February 26, 2025 ‹ Literary Hub

TODAY: In 1906, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle is published. 

• Andrea Barrett on why writing fresh historical fiction means more than cosplaying the past. | Lit Hub Craft
• Michael Hiltzik on how California made Ronald Reagan: “When Reagan launched his political career in the 1960s, the conservative movement was searching for a way to become relevant again.” | Lit Hub History
• “The cowboy apocalypse is at once a religious expression, a form of fan devotion, and an ideological platform with the potential for violent expression.” Video games, violence and the enduring allure of the vigilante hero. | Lit Hub Religion
• Charlotte Taylor Fryar recommends 10 Washington D.C books that aren’t about politicians by Edward P. Jones, Dinaw Mengestu, Morowa Yejidé, and more. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
• “My heart was defecting—as if it were not really mine—and the defector threatened to tear me apart.” On daily life with a defective yet vital organ. | Lit Hub Memoir
• Jane Tara on the world before and after learning that she was going blind in her 40s. | Lit Hub Craft
• “They live in a large house near the grounds of the choir school, where his father is headmaster.” Read from Michael Amherst’s debut novel The Boyhood of Cain. | Lit Hub Fiction
• Missouri Williams considers Djuna Barnes’s often overlooked stories: “…Barnes’s short stories are strange, mechanical offerings that exhibit characters and events that feel as determined as clockwork.” | The Nation
• Audrey Wollen revisits Janet Frame’s novel, The Edge of the Alphabet. | The New Yorker
• Nico Millman talks to members of the Pinko Collective about the revised and updated edition of their book, After Accountability: A Critical Genealogy of a Concept. | Full Stop
• Charley Locke recommends memorizing poems as a morning ritual. | The New York Times Magazine
• Curtis Sittenfeld recommends some books she loves. | Elle

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