Lit Hub Daily: April 24, 2025

TODAY: In 1731, Robinson Crusoe writer Daniel DeFoe dies.

• “The questions…open a singular model into nan backstage lives of men and women successful an era agelong earlier our own.” Mary Beth Norton takes a heavy dive into nan history of nan proposal column. | Lit Hub History
• Steven W. Thrasher remembers Joseph Sonnabend, 1 of nan world’s first AIDS doctors. | Lit Hub Biography
• Lena Moses-Schmitt and Martha Park share an illustrated conversation. | Lit Hub Craft
• Maris Kreizman reminds america that bully spaces still beryllium successful nan world (and astir of those spaces are independent bookstores). | Lit Hub Bookstores
• “Why do we request to spot writers (or anyone) astatine their astir unfastened and despairing to beryllium convinced that they are besides human?” 5 book reviews you request to publication this week. | Book Marks
• Stephen S. Hall explores the centuries-long improvement of nan rattlesnake into an American symbol. | Lit Hub History
• Matthew Specktor remembers his mother’s conflict to find her spot successful LA: “All of this suggests not a personification who’s simply acrophobic to beryllium late, but alternatively 1 who is running: who remains, always, successful flight.” | Lit Hub Memoir
• “Dear God, I americium very sorry astir nan dream I said successful school, it was heresy and I was rightly beaten.” Read from Jo Harkin’s caller novel, The Pretender. | Lit Hub Fiction
• “In a clip for illustration this erstwhile we cognize it’s going to get worse, nan main point to attraction connected is maintaining your integrity.”  David Velasco talks to Sarah Schulman astir penning and solidarity. | Bookforum
• Martin Dolan considers Andrew Lipstein’s fabrication and nan rhythm of  literate masculinity discourse. | The Point
• Emma Cole looks backmost on Bram Stoker’s Dracula, The Craft, and other icons of 90s goth cinema. | Reactor 
• “Places for illustration Iowa City often person scandalous reputations, peculiarly erstwhile embedded successful reddish states. Yet that estimation sometimes stems not from bacchanalian excess, but alternatively from a refusal to judge nan position quo.” Harry Stecopoulos connected nan poesy of Iowa City. | Public Books
• Scholar and translator Donald Rayfield specifications his personal, cultural, and governmental reasons for turning down a life accomplishment award from Georgia’s Writers’ House. | Words Without Borders
• “Onto this eclectic shape enters nan United States pinch its reawakened description ist fantasies.” Ieva Jusionyte connected modern and humanities relevance of Greg Grandin’s America, América: A New History of nan New World. | Los Angeles Review of Books

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