An algorithm built to predict which books will become bestsellers has awarded a perfect score to Dave Eggers’s The Circle, a dystopian novel about a sinister Google-like company that hijacks the time and free will of its employees and the wider world. Using “cutting-edge text-mining techniques” developed by Jodie Archer, a former publisher, and Matthew Jockers, a co-founder of Stanford University’s Literary Lab, the model trawled through 20,000 novels to isolate elements of plot, character, and style that appeal to the broadest segment of the reading population. Archer and Jockers expected the

Jonathan Coe—author of What a Carve Up!, The Rain Before It Falls, and The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim—has been named “France’s favourite British author" and an officer in France’s Order of Arts and Letters. Coe is calling the honor “bittersweet,” following the Britain’s vote to leave the EU last week: “Yes, it’s a bittersweet feeling to have had this recognition from France in the week that Britain has turned its back on the rest of Europe,” says the novelist. “But it’s more important than ever, now, that British writers build a close relationship with their European readers, and try to

“The British are frantically Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it” reads a Washington Post headline about Brexit, which passed. In response to the news, British Prime Minister David Cameron said he would resign in October, and the stock market plunged. “Some British voters say they now regret casting a ballot in favor of Brexit. ‘Even though I voted to leave, this morning I woke up and I just—the reality did actually hit me,’ one woman told the news channel ITV News. ‘If I'd had the opportunity to vote again, it would be to stay.’”

Corey Lewandowski, the recently fired

Peter Manseau, the author of One Nation Under Gods: A New American History, asks: “Is Trumpism its own religion?” “Trump, a biblical illiterate, has succeeded so far because his followers believe he is a transformative figure who can bring about national salvation. In an election year full of surprises, perhaps the most surprising of all is that Trump voters are motivated by a kind of faith: They believe in the man, and in his promise that all their losing will come to end.”

On Twitter, Hillary Clinton has revealed herself to be a succinct and witty literary critic: “Trump has written a lot

A Hispanic man, identified only as “Miguel,” came forward as a lover of the Orlando shooter Omar Mateen to claim the attacks were less an expression of radicalized Islam than a grudge against gay Latinos. “This crazy horrible thing he did, it was a revenge,” said the man, who wore a mask and had his voice altered to appear on Univision. “I told the FBI, if you’re a terrorist and you really want to kill a lot of people, you don’t go to Pulse. . . . He hated gay Puerto Ricans for all the bad things they

Despite his secret funding of lawsuits against Gawker Media, Peter Thiel will remain on the board of Facebook—a potential conflict of interest given Facebook’s increasing influence on web traffic to news and media sites. Mark Zuckerberg, who controls 60 percent of the board, cast the decisive vote to keep Thiel. The controversy is complicated: Gawker argues that its disclosure of Thiel’s sexual orientation in 2007 was a legitimate example of freedom of the press, while Thiel sees it as a private matter, and has sought—privately—to bankrupt the company. “Peter did what he did on his own and not

The New York Times has an in-depth profile of Ho Pin, the publisher of Mirror Media Group. Based in Great Neck, NY, Ho's Chinese-language list is a mixture of politically daring and just-plain-salacious books. “One of Mirror’s latest additions is a 334-page book about Chinese leaders and their offshore accounts that were uncovered by the Panama Papers only weeks earlier. Another book on its shelves is a 2009 volume that claims to depict the extramarital sex lives of China’s top leaders, including Mr. Xi.”

Dave Eggers attended a rally for Trump. “When I parked, I glanced at the car next to me,

Charles Aaron and Erik Roldan have put together a three-and-a-half-hour-long playlist of Latin dance songs and club hits “to honor the Orlando victims, who were just looking for a place to dance and feel free that night.”

At a cocktail reception last night, Johnny Temple, the publisher of Akashic Books, announced some of the highlights of this year’s Brooklyn Book Festival. BKBF events will begin taking place on September 12, and will culminate on September 18, which will feature more than three hundred authors—including Joyce Carol Oates, Sherman Alexie, Margaret Atwood, Nicole Dennis-Benn,

In an interview with Chris Hayes, author and columnist Dan Savage reflected on politicians’ responses to the massacre in Orlando, and stated: “Donald Trump is the enemy of the LGBT community.”

In a conversation at the New York Public Library with author Masha Gessen, Svetlana Alexievich, the author of Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets and the winner of the 2015 Nobel prize, described the traumatic childhood experiences in the former Soviet Union that led her to specialize in oral history. “I grew up in a village after the war and in the village there were almost only women” because so

“At its peak, the Orlando Sentinel had more than 350 journalists in the newsroom. On Sunday, as it ramped up to cover the nation's deadliest mass shooting, it had about 100. It's still the largest news organization in Orlando.” Poynter has a moving story about how breaking news gets reported by newsrooms contending with budget cuts and slashed manpower. The Sentinel spent the first part of the weekend covering the murder of the singer Christina Grimmie, and has, in recent years, done in-depth reporting on the trials of George Zimmerman and Casey Anthony.

A Gallup poll shows Americans’ confidence

After the Washington Post used the headline “Donald Trump suggests President Obama was involved with Orlando shooting” on its front page, Trump announced in a Facebook post that he was revoking the “phony and dishonest” newspaper’s press credentials. The Post has since changed the headline to read “Donald Trump seems to connect President Obama to Orlando shooting.” It referred to Trump’s appearance on Fox News on Monday, during which he suggested Obama ought to resign for not using the term “radical Islam” in his address to the nation on Sunday. “He doesn’t get it or he gets it better than

At The Nation, Richard Kim remembers the first gay bar he went to, and notes that the Pulse, the Orlando gay club where a gunman killed fifty people and wounded at least fifty more this weekend, was a “utopia” and a “safe haven”—qualities that he fervently hopes will not go away: “To all the bartenders and bar-backs and bouncers and gogo boys and drag queens and club kids and freaks who make the nightlife—I love you. Stay strong.”

This weekend, novelist Jennifer Weiner, the author of Good in Bed and other bestsellers, describes going to her college reunion at Princeton expecting her former