Special projects editor John Cook is leaving Gizmodo Media. According to a memo obtained by Business Insider, Cook decided to take a cue from other Gawker staff who took a break after the company’s court battle with Hulk Hogan. "I've watched with envy in recent months as various friends — including the occasional former colleague — have taken some time away from the news grind to clear their heads and get their bearings," he wrote. "After the last year and a half — even with the distance we've been able to put between ourselves the the Troubles — I could still use some head-clearing."

The New

CNN was impressed by Trump’s remarks in the wake of the Las Vegas mass shooting, with no fewer than three pundits calling the president’s words “pitch perfect.” At the New Yorker, Adam Gopnik was disturbed by a telling discordant note: Trump offering “warmest” condolences to the victims’ families. As Gopnik writes, “President Trump, deprived from birth by some genetic accident of all natural human empathy . . . speaks empathy as a foreign language and makes the kinds of mistakes we all make in a second language. . . . Who sends warmest anything to the families of murder victims?” Also at the

S. I. Newhouse Jr.—who once owned the Random House publishing company and later went on to buy the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and a number of other magazines—has died at age eighty-nine.

The Hollywood Reporter is already asking Lena Dunham if she plans to adapt Hillary Clinton’s new memoir, What Happened, for TV.

An excerpt from Anthony DeCurtis’s new biography of Lou Reed recalls how the legendary musician came to interview playwright, dissident, and later president of the Czech Republic Vaclav Havel. Rolling Stone, which originally commissioned the interview, killed the piece. “It was definitely

Jennifer Egan tells the Times about what she read while working on her latest novel, Manhattan Beach. Besides true stories of survival at sea and fiction like Henry Roth’s Call It Sleep, there was also a 1942 edition of the Merchant Marine Officers’ Handbook, which earned her “some quizzical looks on the elliptical machine.”

The Columbia Journalism Review collects the best articles from Playboy, whose founder Hugh Hefner died Wednesday at the age of 91. The Times rounds up Hefner’s most memorable interviews.

Carly Lewis talks to Lauren McKeon about her new book, F-Bomb, a study of the women

Marlon James is writing a television adaptation of his novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings, for Amazon. The show will be directed by Insecure director Melina Matsoukas. “It’s been my dream to bring this story to life onscreen since reading the first line of Marlon’s book,” Matsoukas said in a statement. “I am deeply honored to be entrusted with this tapestry of stories so entrenched in roots, reggae, race, mysticism and politics, while working alongside Marlon to ensure an authentic portrayal of his words.”

Jennifer Palmieri, a former aide to Hillary Clinton, is writing a “book of lessons”

James McBride talks to the Washington Post about humanity, how music affects his writing, and his new book, Five-Carat Soul. “Music . . . gives you the capacity to hear different voices in different keys in different settings,” he said. “Any good writer can do it, but maybe music allows you to hear it and instill it with a little more zing and punch and humor.”

Lauren Williams has been named editor in chief of Vox, replacing Ezra Klein, who will serve as editor at large. The company is also launching a new podcast, and planning an “explanatory journalism” show for television.

At Electric

The National Book Foundation has announced its 5 Under 35 honorees, all of whom are women. Lesley Nneka Arimah, Halle Butler, Zinzi Clemmons, Leopoldine Core, and Weike Wang will each receive $1,000. “At a moment in which we are having the necessary conversations surrounding the underrepresentation of female voices, it’s a thrill to see this list of tremendous women chosen organically by our selectors," National Book Foundation executive director Lisa Lucas said. "These writers and their work represent an incredibly bright future for the world of literary fiction."

The New York Times’s Jim

Showtime has announced that it will run a TV series based on The President Is Missing, the forthcoming thriller co-authored by Bill Clinton and James Patterson.

maybe half-heard from outside through the curtains. That voice could occasionally sound explicitly poetic or expressionistically fractured, but more often—and more consistently as time went by—it sounded conversational, demotic, mild, even-toned, deep-dish American.”

“I’m so bored with arguments against memoir,” says Wild author Cheryl Strayed. “They’re almost always simple-minded and ignorant. . . . Yes, there are memoirs that are

Orion is publishing an anthology about Brexit this November. Goodbye, Europe, will include works from forty-six contributors, including a short story by Lionel Shriver “about a relationship ending in the wake of the referendum,” a reflection by Jessie Burton “about her first visit to the continent,” and an essay by Robert MacFarlane “about the flight paths of the migrant bird species that the UK shares with Europe.”

Shaun King has been hired by The Intercept as a columnist. Most recently, King was a columnist at the New York Daily News. The website has also added Vanessa Gezari as national

Lillian Ross, who wrote for the New Yorker for sixty years, died yesterday at 99. The New York Times writes that Ross “preached unobtrusive reporting and practiced what she preached.” At the New Yorker, Rebecca Mead reflects on working with Ross, who was still writing for the magazine when Mead joined the staff in 1997. “Lillian was a generous champion of younger writers at the magazine, especially younger writers who sought, like her, to chronicle New York’s human comedy,” she writes. “In them—in us—she surely recognized her mischievous, enduring, shit-kicking self.” The magazine also offers

Zadie Smith says that staying off of social media allows her to reserve the right to be wrong. “I have seen on Twitter, I’ve seen it at a distance, people have a feeling at 9 a.m. quite strongly, and then by 11 have been shouted out of it and can have a completely opposite feeling four hours later,” Smith told the New Yorker’s Jia Tolentino at an event earlier this week. “I want to have my feeling, even if it’s wrong, even if it’s inappropriate, express it to myself in the privacy of my heart and my mind. I don’t want to be bullied out of it.”

Franklin Foer talks to Literary Hub about technology,

Paul Farhi reflects on why crime journalist Kevin Deutsch’s numerous instances of unidentifiable sources and possible fabrications were overlooked until the recent publication of his second book, Pill City. “One possibility is that Deutsch’s questionable sources were merely peripheral to his stories, providing ‘color’ about widely reported events,” Farhi writes. “But it’s also possible that a journalist dealing with people on the fringes of society faces less accountability than one reporting in the center of the public square.”

Harper Collins will publish Michelle McNamara’s final book, which