The readers are also kinder to authors' first books, according the Harvard Business School study. This is true in the aggregate, since customer reviews vary wildly and are often "gamed" by publishers.

A lobbyist in Buckley's uproarious new farce finds that it is much harder to conjure hate for the serious Chinese than it was for the vodka-swilling Soviets.

The New York Times reports, "Maurice Sendak, widely considered the most important children’s book artist of the 20th century, who wrenched the picture book out of the safe, sanitized world of the nursery and plunged it into the dark, terrifying and hauntingly beautiful recesses of the human psyche, died on Tuesday in Danbury, Conn."  

In fighting to finally pass a meaningful civil rights act, Lyndon B. Johnson answered a necessary: "What the hell's the presidency for?