Tony Horwitz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and book author who immersed himself deeply in his subjects (slaughterhouses, the sea travels of explorer Captain James Cook, the culture of Civil War reenactments), died yesterday in Washington, DC. In a review of Horwitz’s new book, Spying on the South, Tom Carson writes of Horwitz’s work: “Not many writers mix up geniality and astuteness as enjoyably as Tony Horwitz does. He’s got a rare knack for spotting topics whose eccentricity lets him juxtapose the baleful past and the cuckoo present in arresting, provocative, hugely entertaining ways.”
Siege: Trump Under Fire, Michael Wolff’s sequel to Fire and Fury, will be published next week. According to The Guardian, which has obtained an early copy, the book claims that special counsel Robert Mueller “drew up a three-count obstruction of justice indictment against Donald Trump before deciding to shelve it.” When The Guardian contacted Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller, he responded: “The documents that you’ve described do not exist.”
Novelist Arundhati Roy reflects on the re-election of Narendra Modi, calling the latest election in India “a mockery of what democracy is supposed to be.” How could this change? Roy responds: “Existing political parties in this particular model of first-past-the-post democracy will not easily be able to take on this formidable, money-filled hate-filled machine. I believe that peoples’ rage will one day break the machine. I’m not talking about a revolution. I’m talking about an outbreak, the re-emergence of non NGO-ized social movements. It will come. And that will create new energy and a new kind of opposition that cannot be managed. We will have to play a new game—one that has not been fixed like this one has.”
Crown executive editor Rachel Klayman has purchased the world rights to Rachel Maddow’s Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth. According to the publisher, the book “offers a dark, serpentine, riveting tour of the unimaginably lucrative and corrupt oil and gas industry.”
“As some of you like to point out in your emails, I am 60 years old and fat, and you don’t want me to ‘pull a Robert Jordan’ on you and deny you your book. OK, I’ve got the message. You don’t want me doing anything except A Song of Ice and Fire. Ever.” George R.R. Martin, Philip Pullman, and Hilary Mantel talk about how they respond to the expectations of their fans.