Short Link News: November 2017

Kamis, 30 November 2017

Ben Shapiro, a Provocative 'Gladiator,' Battles to Win Young Conservatives - New York Times

But he is not a moderate. His views are extremely conservative: Transgenderism is a mental illness, as per the encyclopedia of mental disorders before 2013. Yes, blacks have been historically discriminated against. No, institutions are not broadly discriminating against them today. The rich pay too much tax. Abortion should be illegal. Social Security ought to be privatized and Obamacare repealed.

Liberals loathe Mr. Shapiro. They say he is a pugilist who has built his brand on the nation’s addiction to outrage. He is part of an industry that whips up conservatives against the left, they say, and the fact that his audience is mostly young will deepen the divide for years to come.

Supporters of Mr. Shapiro’s at the University of Utah. Kim Raff for The New York Times

And even some former fans say Mr. Shapiro is a brilliant polemicist, but in a tribal nation, he’s just one more partisan mobilizing his troops.

“He’ll never concede anything to the left,” said William Nardi, a college student in Boston, who used to look up to Mr. Shapiro. “He’s saying the left is wrong and I’m right. Kids love that. All they care about is this feeling that they are right and that their identity is preserved. That’s what he gives them.”

Conservatives say he is a force for good. Liberals may not like his conclusions, but they are guiding young people at a time when the conservative movement is adrift and ideas of white nationalism are competing for their attention. Mr. Shapiro, an Orthodox Jew, was one of the first to call out the alt-right movement, denouncing it as racist and anti-Semitic at a time when most people saw it as counterculture and cool. He paid a price. He received 38 percent of all anti-Semitic tweets aimed at journalists in 2016, the largest single share, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

“There’s a real battle for hearts and minds going on right now and Ben is one of the main warriors,” said David French, a columnist for National Review. Mr. French calls Mr. Shapiro a “principled gladiator.” His aggressive tone draws in audiences, he said, but he does not attack unfairly, stoke anger for the sake of it, or mischaracterize his opponents’ positions. He even hits his own side, as he did with Sean Hannity for not weighing in on Roy S. Moore, the embattled Alabama Republican, and Mr. Bannon for supporting him.

“He appeals to the better angels of his audience’s nature, while still being a pugilist, and that’s quite a skill,” Mr. French said.

Mr. Shapiro grew up in Los Angeles in a Jewish family of Reagan Republicans. His parents both worked in Hollywood, his mother as an executive of a TV company and his father as a composer. They lived in a small house, his parents in one bedroom and he and his three sisters in the other. They had political discussions around the dinner table. He was patriotic. He dressed up as John Adams every year for Halloween from the age of 5. He had a favorite musical: 1776.

He is less established than Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh, but his audience is younger. And instead of hunkering down in a studio, Mr. Shapiro travels the country, speaking at colleges (he’s been to 37 since early last year) and on panels.

“So often I’ve felt turning on Fox, it makes you dumber, but you listen to Ben Shapiro and you are likely to be both entertained and enlightened,” said Charlie Sykes, a conservative pundit and Trump critic. “He’s high octane. He reads books. His mind works really fast. He likes to get under people’s skin. He’s clearly part of this younger generation. I could imagine Bill Buckley looking down and smiling.”

Students lined up to ask questions during Mr. Shapiro’s visit to the university. Pool photo by Leah Hogsten

People often discover Mr. Shapiro by seeing a video clip of him arguing with somebody. Some have been watched millions of times, like one from a college in Michigan in February. After a back and forth with a young woman in the audience about transgenderism, Mr. Shapiro asked her how old she was. She said 22.

“Why aren’t you 60?” he asked. “What is the problem with you identifying as 60?”

The young woman looked at him and hesitated, lowering the microphone slightly.

“It’s not the same as gender,” she said. “You can’t just …”

Mr. Shapiro looked at her, his face impassive: “You’re right,” he said. “You can’t magically change your gender. You can’t magically change your sex. You can’t magically change your age.”

In an age of partisan warfare on college campuses, this video clip is a rare weapon. It is also vintage Shapiro. He takes apart arguments in ways that makes the conservative conclusion seem utterly logical, like putting a key in a locked door. The clip has had about 47 million views on Facebook.

“There is a hunger in conservative millennial land for a different kind of voice,” Mr. French said. “They want someone who will unapologetically stand up for conservative values, but who is also articulating a movement they can feel proud of.”

Mr. Shapiro has always been deeply conservative and does not pretend to be objective. But he says his market niche is giving cleareyed reads of current events, not purely partisan rants. He is often compared to his former colleague at Breitbart, Milo Yiannopoulos. On the surface, they seem the same. Both speak on college campuses. Both draw protests. Both used to work for Mr. Bannon at Breitbart. Both are young.

In fact, they are very different. Mr. Yiannopoulos, a protégé of Mr. Bannon, was good at shocking audiences, saying things like “feminism is cancer.” But critics say that he was empty of ideas, a kind of nihilistic rodeo clown who was not even conservative. Mr. Shapiro broke with Mr. Bannon last year, saying Breitbart had become a propaganda tool for Mr. Trump.

Mr. Yiannopoulos’s act collapsed this year. But the fact that it lasted so long says a lot about the right’s fury against mainstream liberalism, Mr. Shapiro said.

Mr. Shapiro preparing for his podcast in Salt Lake City. Kim Raff for The New York Times

Years of cultural dominance in TV, movies, comedy, media and to a large extent, universities, left conservatives feeling looked down on and labeled. Mr. Shapiro, who still lives in Los Angeles, wrote a book about it, “Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV.” Add to that economic frustration, and taboos around race, gender and sexual orientation, and you start to explain Mr. Limbaugh’s explosive success 20 years ago.

“Trump won the nomination because he was anti-left, not because of any political viewpoints,” Mr. Shapiro said in an interview. “He was slapping people on the left and people on the right went, ‘Yeah, those people need to be slapped!’”

But Mr. Shapiro does it too. He thinks it’s easy to provoke the left, which he says has become intellectually flabby after decades of cultural dominance. It’s not good at arguing and relies instead on taboos and punishing people who violate them. That is the essence of his stump speech.

“The left believes in a hierarchy of victimhood,” he said in Utah. “If you are L.G.B.T.Q., then we suggest that you are very top of the victimhood hierarchy. You have been most victimized in the United States and therefore your opinion must be taken with the most gravitas.”

