For a brief period in the 1940s and 1950s, mass market paperback books had covers with sultry women, shadowy detectives, and thrilling action, sold for a quarter at newsstands and drug stores across the country. Let me tell you the story about how lurid pulp covers democratized literacy, sparked a federal moral panic, and permanently…
As of mid-2026, there are roughly 70,000 AI companies. About half of all global venture capital funding is pouring into pure-play AI startups. The indications are good. Remember that phrase. It does not mean what you think it means. We’ll come back to that. Right now I want to tell you a Mark Twain story. That…
The Olympia Press was a notorious Parisian publishing house that used a legal loophole to mass-produce cheap, pseudonymous English erotica for tourists in the 1950s. Olympia Press was owned by Maurice Girodias, a chaotic businessman who had an eye for avant-garde masterpieces like Lolita but all too often took advantage of his authors. I’ll give you some background…
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Those are the opening lines of Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov’s dazzling literary masterpiece. Lolita was an international bestseller that reshaped modern fiction and established Nabokov as one of the twentieth century’s greatest novelists. There’s a great story about why the first edition was a cheap paperback…