Daniel Weiss, the president and chief executive of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has sold a book to Public Affairs. The still-untitled work examines “America’s experience in the Vietnam era.”
Olympic gymnast Aly Raisman is working on a memoir for Little, Brown. Fierce: How Competing for Myself Changed Everything will be published next november.
Jailed literary critic and Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo has been transferred from prison to a hospital after he was diagnosed with liver cancer. Activist Hu Jia called the news “a political murder” and noted that Liu’s eleven-year sentence likely contributed to the seriousness of his disease. “I’ve been to prison in China,” Hu said. “The medical care is terrible and I’m sure China’s leaders were hoping for this outcome.”
As part of an auction to support victims of London’s Grenfell Tower fire, Philip Pullman has pledged to name a character in his The Book of Dust trilogy after Nur Huda el-Wahabi, a sixteen year old who died in the fire.
After deleting and retracting an article about the Senate investigation into the Trump administration’s ties to Russia, CNN is requiring reporters to get approval from two separate editors before publishing anything on the subject. Three employees who were involved with the story have resigned.
Sherman Alexie talks to BuzzFeed about not being “the kind of Indian that’s expected.” After publishing his first book of short stories, he said that he was treated “as a miracle.” “It was like, ‘You came out of nowhere, you’re a star child!’ ‘Look at his storytelling tradition, the oral tradition, it comes from his grandmother!’” he remembered. “Nah, I just did debate in high school, and stand-up in college.”
At the New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin profiles David Pecker, the chief executive of American Media Inc. who also oversees the company’s flagship tabloid, the National Enquirer. Since Pecker took over the company in 1999, the Enquirer has continued to specialize in covering “the foibles of public personalities,” but made an exception for Donald Trump, Pecker’s long-time friend. The decision to publish only positive stories on Trump during the 2016 election confused some employees. “We used to go after newsmakers no matter what side they were on,” one former staffer said. “And Trump is a guy who is running for President with a closet full of baggage. He’s the ultimate target-rich environment. The Enquirer had a golden opportunity, and they completely looked the other way.”