He ticked off others.

“Black folks have been historically victimized in the United States, which of course, is true. But the idea that every black person now is being individually victimized by the United States is not true.”

Then he got to the group that made up most of the audience.

“Way down at the bottom are white straight males. Those are people whose opinions do not matter at all. Because those are the people who are the beneficiaries of the system. They don’t get to talk about the system because they were the ones who built the system.”

Critics say that is great red meat for his audience, but it’s nonsense. Even if straight white males are low on the left’s pecking order, they have most of the power in Washington, in statehouses, in every corporate boardroom. They run America.

Mr. Shapiro says he’s about more than tribal polemics. In an age of combative politics, you have to be a fighter to be in the game. And he says he’s willing to defend conservatism against those on the right as well as the left.

“I am trying to militantly defend conservative ideas,” he said. “I’m not going to be anti-left for the sake of it.”

Correction: November 24, 2017

An earlier version of this article referred imprecisely to the tweets received by Mr. Shapiro. He received 38 percent of all anti-Semitic tweets aimed at journalists in 2016; not of tweets overall.

Rabu, 29 November 2017

My Brother Kevin's Not Tired of Winning - New York Times

Democrats say Obamacare needs only a tweak. My youngest son just received his bill for health care. It came with an annual premium of $8,100. At that price, I think he will continue to vote Republican.

The dam has broken on sexual harassment and worse. It has already claimed Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey and Charlie Rose and threatens to make a ghost town of Hollywood and the Capitol. It has also brought back Bill Clinton for an unwanted encore of his colorful past.

At the center of it is the Republican Senate candidate in Alabama, Roy Moore. Moore is despicable. But the seat is very important. He still may win, but it will be a Pyrrhic victory when his own colleagues refuse to seat him and ask the governor to send over a new name. It was not surprising that the president said he would rather have a Republican in the seat. It will not be Roy Moore. Moore will never be seated.

But the Republicans do have a problem. They are in total control and have not passed any major legislation. They cannot let large egos — theirs and Trump’s — get in the way of this opportunity. They are also facing a rear-guard attack by Steve Bannon, who brings his own army of candidates with him. I’m not a Bannon fan. But he’s holding Republicans’ feet to the fire, which should be done.

If Republicans cannot pass tax reform, they are not Republicans and deserve to be fired. They were elected to get results. Early in my sales career, we learned that a new manager was on the way. We quickly called the office where he worked to get a profile on what to expect. The report came back, “Well, he is a real difficult guy to like … but a real easy guy to hate.”

Over the next two years, our office had its highest production in history. The manager was promoted to another sales office. Everyone still hated him. The promotion was for results. Results matter.

The Democrats have their own issues. Their leaders are all on Medicare and cling to power like a drunk hugging his bottle of schnapps at last call. Liz and Bernie want the party to be more liberal, as if that were possible. If they move any further left, they will be driving in Britain.

Their more pressing problem is Hillary, now in exile on her endless book tour. She continues to hover above the party like some giant pterodactyl of Christmas Past.

Here is my holiday list of Things That Do Not Bother Me:

Trump’s daily activity: I do not follow every move he makes. I counsel my Democratic friends to do the same, but they cannot help themselves.

Trump’s minor battles: The N.F.L. players were disrespecting the American flag and were not called out by their gutless commissioner in a timely fashion. LaVar Ball is a publicity whore who cannot grasp that his son (and meal ticket) would have gone to jail without the president’s intervention.

Trump’s interaction with dictators: If President Obama had done it, he would have been given the Nobel Peace Prize. (That already happened?)

Robert Mueller’s investigation: So far, no direct connection with Trump himself on the Russia collusion. But it did find collusion with Hillary and the D.N.C. on the dossier. Luckily, she has several donors on Mueller’s staff ready to offer legal advice.

Trump pressuring the Department of Justice: If Jeff Sessions cannot find prosecutable evidence against James Comey, Loretta Lynch and Hillary, he should go back to the Senate.

Nepotism: Ivanka and Jared? Surely you jest. In the grand scheme of things, I don’t think they have any effect on anything. If this were a movie, they wouldn’t even be in the credits.

I hope you had a happy Thanksgiving.

Newly revealed vision of St. Pope John Paul: Islam will invade Europe - Lifesite

Outlander: If the Show Follows the Books, Here's What Will Happen to Jamie - POPSUGAR

For three seasons, Outlander fans have been swooning left and right over Sam Heughan's portrayal of Jamie Fraser on the Starz drama series. He's a near-perfect hero — as executive producer Matthew B. Roberts joked with us on set last year, "Jamie, let's face it — he's a pretty awesome guy. He does most things really well. He's handsome. As far as we can tell, he gets seasick and he can't wink. These are his flaws."

"That's a tough character to write," Roberts added with a laugh.

But the Outlander writers have done an awesome job of making Jamie come to life on screen, buffeted by Heughan's strong-yet-vulnerable performance. Where is his Emmy nomination already, TV academy?

If you're a book reader like us, you're positively giddy at what is coming up for Jamie as the show gets further and further into the book series. But if you're not familiar with Diana Gabaldon's novels and would like to know the amazing things you can start dreaming about, look no further. We're here to preview the major events of the books. But do be warned of spoilers — stop reading if you don't want to know.

For a primer on the remaining events of Voyager, read our post here. Everything in book four and beyond is ahead!

Drums of Autumn

In book four, Jamie, Claire, Ian, and Fergus have washed ashore in South Carolina. As they make their way to the North Carolina plantation owned by Jamie's Aunt Jocasta (who will be played by the amazing Maria Doyle Kennedy of Orphan Black fame), the group encounters the dastardly Stephen Bonnet.

Jamie helps him escape, believing him to be a friend of one of Jamie's former Ardsmuir prisonmates. But later, that decision will prove tragic, as Bonnet robs them of the remaining treasure and money they had and turns out to be the man who rapes Brianna (when she travels back in time to warn her parents after finding their death notice in an old paper).

Upon arrival at River Run, Jamie quickly realizes that his aunt wants to name him her heir (to keep would-be suitors from sniffing around her estate). But he doesn't want that and politely declines. Instead, he takes an offer to settle a tract of land nearby on the condition that North Carolina's Governor Tryon may call on Jamie at any time if he is in need of Jamie's service.

