The year in fiction: Our favorite 2018 novels

The year in fiction. Peruse our favorite 76 novels from the past year at the 2019 Tournament of Books long list.

The Morning News
A former FBI lawyer draws parallels between the Watergate road map and Trump's attempts to control the Russia investigation.
↩︎ The Atlantic 2h
How to cook Thanksgiving dinner: You’ve got less than two days—are you ready? Sage advice from Leslie Harpold.
↩︎ The Morning News 5h
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↩︎ TMN Membership 6h
How to protect the future from radioactive waste: Bioengineer Geiger-counter cats and introduce myths about them.
↩︎ The Ray Cat Solution 6h
The share of Americans who believe in the devil is up more than 8% since 1990.
↩︎ The Atlantic 6h
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The Editors' Longreads Picks
A database of American political campaign logos reveals a sea of sameness—with occasional bursts of weird.
↩︎ Politics and Design 6h

As a parent, you want to give your kids so much. You want to give them all that you have and all that you can get. You want to give them the world, and a better world than the one you’ve got. It’s terrifying to look up in the sky and think about what they’ll inherit.

Mat Honan looks at the fires, and into the future of California.
↩︎ BuzzFeed News
6h
The latest in Russian hacking news: A long-dormant, but highly effective phishing group is showing signs of activity.
↩︎ WIRED 6h
A former White House counsel says Trump's voting fraud lies undermine voting rights and the Constitution—an impeachable offense.
↩︎ The Atlantic 6h
How many years air pollution can cut from people's lives worldwide—Fresno County, Calif., is the highest in the US, at two years.
↩︎ The Washington Post 8h
We don't know if China or Cuba has sonic weapons, but the US Dept. of Defense is developing one, among other nonlethal devices.
↩︎ WIRED 10h
"Provenance has become a political tool." How nations and museums have twisted the original intent for returning war-looted art.
↩︎ Observer 10h

About a handful each of stoned dates, dried figs, shelled almonds and peanuts: chop these and mix them together. A bunch of cannabis sativa can be pulverised.

Here is Alice B. Toklas’s recipe for hash brownies.
↩︎ Literary Hub
10h
Your appendix isn't an unnecessary organ. Among its jobs is to replenish your gut bacteria after a gastrointestinal illness.
↩︎ The New York Times 11h
Good news about bad companies: The NRA has stopped giving its employees free coffee, which could mean budget woes.
↩︎ Quartz 11h
A deep dive into the brands you find on Amazon. Of course, many are owned by Amazon, but it's not so easy to tell which ones.
↩︎ The New York Times 11h
Recognizing its tone as too gendered, the Financial Times created a bot to alert its reporters if they're over-quoting men.
↩︎ The Nieman Journalism Lab 11h
The worst year to be alive was 536: With months of no sunlight, crops failed, people starved—and then the plague hit.
↩︎ Science 11h

This battle is epic and undecided. If we miss the two-degree target, we will fight to prevent a rise of three degrees, and then four. It’s a long escalator down to Hell.

Thirty years after his early climate change reporting, Bill McKibben assesses our extraordinary hubris in the face of extinction.
↩︎ The New Yorker
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The Editors' Longreads Picks

Mauerbauertraurigkeit: The inexplicable urge to push people away, even close friends who you really like. Chrysalism: The amniotic tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm.

A list of emotions people feel but can’t explain. From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.
↩︎ Niclas Berggren / Twitter
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