’ll find 4 of the 5 Hitchcock films mentioned yesterday. Folks on Twitter have confirmed that the films can be accessed in Mexico, Belgium, Sri Lanka, Ireland and Canada. So hopefully you’ll be in good shape too. Thanks to an unidentified reader for the tip:
Pulitzer Prize Winner Picks Essential US History Books
The Wall Street Journal asked Gordon Wood, one of America’s leading historians, to pick his favorite works of US history, and here is what he had to say.
1) The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It — Richard Hofstadter
2) The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution — Bernard Bailyn
3) White Over Black — Winthrop D. Jordan
4) Mothers of Invention — Drew Gilpin Faust
5) Grand Expectations — James T. Patterson
As a quick side note, if you live in the SF Bay Area, you can catch Gordon Wood teaching at Stanford this spring along with two other Pulitzer Prize Winning historians. The course, The American Founders and Their World, comes out of the Continuing Studies program and is open to the public. Get details here.
via Harvard University Press Twitter Feed (also see Open Culture’s Twitter Feed here)
What We Can Learn from Past Presidents
Appearing at the TED Conference in 2008, Pulitzer-Prize Winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin talks about what we can all learn from American presidents, including particularly Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon Johnson. This is not another talk about what makes presidents great. It’s more about the balance between work, love, and play, and how we can generally be productive, shiny, happy people.
Kindle Book Sales Factoid
Quite the stat noted over on Seth Godin’s blog: “Amazon’s Kindle is cool and it’s gaining in traction and people who have one buy a lot of books. 10% of Amazon’s book sales are now on the Kindle. [For books where both versions are available].”
Who knew that many e‑books were being sold on Amazon?
This American Life: The Financial Crisis in 59 Minutes
Last week, we created a handy list of blogs & podcasts that regularly cover the financial crisis. And so it seemed worth flagging the latest episode of This American Life. It’s called “Bad Bank” (MP3 — iTunes — Feed). It just came out this weekend. And it takes a close and entertaining look at what happens when a bank goes bad/insolvent. The show gets into the real nitty gritty of the crisis and, once you’ve listened, you’ll better understand better the pros and cons of solutions being tried out by the government.
The episode follows two other insightful programs by This American Life: The Giant Pool of Money (May 2008), and Another Frightening Show about the Economy (November 2008). All three programs are now added to our list of financial crisis blogs and podcasts.
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