As they settle other ex-inmates from Ardsmuir Prison on Fraser's Ridge (remember, all of Jamie's prison companions were shipped off to the Colonies, so this is where we think we'll see Murtagh again), Lord John Grey pays Jamie a visit with his "step-son," William, giving Jamie a chance to spend time with his son.

And that's not the only child he meets in this book. While Jamie and Claire are settling in North Carolina, Brianna appears at Lallybroch in 18th-century Scotland, looking for her mother and father. After a long journey in which Roger Wakefield catches up with her and the two of them are married, she arrives at Fraser's Ridge. Due to a misunderstanding, Jamie thinks it is Roger who raped Brianna (instead of Bonnet), and he beats Roger to a bloody pulp, then hands him off to some local Native Americans as a prisoner.

When the misunderstanding is realized, Jamie, Claire, and Ian manage to rescue Roger (and Ian ends up taking the place of a dead Mohawk tribe member within the tribe), then they (minus Ian) return to River Run, where Brianna has just given birth to a son, Jeremiah (Jemmy), whose biological father could be either Bonnet or Roger. Roger says he's the boy's father no matter what the paternity might be.

The Fiery Cross

Governor Tryon calls in his chip with Jamie, ordering him to form a militia. The militia leaves Fraser's Ridge for only a month, however, before Tryon sends a message that it is to be disbanded (for now).

When the family attends Aunt Jocasta's wedding at River Run, they again encounter Stephen Bonnet, this time working with an accomplice to try to rob Jamie and Jocasta. They're looking for the gold King Louis XV had sent to Bonnie Prince Charlie to aid in the rebellion, but Jamie and Jocasta don't have it.

The militia, calling itself Fraser's Company, is reformed in the Spring (it is now April 1771). As they engage in the Battle of Alamance, Roger is wrongfully hanged as a rebel and Jamie must rescue him, barely saving Roger in time. They return to Fraser's Ridge and continue to struggle with the daily hardships of frontier life.

In Spring 1772, Roger and Jamie go on a mission to find and kill Stephen Bonnet, but they miss their chance and Bonnet actually finds Claire, Brianna, Marsali, and the children. He attemps to kidnap Jemmy, whom he believes to be his son. Brianna saves her son by shooting Bonnet, who runs off, wounded.

A Breath of Snow and Ashes

Jamie becomes what was known as an "Indian agent," or someone authorized to interact with Native American tribes on behalf of the US government. He also decides to form a Committee of Safety for his tenants at Fraser's Ridge. Committees of Safety were real organizations during the Revolutionary War. They were made up of Patriots (those fighting against the British crown) whose purpose was to act as governing bodies, deriving authority from provincial congresses (which would later become US states). Basically, a Committee of Safety was one of the first forms of local government in the US.

Jamie frequently travels around the area, helping tenants and parlaying with the local Native Americans. During one of the trips, Clarie is kidnapped by a group of criminals that includes a fellow time-traveler named Wendigo Donner. While captive, Claire is assaulted and raped. Jamie, Ian, Fergus, and Co. eventually rescue her, slaughtering nearly all the men involved in the process.

As the events of the Revolutionary War get underway, Jamie stops working as an Indian agent for the government and begins to work in secret for the rebels (the Patriots). In February 1776, he gathers up the men of Fraser's Ridge, and they march to Wilmington to join the rebel militias. But after fighting for a few months, Jamie returns to Fraser's Ridge and the family sets about sending Brianna, Roger, Jemmy, and their new baby, Amanda, back through the stones because of Mandy's life-threatening heart murmur, which cannot be repaired in the 18th century.

After they leave, Claire and Jamie still have to deal with Donner and his companions, looking for gemstones because they help with traveling through the stones. The men loot Jamie and Claire's big log cabin house and end up dying in a fire that Ian sets. With the house and their family now gone, Jamie says he and Claire must return to Scotland to fetch his printing press.

If the show reaches this point, which would be the season six finale, this might be where Starz would consider ending things. It's a huge turning point in the novels and could make for a natural ending if the network doesn't want to pursue seasons seven, eight, nine, etc.

An Echo in the Bone

Of course, nothing is ever easy for Jamie and Claire. As they set sail with Ian aboard the Tranquil Teal, they are approached by a British naval ship that presses Jamie and Ian into service. The three of them (because Claire never leaves Jamie to go off and have adventures without her) eventually are able to extract themselves from the British and join a rebel militia. Claire is welcome there because of her medical expertise. When Jamie's cousin, Simon Fraser, is killed in battle, General Gates asks Jamie to take the body back to Scotland, so Jamie, Claire, and young Ian do eventually set sail for Scotland.

They reach Lallybroch in early 1778 only to find that the elder Ian Murray — young Ian's father and Jamie's best friend — is dying. They prepare to stay for a while, but Marsali writes from America that her son, Henri-Christian, who was born with what was then referred to as dwarfism, requires life-saving surgery. So Claire and young Ian say their goodbyes and sail for America; Jamie stays with Jenny and Ian until Ian dies.

Then in what is quite a surprise, Jenny, who has never really left Lallybroch, decides to sail for America with her brother. Jamie books passage for them on the Euterpe, but they miss that boat and must take another one a few days later. When the Euterpe sinks en route to America, however, Lord John and Claire back in the States believe Jamie to be drowned at sea. A British captain intends to now arrest Claire as a spy, so she marries Lord John for protection.

When Jamie does arrive in Philadelphia, he goes to get Claire from Lord John and instead encounters a grown William, who realizes that Jamie is his biological father because the resemblance is too hard to miss. Jamie also finds out that Lord John and Claire have been intimate in his absence.

Oh, and while all this is happening in the 1770s, Roger and Brianna think Jemmy is being kidnapped in 1980 and taken back to 1739 to find his grandfather's gold. Roger gives chase, though Jemmy is not actually in 1739, and then later Brianna, Jemmy, and Mandy follow him.

Written in My Own Heart's Blood

Jamie and Claire are reunited (again) in Philadelphia and join General Washington's army (yes, that General Washington, as in the first president of the United States). Lord John swears allegiance to the rebel forces, and then they must all work together to save William from the British.

