According to an article by Maggie Haberman and Michael S. Schmidt, a manuscript of a book by former national security adviser John R. Bolton, given out to associates and to the White House for review, describes a conversation with Trump in August, in which the president said he planned to continue freezing $400 million in aid to Ukraine until the country helped him with investigations into rival Democrats, particularly the Bidens. The book draft also points out that Trump was at odds with Bolton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper in his stance on Ukraine. As the Times notes, the manuscript “offers a glimpse into how Mr. Bolton might testify in the trial” if he is called to do so.
Masha Gessen has sold a book about the Trump administration to Riverhead Books. Surviving Autocracy is, according to the publisher, a “galvanizing analysis of the destruction the Trump administration has waged on our institutions, the cultural norms we hoped would save us, and our very sense of identity.” The book, which is scheduled to be released in June 2020, expands on Gessen’s article “Autocracy: Rules for Survival,” which was published in the New York Review Daily.
Erin Overbey revisits the New Yorker’s original book reviews of 1984, The Handmaid’s Tale, Invisible Man, The Grapes of Wrath, and Slaughterhouse-Five.
The Guardian has published a series of interviews with the “best debut novelists” from Britain and Ireland.
Roxane Gay—author of Bad Feminist, Hunger, and Difficult Women—will appear in the season finale of The L Word.
Tonight at McNally Jackson in Brooklyn, Alexander Zevin will discuss his new book Liberalism at Large with The People’s Platform author Astra Taylor.
