There is no such thing as sustainability in any conventionally acceptable sense. That is: the word is freighted with an impossible self-contradiction, projecting an aspiration for eternal recurrance onto a universe that does not engage in repetition. 

“What do Vietnam-draft dodgers, buried gold, Basque terrorists, the World’s Oldest Living Hippie, rampant inflation, the CIA, a Russian revolutionary, Confederate coins, Indonesian militant feminists, and Doc Brown from Back to the Future, have in common? The answer lies in a nondescript upstate New York warehouse overflowing with currency from every country—more cash than ever before amassed.”

My father tried to explain radical behaviorism to me when I was a kid, but I didn’t understand it. I read what my father said was Skinner’s most accessible essay, “On ‘Having’ a Poem,” but Skinner’s implication that there aren’t really any “poets” who “write” poems seemed baffling and insulting. Skinner said every so-called “poet” was merely the current, instantaneous sum of every influence that had ever fed into “him,” extending back in time. Therefore, the poem was in truth just an outcome of the sum of those same influences that had yielded the poet. There seemed to be no room in such an explanation for what I would normally think of as a creative individual human mind. 

At Lonya’s dacha, in a forest outside Moscow, Chris conducted a long, slow conversation with Lonya’s ninety-one-year-old mother, my Great-Aunt Sonia. My cousin Anya, who had spent a year in the United States, translated for us.

Chris asked Sonia, “How did you greet the Communist revolutionaries when they reached your village?”

Sonia’s wrinkled, alert face lit up as she remembered her girlhood—the year 1917. “With joy! When they marched into town holding the Red Flag we cheered. All of us girls brought them flowers. My father had started as a schoolteacher—but he had opened a bookstore in 1915.  When the revolutionaries told him he had to give the books away to the people, he did so gladly.”

“So, he had to close the bookstore?”

In 1972, Paul was on assignment in Thailand, doing a travel essay, when he got word Jane was dying, in New York. In Without Stopping, Paul describes the moment he heard the news. He immediately left Thailand, to go to Jane, in New York.

He took ship.

Two weeks later, Paul was at Jane’s side.

Stuck deep in the humorous vein of Mark Twain, O. Henry, William Saroyan, and MAD Magazine, inveterate liar and spineless invertebrate Harry X (sextuply-terminated four-decade Long-Island mailman, and author of rabidly contested HARRY CARRY: TRUE STORY’S OF THE POST OFFICE, plus universally ignored, Cassandra-like bicomixography THE TRUMP ORANGE PRIMER), disclaims paternity of, responsibility for—but never royalties from—Great American Roman Graphique,OFF I WENT.

Last fall, the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, decided he didn’t like Wikipedia because it isn’t sufficiently Right-Wing. Musk announced he would launch a competing online encyclopedia that relied on his AI large language model, called xAI or Grok. His new encyclopedia launched in October 2025 and already has six million articles. It’s called Grokipedia.

How did Grokipedia create six million articles so quickly? It copied the topics and subjects from Wikipedia.

That crooked lawyer—he says in his book that it was his experience during the Richard Ramey trial that affected his outlook: he was inspired by Arthur Cieslik—and this ultimately led to him switching sides, and becoming an FBI informant, to take all those inside crooks down. So—our testimony in that case really made a difference!

[Paquito] was peeling off hundred-dollar bills from a big roll of cash while Arturo watched like a hungry lion.

Political leaders would naturally want books in the library to say what those political leaders want the books to say. (I guess if an opposing party comes to power, librarians would be told to throw out the books, and buy opposing ones.)

The author of this book entitled Shut Up and Read, is someone I’ve never met: Jeannine Cook. We’d corresponded by email in July of 2024, trying to coordinate schedules. Our plan was to set up a book launch at Jeannine’s store in Philadelphia, Harriett’s Bookshop, to celebrate Accidental Anchorwoman, the memoir written by Melba Tolliver, which Book & Puppet Company published last year. October 2024 was the target for the event at Harriett’s. But somehow it slipped; the event never materialized.

I felt angry. I’ve spent my career advocating ideas and business strategies around bookstores embracing roles as community centers offering profound, real-life experiences impossible to replicate online. Now, here’s AI—the mirror opposite of indie bookstores—parroting the language we indie booksellers have developed to fight this damned AI.

“In regard to every action one must know the result that is expected to follow, the means thereto, and the capacity for it. He who, being thus equipped, is without desire for the result, and is yet wholly engrossed in the due fulfillment of the task before him, is said to have renounced the fruits of his action. Again, let no one consider renunciation to mean lack of fruit for the renouncer…Renunciation means absence of hankering after fruit. As a matter of fact, he who renounces reaps a thousandfold…”—Mohandas K. Gandhi

What stood out most strikingly was the difference that possessing her books made for the children. They understood this person had personally created the book they owned. Olugbemisola took dozens of questions from each group, moving among the children with her microphone, and their questions demonstrated fascination for her background, and for her accomplishment of making their own book.

Barnes & Noble destroyed my Chicago business, The Children’s Bookstore, thirty years ago, and even though Barnes & Noble has changed hands (“Under New Ownership”), I have no reason to believe their corporate DNA has also changed.

“The majority of Americans are angry about this idiocy. There will come a tipping point.
The majority will fight back and win.”

I rang the other books up, and as the mother left, one of the younger children noticed that her older sister’s chosen book had not been purchased and asked about it. The mother said, “We’ll get something for her later.”  As the group left the store, the nine-year-old gave me a sidelong dirty look.

Because Greg Piper did not actually read my book, and did not reach out to me directly, perhaps I should take these two rebukes as exemplary of a tendency on his part to misrepresent opponents’ arguments? Or maybe he is simply a sloppy journalist?

I peeked into the pastry box. It held three very fancy donuts, a large triangular frosted scone, and four pieces of coffee cake coated in powdery sugar.

Well…what I didn’t tell her is that back in 2018 when I was first pitching the idea of launching a book festival in Easton, I didn’t expect we would end up the way we ended up, with a focus on community development. I thought we’d be a regular book festival, where authors who’ve been published by big national companies read and sign their books because they’re on national book tours. Big-name, bestselling writers provide most of the excitement. Readers wait in long lines to get autographs and buy tons of books. That’s how I assumed Easton Book Festival would be.