At times both Lord John and Ian are captured by the British, then Claire is shot as the mission turns to locating Lord John's nephew, Benjamin. Meanwhile, Fergus and Marsali's Philadelphia print shop burns down, and little 4-year-old Henri-Christian dies when he cannot escape the fire. This causes the Frasers and Murrays (Ian and his wife, Rachel) to move to Savannah, GA. Fergus, Marsali, and their two daughters settle there, while Jamie, Claire, Ian, Rachel, Jenny, and Fergus's eldest child, Germain, head back to Fraser's Ridge.

At the end of the novel, Brianna, Roger, and their two children return to Fraser's Ridge as well.

By this point, it is the summer of 1779, and Jamie and Claire are in their late 50s/early 60s. It will be rather amazing if Outlander makes it this far — and this isn't even the last book in the series!

Jet Packinski Touches a Hairless Rat, Rooster & Other Weird Stuff in the Fear Box | Vanity Fair - Vanity Fair

In this episode of Derek Does Stuff with a Friend, Derek Blasberg challenges Jet Packinski (Liza Koshy) to stick his hands in the Fear Box. Packinski touches a rooster, a hairless rat, and some other weird stuff. His reactions are priceless.

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Jet Packinski Touches a Hairless Rat, Rooster & Other Weird Stuff in the Fear Box | Vanity Fair

100 Notable Books of 2017 - New York Times

BEAUTIFUL ANIMALS. By Lawrence Osborne. (Hogarth, $25.) On a Greek island, two wealthy young women encounter a handsome Syrian refugee, whom they endeavor to help, with disastrous results.

THE BOOK OF JOAN. By Lidia Yuknavitch. (Harper/HarperCollins, $26.99.) In this brilliant novel, Earth, circa 2049, has been devastated by global warming and war.

A BOY IN WINTER. By Rachel Seiffert. (Pantheon, $25.95.) Seiffert’s intricate novel probes the bonds and betrayals in a Ukrainian town as it succumbs to Hitler.

THE CHANGELING. By Victor LaValle. (Spiegel & Grau, $28.) LaValle’s novel, about Apollo Kagwa, a used-book dealer, blends social criticism with horror, while remaining steadfastly literary.

CHRISTMAS DAYS: 12 Stories and 12 Feasts for 12 Days. By Jeanette Winterson. (Grove, $24.) A gift book from the British novelist, containing otherworldly and wickedly funny stories.

DANCE OF THE JAKARANDA. By Peter Kimani. (Akashic, paper, $15.95.) This funny, perceptive and ambitious work of historical fiction by a Kenyan poet and novelist explores his country’s colonial past.

THE DARK FLOOD RISES. By Margaret Drabble. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26.) This masterly novel follows its 70-something heroine on a road trip through England.

THE DINNER PARTY: And Other Stories. By Joshua Ferris. (Little, Brown, $26.) Anxiety, self-consciousness and humiliation are the default inner states of the characters in these 11 stories.

THE ESSEX SERPENT. By Sarah Perry. (Custom House/Morrow, $26.99.) This novel’s densely woven plot involves an independent-minded widow and the possible haunting presence of a giant serpent.

EXIT WEST. By Mohsin Hamid. (Riverhead, $26.) The new novel by the author of “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” and “How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia” mixes global unrest with a bit of the fantastic.

FAST. By Jorie Graham. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $25.99.) Graham created these poems against a backdrop of personal and political trauma — her parents are dying, she is undergoing cancer treatment, the nation is mired in war and ecological crisis.

FIVE-CARAT SOUL. By James McBride. (Riverhead, $27.) In his delightful first story collection, the author of the National Book Award-winning novel “The Good Lord Bird” continues to explore race, masculinity, music and history.

FOREST DARK. By Nicole Krauss. (Harper/HarperCollins, $27.99.) Tracing the lives of two Americans in Israel, this restless novel explores the mysteries of disconnection and the divided self.

4 3 2 1. By Paul Auster. (Holt, $32.50.) Auster’s book is an epic bildungsroman that presents the reader with four versions of the formative years of a Jewish boy born in Newark in 1947.

FRESH COMPLAINT: Stories. By Jeffrey Eugenides. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27.) Eugenides’s expert debut collection of short stories is his first book since “The Marriage Plot” in 2011.

FUTURE HOME OF THE LIVING GOD. By Louise Erdrich. (HarperCollins, $28.99.) What if human beings are neither inevitable nor ultimate? That’s the premise of Erdrich’s fascinating new novel.

GIVING GODHEAD. By Dylan Krieger. (Delete, paper, $17.99.) Seamlessly mixing the religious with the obscene, Krieger’s poetry is inventive and powerful.

HISTORY OF WOLVES. By Emily Fridlund. (Atlantic Monthly, $25.) A slow-motion tragedy unfolds in Minnesota’s north woods in Fridlund’s disturbing debut.

HOME FIRE. By Kamila Shamsie. (Riverhead, $26.) A bold retelling of Sophocles’ “Antigone” that follows the lives of three British siblings of Pakistani descent.

HOMESICK FOR ANOTHER WORLD. By Ottessa Moshfegh. (Penguin Press, $26.) The insightful stories in this dark debut collection are about “loneliness, desire, hope and self-awareness.”

A HORSE WALKS INTO A BAR. By David Grossman. Translated by Jessica Cohen. (Knopf, $29.95.) Grossman’s magnificently funny, sucker-punch-tragic novel about a tormented stand-up comedian combines comic dexterity with Portnoyish detail.

Olimpia Zagnoli

THE IDIOT. By Elif Batuman. (Penguin Press, $27.) An innocent, language-intoxicated teenager, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, arrives at Harvard in the ’90s to pursue love and (especially) literature in Batuman’s hefty, gorgeous digressive slab of a novel.

ILL WILL. By Dan Chaon. (Ballantine, $28.) Chaon’s dark, disturbing literary thriller encompasses drug addiction, accusations of satanic abuse and a self-deluding Midwestern psychologist.

A KIND OF FREEDOM. By Margaret Wilkerson Sexton. (Counterpoint, $26.) This assured first novel shines an unflinching, compassionate light on three generations of a black family in New Orleans.

LESS. By Andrew Sean Greer. (Lee Boudreaux/Little, Brown, $26.) On the eve of his 50th birthday and a former lover’s wedding, a mediocre novelist takes refuge in literary invitations that enable him to travel around the world.

