Lit Hub Daily: June 24, 2026

THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET

TODAY: In 1909, Sarah Orne Jewett is born.

• Andrew McKenzie-McHarg explores iconic conspiracy theorist Carl Oglesby’s idea of a Yankees versus Cowboys war. | Lit Hub History
• Maggie McKinley considers Joan Didion’s “future-oriented” nostalgia. | Lit Hub Criticism
• “I would never blame them. But being around Americans while this country is bombing mine is the last thing I can do.” Iranian writer Shohreh Laici on war and her mother. | Lit Hub Memoir
• Why time travel stories don’t always need to be cautionary tales. | Lit Hub Craft
• “The more natural or taken-­for-­granted something is for us in our everyday life, indeed, the harder it becomes for the historian to reconstruct.” On archiving as family duty. | Lit Hub Memoir
• How crops from Africa built American agriculture. | Lit Hub Food
• “When they were little, Netty and G spent their prayers asking God why he made them cousins instead of sisters.” Read “The Thing About You” from T Clarks’ new collection, All This Want (and I Can’t Get None). | Lit Hub Fiction
• Today in Betteridge’s Law of Headlines: Would you let AI Michael Caine read you The Odyssey? | The New York Times
• “You can’t have pie-in-the-sky optimism, but an optimism rooted in fact and history and the politics of change is something all of us, particularly young people, desperately need.” Dave Zirin and Andrew Holter discuss Howard Zinn’s legacy. | Boston Review
• McKenzie Prillaman considers the past and future of the SAT. | Smithsonian Magazine
• Fewer public libraries are doing Pride displays, for reasons that are unfortunately (politically) obvious. | 404 Media
• Should writers read? Should cartoonists be critics? Hagai Palevsky considers these discourses and more while examining Sethphemera essays and interviews by the cartoonist Seth. | The Comics Journal
• “These cases not only underscore the mendacity of the conservative majority but also point to what a confused category privacy itself is.” Samuel Huneke considers our eroding right to privacy. | The Baffler

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