Short Takes

FLUSH TIMES AND FEVER DREAMS author Joshua Rothman has a piece in Bloomberg regarding the similarities of the 2008 financial meltdown and the Panic of 1837.

The financial meltdown of 2008 has been attributed to a pre-crash economy whose incentives and rewards resembled a freewheeling casino rather than a rational marketplace. . . .
The U.S. has been here before. The middle of the 1830s was one of those times, when land speculation and easy credit blurred the lines between legitimate and illegitimate pursuits of wealth. No part of the U.S. was more steeped in this culture of speculation than the Deep South, because the forced removal of Native Americans had opened vast swaths of valuable cotton land there for development. Cotton cultivated by slaves was the raw material driving the early Industrial Revolution. The crop’s market prices kept rising seemingly regardless of supply, and it became America’s most significant export and arguably the most important commodity in the world.

In honor of University Press Week, Southern Spines features an interview with THE INVISIBLES author Hugh Sheehy.

SS:  The book is called  The Invisibles, which likely borrows from one of the short stories with the same name. Define  an “Invisible” for us.
HS:  It’s a weird condition because it’s kind of a paranoid condition. It’s a person who is unmemorable for some reason, who doesn’t get detected by other people. Other people don’t pick up on their presence. They are there, but nobody notices them. When they’re gone, it’s as if they’ve never been there. They’re there lurking.

Over on Lambda Literary, the other recent Flannery O'Connor Award winner, E. J. Levy, answers questions about her collection, LOVE, IN THEORY, "her long road to publishing, the eroticism of academia, and of course, love."

Finally, for the sake of cheesiness, what’s your own theory of love?
I’m from the dairyland of the Midwest so I’m a huge fan of cheese! I think (I hope) I’m done with theories of love; these days, I’m for love, in fact. I think Thomas Merton said it well, “We are what we love.” So, if I have any theory on the subject now, it would be to choose well what you love and then love with all you’ve got; in the end, it defines us, as much as we try to define it.

California State University, Fullerton highlights Erica L. Ball's new book, TO LIVE AN ANTI-SLAVERY LIFE and shares an excerpt on their news services website.