LINCOLN IN THE BARDO. By George Saunders. (Random House, $28.) In this Man Booker Prize-winning first novel by a master of the short story, Abraham Lincoln visits the grave of his son Willie in 1862, and is surrounded by ghosts in purgatory.

MANHATTAN BEACH. By Jennifer Egan. (Scribner, $28.) Egan’s engaging novel tells overlapping stories, but is most fundamentally about a young woman who works at the Brooklyn Naval Yard during World War II.

MRS. OSMOND. By John Banville. (Knopf, $27.95.) Banville’s sequel to Henry James’s “Portrait of a Lady” follows Isabel Archer back to Rome and the possible end of her marriage.

MY ABSOLUTE DARLING. By Gabriel Tallent. (Riverhead, $27.) The heroine of this debut novel is Turtle, a 14-year-old who grows up feral in the forests and hills of Northern California.

NEW PEOPLE. By Danzy Senna. (Riverhead, $26.) Senna’s sinister and charming novel, about a married couple who are both biracial, riffs on themes she’s made her own — about what happens when races and cultures mingle in the home, and under the skin.

THE NINTH HOUR. By Alice McDermott. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26.) In McDermott’s novel, the cause of a young Irish widow and her daughter is taken up by the nuns of a Brooklyn convent.

PACHINKO. By Min Jin Lee. (Grand Central, $27.) This stunning novel chronicling four generations of an ethnic Korean family in Japan is about outsiders and much more.

THE POWER. By Naomi Alderman. (Little, Brown, $26.) In this fierce and unsettling novel, the ability to generate a dangerous electrical force from their bodies lets women take control, resulting in a vast, systemic upheaval of gender dynamics across the globe.

THE REFUGEES. By Viet Thanh Nguyen. (Grove, $25.) This superb collection of stories concerns men and women displaced from wartime Saigon and (mostly) settled in California.

SELECTION DAY. By Aravind Adiga. (Scribner, $26.) Adiga’s third novel (he won the Booker Prize in 2008 for “The White Tiger”) is a sharp look at modern India. It revolves around two teenage brothers groomed by their father to be cricket stars.

A SEPARATION. By Katie Kitamura. (Riverhead, $25.) Deceptions pile on deceptions in this coolly unsettling postmodern mystery, in which a British woman travels to a Greek fishing village to search for her estranged husband, who has disappeared.

SING, UNBURIED, SING. By Jesmyn Ward. (Scribner, $26.) Ward’s novel, which won the National Book Award, combines aspects of the American road novel and the ghost story with an exploration of the long aftershocks of a hurricane.

SIX FOUR. By Hideo Yokoyama. Translated by Jonathan Lloyd-Davies. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $28.) A former criminal investigator, now working in police media relations, faces angry reporters, the nagging 14-year-old case of a kidnapped girl, and his own teenage daughter’s disappearance.

STAY WITH ME. By Ayobami Adebayo. (Knopf, $25.95.) This debut novel is a portrait of a marriage in Nigeria beginning in the politically tumultous 1980s.

THE STONE SKY: The Broken Earth: Book Three. By N.K. Jemisin. (Orbit, paper, $16.99.) Jemisin won a Hugo Award for each of the first two novels in her Broken Earth trilogy. In the extraordinary conclusion, a mother and daughter do geologic battle for the fate of the earth.

TIES. By Domenico Starnone. Translated by Jhumpa Lahiri. (Europa, paper, $16.) The husband of the woman who has been identified as Elena Ferrante offers a powerful novel about a fraying marriage.

TRANSIT. By Rachel Cusk. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26.) In the second novel of a planned trilogy, Cusk continues the story of Faye, a writer and teacher who is recently divorced and semi-broke.

WAKING LIONS. By Ayelet Gundar-Goshen. Translated by Sondra Silverston. (Little, Brown, $26.) An Israeli doctor in the Negev accidentally hits an Eritrean immigrant, then drives off. The consequences are explored with insight and a thriller’s twists and turns.

WHEREAS. By Layli Long Soldier. (Graywolf, paper, $16.) Long Soldier, a member of the Oglala Sioux tribe, troubles our consideration of the language we use to carry our personal and national narratives in this moving debut poetry collection.

WHITE TEARS. By Hari Kunzru. (Knopf, $26.95.) This complex ghost story about racial privilege, cultural appropriation and the blues is written with Kunzru’s customary eloquence and skill.

WHO IS RICH? By Matthew Klam. Illustrated by John Cuneo. (Random House, $27.) The protagonist of this novel, a middle-aged illustrator, is a conflicted adulterer. Klam agilely balances an existentially tragic story line with morbid humor and self-assured prose.

Olimpia Zagnoli

Nonfiction

AGE OF ANGER: A History of the Present. By Pankaj Mishra. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27.) Mishra argues that broad swaths of the globe are reliving the traumas and violent dislocations that accompanied Europe’s transition to modernity in the 18th and 19th centuries.

AMERICAN FIRE: Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land. By Monica Hesse. (Liveright, $26.95.) Hesse tells the story of 67 fires set in Virginia during a five-month arson spree, beginning in 2012, and the mystery of why a local auto mechanic was behind them.

ANIMALS STRIKE CURIOUS POSES: Essays. By Elena Passarello. (Sarabande, $19.95.) Passarello presents biographies of famous animals, from an ancient mummified mammoth to Mr. Ed and Cecil the Lion.

THE BLOOD OF EMMETT TILL. By Timothy B. Tyson. (Simon & Schuster, $27.) Tyson’s absorbing retelling of the events leading up to the horrific lynching in 1955 includes an admission from Till’s accuser that some of her testimony was false.

BORN A CRIME: Stories From a South African Childhood. By Trevor Noah. (Spiegel & Grau, $28.) The host of “The Daily Show” writes about growing up in South Africa under apartheid, and about the country’s rocky transition into the post-apartheid era in the 1990s.

BUNK: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News. By Kevin Young. (Graywolf, $30.) Young’s enthralling and essential history is both exhaustive and unapologetically subjective — not to mention timely. Again and again, he plumbs the undercurrents of a hoax to discover the fearfulness and racism that often lurk inside.

CHURCHILL AND ORWELL: The Fight for Freedom. By Thomas E. Ricks. (Penguin Press, $28.) This enjoyable dual biography draws out the common causes of these 20th-century giants: two independent thinkers and opponents of totalitarianism whose influence remains pervasive today.

