In n+1, Elias Rodriques considers the life and work of journalist Louis Lomax on the occasion of Thomas Aiello’s new biography, published by Duke University Press. Rodriques writes of the reporter: “Lomax may have fallen out of historical memory, but, as a one-man embodiment of the Civil Rights Movement’s ideological diversity, he was integral to ensuring that the movement did not.”
Historian Julius S. Scott has died at the age of sixty-six. Scott was known for a groundbreaking work on the Hatian Revolution, which started as a dissertation that finally found a publisher in 2018, after three decades. Robin D.G. Kelley called Scott’s book, The Common Wind Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution, “An important part of the tradition of scholarship that puts the end of modern slavery in a global perspective.
The employees of the Washington DC bookstore Politics and Prose are trying to unionize. According to the union, the store is not recognizing the organization and has hired a law firm to fight the effort. The store’s co-owner wrote in an email to staff: “We’ve always valued the opportunity to work directly and collaboratively with you to solve problems and address your needs, from the professional to the personal. . . . We believe a union at P&P would make our workplace more transactional, less personal, and less flexible.”
On Electric Lit, Vanessa Chan lists nineteen writing conferences for emerging and established writers.
For Harper’s Magazine, Rebecca Panovka reviews Hanya Yanagihara’s new novel: “In To Paradise, personality is destiny. Some people are weak and some are strong, and those who have been abused or tricked are doomed to be victimized time and again. (Yanagihara has yet to write a book in which a child is not sexually assaulted.)”