This week’s Publisher’s Weekly turns a wel­come spot­light on Jeff Clark, the designer respon­si­ble for some of the truly remark­able book covers that have appeared over the last few years, from Matthew Rohrer’s Rise Up (Wave Books) to Hannah Weiner’s Open House (Ken­ning Edi­tions) to Jonathan Bate’s biog­ra­phy and selected poems of John Clare (FSG). Jeff’s work is every­where these days; besides being design direc­tor for Flood Edi­tions—which has not one but two books of poetry up for an NBCC award this year—he designs for Ahsahta Press, Wave Books, and Essay Press, among many others. He also designed every Chicago Review cover between the Ed Dorn spe­cial issue (50:2/3/4) and our latest issue (53:2/3).

This little tidbit, which comes on the very last page of the new NYRB, just about makes up for the truly cringe-​inspiring arti­cle on blogs by Sarah Boxer (which includes an instruc­tion for read­ing emoti­cons that actu­ally begins, “Tilt your head to the left…”):

No one can be sure how wide­spread sab­o­tage by muni­tions work­ers was, but there is plenty of anec­do­tal evi­dence, includ­ing a story I can con­tribute myself. A German bomb fell through the roof of my wife’s grandmother’s house in the East End of London in 1943 and lodged, unex­ploded, in her bed­room wardrobe. When the bomb dis­posal unit opened it up, they found a note inside. “Don’t worry, English,” it said, “we’re with you. Polish workers.”

It’s from Richard J. Evans’s response to a letter by John Diebold.

One of the high­lights of this year’s Key West Lit­er­ary Sem­i­nar was a talk by the preter­nat­u­rally gifted Junot Díaz. I’m not sure how it will play as a pod­cast, but the KWLS has been good enough to make one avail­able here.

(Of course, if you haven’t yet read The Brief Won­drous Life of Oscar Wao, that’s your first assign­ment. God knows I’m not the first to say it, but this is it, the real deal.)

Maybe you knew about this, but I didn’t:

The record­ings, which range from the late 1930s to recent times, are espe­cially strong in the areas of fiddle, banjo, har­mon­ica, and dul­cimer tunes; sec­u­lar bal­lads and songs; gospel songs, and the unac­com­pa­nied lined-​out and shape note singing styles. Included as well are such rel­a­tive unknowns as the mouth bow with ori­gins in Africa, Chero­kee singing and dance music, Swiss-​American singing and yodel­ing, Hungarian-​American cym­balum play­ing, and the jug band sound from the early 1900s com­prised of a loose rural-​urban mix of blues, hill­billy, and jazz.

In many instances the reper­toire and play­ing styles doc­u­mented in these record­ings date well back into the 1800s. Among the music’s read­ily detectable influ­ences are musi­cal expres­sions aris­ing from slav­ery, min­strel stage music, Civil War mil­i­tary music, and the dance music of Britain, Ire­land and, in some instances, France and Germany.

(via Silas House)