Lit Hub Daily: August 12, 2026

THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET

TODAY: In 1876, Mary Roberts Rinehart is born.

• When a wealthy university donor can silence one of the world’s leading genocide scholars, it exposes the problem with for-profit higher education. | Lit Hub Politics
• The best way to get people interested in your lit mag? Mail them free copies, obviously. | Lit Hub Advice
• Why the people who fight “supposedly depraved art” are more dangerous than the art itself. | Lit Hub Art
• How Hannah Arendt examined antisemitism as Hitler rose to power: “Hitler’s so-called seizure of power made all Jews indistinguishable; he forced all of them into the same mold, with varying degrees of perceptible consequences.” | Lit Hub Biography
• If you still have the Roman Empire on the mind, Michelle Berenfeld thinks you should read these books by John Williams, Ursula K. Le Guin, Robert Graves, and more. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
• Dave Zirin traces the impact of World War II on Howard Zinn’s historical perspective. | Lit Hub Biography
• “When I first met her, I was happier than I’d ever been. I’d finally triumphed over the mother who abandoned me, my whole ugly childhood.” Read from Leslie Bazzett’s debut novel, Mia. | Lit Hub Fiction
• Obama is starting a literary podcast. Okay! | The New York Times
• Lincoln Michel considers the horrors of revision (and offers a few bits of advice). | Counter Craft
• Sometimes, “written by a human” actually means written by AI. | 404 Media
• Brittany Dennison considers Late Fame and the rise of an empty literary aesthetic. | The Baffler
• Jill Lepore on the technofascists who fundamentally misunderstand classic science fiction. | Wired
• “This was among the first books that asked women how they felt about sex, rather than telling them what to feel.” Rosa Campbell looks at The Hite Report. | Aeon

Article continues after advertisement