THE COLLECTED ESSAYS OF ELIZABETH HARDWICK. Selected and with an introduction by Darryl Pinckney. (New York Review Books, $19.95.) The landmark American critic surveys everything from the 1968 Democratic convention to the literature of New York City.

A COLONY IN A NATION. By Chris Hayes. (Norton, $26.95.) Hayes paints a portrait of two “distinct regimes” in America — one for whites, which he calls the Nation; the other for blacks, which he calls the Colony.

THE COLOR OF LAW: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. By Richard Rothstein. (Liveright, $27.95.) Going back to the late 19th century, the author uncovers a policy of de jure segregation in virtually every presidential administration.

THE CRISIS OF THE MIDDLE-CLASS CONSTITUTION: Why Economic Inequality Threatens Our Republic. By Ganesh Sitaraman. (Knopf, $28.) Sitaraman argues that the Constitution is premised on the existence of a thriving middle class, and that the current explosion of inequality will destroy it.

THE DAWN WATCH: Joseph Conrad in a Global World. By Maya Jasanoff. (Penguin Press, $30.) Conrad explored the frontiers of a globalized world at the turn of the last century. Jasanoff uses Conrad’s novels and his biography to tell the history of that moment, one that mirrors our own.

THE DEATH AND LIFE OF THE GREAT LAKES. By Dan Egan. (Norton, $27.95.) Climate change, population growth and invasive species are destabilizing the Great Lakes’ wobbly ecosystem, but Egan provides a taut and cautiously hopeful narrative.

DESTINED FOR WAR: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? By Graham Allison. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $28.) Allison offers erudite historical case studies that illuminate the pressure toward military confrontation when a rising power challenges a dominant one.

DEVIL’S BARGAIN: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency. By Joshua Green. (Penguin Press, $27.) Green’s book is a deeply reported and compulsively readable account of this fateful political partnership.

THE EVANGELICALS: The Struggle to Shape America. By Frances FitzGerald. (Simon & Schuster, $35.) FitzGerald’s fair-minded history focuses on the doctrinal and political issues that have concerned white conservative Protestants since they abandoned their traditional separation from the world and merged with the Republican Party.

THE EVOLUTION OF BEAUTY: How Darwin’s Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World — and Us. By Richard O. Prum. (Doubleday, $30.) A mild-mannered ornithologist and expert on the evolution of feathers makes an impassioned case for the importance of Darwin’s second theory as his most radical and feminist.

FASTING AND FEASTING: The Life of Visionary Food Writer Patience Gray. By Adam Federman. (Chelsea Green, $25.) Federman’s biography is the first of this cult food writer.

FLÂNEUSE: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London. By Lauren Elkin. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27.) Elkin joins memoir and biographies of walking women like Woolf and Sand.

FRIENDS DIVIDED: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. By Gordon S. Wood. (Penguin Press, $35.) Wood traces the long, fraught ties between the second and third presidents, and sides almost reluctantly with Jefferson in their philosophical smack-down.

THE FUTURE IS HISTORY: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia. By Masha Gessen. (Riverhead, $28.) Gessen, a longtime critic of Vladimir Putin, tells the story of modern Russia through the eyes of seven individuals who found that politics was a force none of them could escape; winner of the National Book Award.

GENERATION REVOLUTION: On the Front Line Between Tradition and Change in the Middle East. By Rachel Aspden. (Other Press, $24.95.) What happened to Egypt’s revolution? This excellent social history argues that despite their politics, young Egyptians did not reject the conservative mores of family and religion.

THE GLASS UNIVERSE: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars. By Dava Sobel. (Viking, $30.) This book, about the women “computers” whose calculations helped shape observational astronomy, is a highly engaging group portrait.

GRANT. By Ron Chernow. (Penguin Press, $40.) Chernow gives us a Grant for our time, recounting not only the victories of the general but also the challenges of a president who fought against the K.K.K.

GREATER GOTHAM: A History of New York City From 1898 to 1919. By Mike Wallace. (Oxford, $45.) A vibrant, detailed chronicle of the 20 years that made New York City the place we know today.

THE GULF: The Making of an American Sea. By Jack E. Davis. (Liveright, $29.95.) Davis’s sweeping history of the Gulf of Mexico takes into account colorful nature, idiosyncratic human characters and economic development.

HAMLET GLOBE TO GLOBE: Two Years, 190,000 Miles, 197 Countries, One Play. By Dominic Dromgoole. (Grove, $27.) To celebrate the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth, London’s Globe Theater performed “Hamlet” all around the world. Dromgoole’s witty account offers insight about the play and its enduring appeal.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU: A Life. By Laura Dassow Walls. (University of Chicago, $35.) This new life of Thoreau, in time for his 200th birthday, paints a moving portrait of a brilliant, complex man.

THE HOUSE OF GOVERNMENT: A Saga of the Russian Revolution. By Yuri Slezkine. (Princeton University, $39.95.) This history describes the lives of Bolsheviks who were swallowed up by their own cause.

Olimpia Zagnoli

THE INVENTION OF ANGELA CARTER: A Biography. By Edmund Gordon. (Oxford University, $35.) This terrific book is the first full-length biography of Carter, whose novels were fantastical, feminist and sexy.

JANESVILLE: An American Story. By Amy Goldstein. (Simon & Schuster, $27.) Goldstein writes about the impact on the small Wisconsin factory city of the title when General Motors closes a plant there.

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. By David Grann. (Doubleday, $28.95.) In the 1920s, the Osage Indians had been driven onto land in Oklahoma that sat on top of immense oil deposits. The oil made the Osage rich, and then members of the nation started turning up murdered.

KRAZY: George Herriman, a Life in Black and White. By Michael Tisserand. (Harper/HarperCollins, $35.) Who was the man behind “Krazy Kat”? This fascinating biography and guide to the work of the cartoonist, who passed for white, tells the full story.

LENIN: The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror. By Victor Sebestyen. (Pantheon, $35.) Sebestyen has managed to produce a first-rate thriller by detailing the cynicism and murderous ambition of the founder of the Soviet Union.

LETTERMAN: The Last Giant of Late Night. By Jason Zinoman. (Harper/HarperCollins, $28.99.) Zinoman’s lively book does impressive triple duty as an acute portrait of stardom, an insightful chronicle of three rambunctious decades of pop-culture evolution, and a very brainy fan’s notes.

LOCKING UP OUR OWN: Crime and Punishment in Black America. By James Forman Jr. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27.) A masterly account of how a generation of black elected officials wrestled with crises of violence and drug use by unleashing the brutal power of the criminal justice system on their constituents.

LOOKING FOR “THE STRANGER”: Albert Camus and the Life of a Literary Classic. By Alice Kaplan. (University of Chicago, $26.) Impressive research illuminates the context and history of Camus’s classic novel.

THE LOST CITY OF THE MONKEY GOD: A True Story. By Douglas Preston. (Grand Central, $28.) The novelist joins a rugged expedition in search of pre-Columbian ruins in the Honduran rain forest.

NOMADLAND: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century. By Jessica Bruder. (Norton, $26.95.) For three years, Bruder traveled and worked alongside “workampers,” older people, casualties of the Great Recession, who drive around the United States looking for seasonal work.

NOTES ON A FOREIGN COUNTRY: An American Abroad in a Post-American World. By Suzy Hansen. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26.) Hansen, who moved to Istanbul after 9/11, grapples with her country’s violent role in the world.

PRAIRIE FIRES: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder. By Caroline Fraser. (Metropolitan/Holt, $35.) This thoroughly researched biography of the “Little House” author perceptively captures Wilder’s extraordinary life and legacy.

PRIESTDADDY: A Memoir. By Patricia Lockwood. (Riverhead, $27.) The poet’s memoir is fueled by a great character: her father, a rare married Catholic priest, a big bear of a man fond of guns, cream liqueurs and pork rinds.

THE SONGS WE KNOW BEST: John Ashbery’s Early Life. By Karin Roffman. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $30.) This first full-fledged biography of the poet is full of rich and fascinating detail.

TENEMENTS, TOWERS & TRASH: An Unconventional Illustrated History of New York City. By Julia Wertz. (Black Dog & Leventhal, $29.99.) Wertz has become a cult favorite for her graphic memoirs. Her new book is a departure, focusing on her great love, New York.

TO SIRI WITH LOVE: A Mother, Her Autistic Son, and the Kindness of Machines. By Judith Newman. (Harper/HarperCollins, $26.99.) Newman’s tender, boisterous memoir strips the usual zone of privacy to edge into the world her autistic son occupies.

THE UNDOING PROJECT: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds. By Michael Lewis. (Norton, $28.95.) Lewis profiles the enchanted collaboration between Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, whose groundbreaking work proved just how unreliable our intuition could be.

WE WERE EIGHT YEARS IN POWER: An American Tragedy. By Ta-Nehisi Coates. (One World, $28.) A selection of Coates’s most influential pieces about race in America from The Atlantic, with subjects including Barack and Michelle Obama, Donald J. Trump, reparations and mass incarceration.

WHAT HAPPENED. By Hillary Rodham Clinton. (Simon & Schuster, $30.) Clinton tells the story of what it was like to run for president of the United States as the first female nominee of a major party.

WORLD WITHOUT MIND: The Existential Threat of Big Tech. By Franklin Foer. (Penguin Press, $27.) Foer dons the heavy mantle of cyber-skeptic with this persuasive brief against the big four tech giants who he believes pose a threat to the individual and society.

YOU SAY TO BRICK: The Life of Louis Kahn. By Wendy Lesser. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $30.) This biography covers the best-known works of the architect Louis Kahn as well as his complicated personal life.

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Countertop Face-Off: Can the Instant Pot Replace All Those Other Appliances? - ConsumerReports.org

Time-saving kitchen appliances appeal no matter where you shop, which is why you’ll see the Instant Pot for sale everywhere from Target to Williams-Sonoma. The Instant Pot DUO60 7-in-1, $100, is Amazon’s top-selling multi-cooker, and its bragging rights don’t stop there.

The manufacturer claims this version of the Instant Pot replaces seven kitchen appliances—as in buy this one device, and you’ll no longer need a pressure cooker, slow cooker, rice cooker, steamer, yogurt maker, warmer, and whatever you use to sauté. (The Duo Plus 9-in-1 and Ultra 10-in-1 versions of the Instant Pot are designed to combine nine and 10 functions, respectively.)

Consumer Reports tested the seven-function Instant Pot and found that it lives up to its promise of cooking healthy food fast. Food didn’t necessarily taste better, but the Instant Pot cooks faster than a stovetop and offers hands-off cooking that frees you to do other things.

So that got us thinking. Can the Instant Pot really replace seven countertop appliances? Our testers headed back to our lab kitchen to pit each of the Instant Pot’s functions against the device it’s claimed to replace.

Selasa, 28 November 2017

“Kelly Has Clipped his Wings”: Jared Kushner's Horizons Are Collapsing within the West Wing - Vanity Fair

Kushner and Kelly walk along the South Lawn on August 3, 2017.

By Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images.

When Donald Trump appointed John Kelly as chief of staff in July, the four-star Marine general arrived with a mandate to bring order to a freewheeling West Wing. Gone are the days of staffers waltzing into the Oval Office to lobby the president on policy or supply him with gossip. Trump still tweets, of course, but for the most part Kelly’s cleanup has been successful, according to interviews with a half dozen Trump advisers, current and former West Wing officials, and Republicans close to the administration. The aide who has ceded the most influence in the Kelly era, these people said, is Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. “Kelly has clipped his wings,” one high-level Republican in frequent contact with the White House told me.

It’s perhaps hard to remember now, but it wasn’t long ago when Trump handed Kushner a comically broad portfolio that included plans to reinvent government, reform the V.A., end the opioid epidemic, run point on China, and solve Middle East peace. But since his appointment, according to sources, Kelly has tried to shrink Kushner’s responsibilities to focus primarily on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And even that brief appears to be creating tensions between Kushner and Kelly. According to two people close to the White House, Kelly was said to be displeased with the result of Kushner’s trip to Saudi Arabia last month because it took place just days before 32-year-old Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman arrested 11 Saudi royals, including billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. The Washington Post reported that Kushner and M.B.S., as the prince is known, stayed up till nearly 4 a.m. “planning strategy,” which left Kelly to deal with the impression that the administration had advance knowledge of the purge and even helped orchestrate it, sources told me. (Asked about this, Sarah Huckabee Sanders responded, in part: “Chief Kelly and Jared had a good laugh about this inquiry as nothing in it is true.”)

Where this all leaves Kushner in Trump’s ever-changing orbit is a topic that’s being discussed by Republicans close to the White House. During Kelly’s review of West Wing operations over the summer, the chief of staff sought to downsize Kushner’s portfolio, two sources said. In the early days of the administration, sometimes with the help of a small cadre of Ivy League whiz kids who staff his Office of American Innovation, Kushner dreamed up scores of business “councils” that would advise the White House. “The councils are gone,” one West Wing official told me. With some of their purview being whittled away, “they seem lost,” the official added.

Jared Kushner and Jon Kelly attend a meeting with Trump on cyber security on January 31, 2017.

Kushner and Kelly attend a meeting with Trump on cyber security on January 31, 2017.

By Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

As Kushner’s Russia troubles mount—last Friday the Senate disclosed that he had not turned over e-mails about WikiLeaks, a claim his attorney, Abbe Lowell, denied—insiders are again speculating, as my colleague Emily Jane Fox reported last month, about how long Kushner and Ivanka Trump will remain in Washington. Despite Kushner’s efforts to project confidence about Robert Mueller’s probe, he expressed worry after the indictments of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates about how far the investigation could go. “Do you think they’ll get the president?” Kushner asked a friend, according to a person briefed on the conversation.

According to two Republicans who have spoken with Trump, the president has also been frustrated with Kushner’s political advice, including his encouragement to back losing Alabama G.O.P. candidate Luther Strange and to fire F.B.I. Director James Comey, which Kushner denies. (For what it’s worth, Kushner’s choice of Strange prevented Trump from the embarrassment of inadvertently supporting Roy Moore.) Trump, according to three people who’ve spoken to him, has advocated for Jared and Ivanka to return to New York in part because they are being damaged by negative press. “He keeps pressuring them to go,” one source close to Kushner told me. But as bad as the Russia investigation may be, it’s not clear a New York homecoming would be much better for Kushner, given that his family’s debt-ridden office tower at 666 Fifth Avenue could be headed for bankruptcy.

This article has been updated to include a comment from the White House.

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Most Everything You Learned About Thanksgiving Is Wrong - New York Times

Beyond that, claiming it was the “first Thanksgiving” isn’t quite right either as both Native American and European societies had been holding festivals to celebrate successful harvests for centuries, Mr. Loewen said.

A prevalent opposing viewpoint is that the first Thanksgiving stemmed from the massacre of Pequot people in 1637, a culmination of the Pequot War. While it is true that a day of thanksgiving was noted in the Massachusetts Bay and the Plymouth colonies afterward, it is not accurate to say it was the basis for our modern Thanksgiving, Ms. Sheehan said.

Plymouth Rock in Pilgrim Memorial State Park in Plymouth, Mass. The rock, known as the “landing place of the Pilgrims,” was not mentioned in the Pilgrims’ original writings. Instead, it is a part of the region’s oral history. Erik Jacobs for The New York Times

And Plymouth, Mr. Loewen noted, was already a village with clear fields and a spring when the Pilgrims found it. “A lovely place to settle,” he said. “Why was it available? Because every single native person who had been living there was a corpse.” Plagues had wiped them out.

It wasn’t just about religious freedom.

It’s been taught that the Pilgrims came because they were seeking religious freedom, but that’s not entirely true, Mr. Loewen said.

The Pilgrims had religious freedom in Holland, where they first arrived in the early 17th century. Like those who settled Jamestown, Va., in 1607, the Pilgrims came to North America to make money, Mr. Loewen said.

“They were also coming here in order to establish a religious theocracy, which they did,” he said. “That’s not exactly the same as coming here for religious freedom. It’s kind of coming here against religious freedom.”

Also, the Pilgrims never called themselves Pilgrims. They were separatists, Mr. Loewen said. The term Pilgrims didn’t surface until around 1880.

There’s no evidence that native people were invited.

Possibly the most common misconception is that the Pilgrims extended an invitation to the Native Americans for helping them reap the harvest. The truth of how they all ended up feasting together is unknown.

“The English-written record does not mention an invitation, and Wampanoag oral tradition does not seem to reach back to this event,” Ms. Sheehan said. But there are reasons the Wampanoag leader could have been there, she said, adding: “His people had been planting on the other side of the brook from the colony. Another possibility is that after his harvest was gathered, he was making diplomatic calls.”

The Thanksgiving Day parade in Plymouth, Mass., in 2012. Charlie Mahoney for The New York Times

It is true that the celebration was an exceptional cross-cultural moment, with food, games and prayer.

The deadly conflicts that came after, though, created an undercurrent that is glossed over, Mr. Loewen said. Still, “we might as well take shards of fairness and idealism and so on whenever we find them in our past and recognize that and give credit to them,” he said.

The role of Squanto is complicated.

Tisquantum, known as Squanto, did play a large role in helping the Pilgrims, as American children are taught. His people, the Patuxet, a band of the Wampanoag tribe, had lived on the site where the Pilgrims settled. When they arrived, he became a translator for them in diplomacy and trade with other native people, and showed them the most effective method for planting corn and the best locations to fish, Ms. Sheehan said.

That’s usually where the lesson ends, but that’s just a fraction of his story.

He was captured by the English in 1614 and later sold into slavery in Spain. He spent several years in England, where he learned English. He returned to New England in 1619, only to find his entire Patuxet tribe dead from smallpox. He met the Pilgrims in March 1621.

There was no turkey or pie.

There was no mention of turkey being at the 1621 bounty, and there was definitely no pie. Settlers lacked butter and wheat flour for a crust, and they had no oven for baking. What is known is that the Pilgrims harvested crops and that the Wampanoag brought five deer. If fowl graced the table, it was probably duck or goose.

It is unlikely that turkey was at the 1621 bounty, but other fowl, such as duck, may have been. Melina Hammer for The New York Times

The menu may have also included cornmeal, pumpkin, succotash and cranberries. There were no sweet potatoes in North America at the time.

Contrary to popular depictions, there were about 90 native people in attendance, almost double the number of Pilgrims by some accounts.

Correction: November 21, 2017

An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of a living history museum in Plymouth, Mass. It is Plimoth Plantation, not Plimouth.

Dramatic video shows North Korean soldier's escape across border - CNN

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