New York Times reporters and editors are highlighting great stories from around the web. You can receive What We’re Reading by email, and let us know how you like it at wwr@nytimes.com.
Celebrate
From Huffington Post: Like the author of this piece, I grew up with “The Snowy Day” by Ezra Jack Keats, a landmark children’s book. The article’s writer describes the book as “a saving grace that pushed past the hard edges of a world that didn’t always accept the color of my skin.” The main character, a black kid in a hoodie named Peter, is now on holiday-themed U.S. postage stamps, true tidings of comfort and joy. — Lynda Richardson, senior staff editor, Travel
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On Liberty
From The Baltimore Sun: Frederick Douglass famously said, “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” We often forget that adult prisoners were once youths who were likely the failed and forgotten children of the public school system. This piece, by the former U.S. secretary of education John King, reminded me that learning is freedom. — Erica Green, reporter, education policy
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Returns
From The New York Times: Who will regret the passage of the tax reform bill? Will voters like the bill more once they see more money in their paychecks? Writers on the right, left and center argue about what the effects of the bill will be on electoral outcomes in 2018 and beyond. — Anna Dubenko, senior digital strategist
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Ever After
From The Guardian: I love hearing from writers about what books shaped them creatively and intellectually, and this roundup asks an all-star cast of women writers — including Margaret Atwood, Mary Beard, Naomi Klein, Kamila Shamsie and Jeanette Winterson — to name the books that turned them into feminists. Some you would expect, like Simone de Beauvoir’s "The Second Sex,"but some are surprising. Grimms’ Fairy Tales? (Atwood!) — Alexandra Alter, reporter, publishing
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By Degrees
From Catapult: “Show don’t tell,” a good editor will tell you. This is a beautiful, chilling, connective account of what it is to be female in a culture in which women are objectified and degraded, their stories systematically doubted. This writer tells the story of her aunt, who was murdered by her husband not a year after a jury found him not guilty of spousal rape. And she confronts how the smaller insults — the guy in the bar who starts touching you, the man on the street who shouts at you, the boss who makes you think it’s your sex appeal not your talent — are connected to the big crimes. I don’t ever say this, but just read it. — Jessica Bennett, gender editor
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Penalty Play
From Sports Illustrated: The Carolina Panthers owner, Jerry Richardson, was a hero in Charlotte for bringing pro football to town. But this investigative piece by Jon Wertheim and Viv Bernstein adds a new chapter to weird male behavior. The 81-year-old Richardson was called “Mister” by employees (in the Deep South, no less), known for his commentary on how women’s jeans fit, insistent on fastening the seatbelt for female passengers (hands brushing their breast as he did so) and on and on. “You look back and it’s wackadoo,” says one former Carolina employee. Indeed. — Tom Jolly, associate masthead editor
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The Pattern
From Quartz: There’s a lot of talk these days about the way inexpensive production in China has hurt American fashion, and how we have to fight for the garment district and so on, but this story, about the collapse of the textile industry in the Democratic Republic of Congo, makes very clear this is a global phenomenon. Tracing the history of local cloth production over the last half century, it is a powerful and touching examination of the end of an artisan form. — Vanessa Friedman, fashion director
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Ghost Library
From Signature: A brief but intriguing essay about lost books — some historical, some modern — that have apparently vanished from the earth, whether through natural disaster or human censorship. Why does this loss seem so much sadder than if they never existed at all, the writer wonders, and why are novelists so often drawn to write about the quest for lost books? — Kathleen A. Flynn, staff editor, Upshot
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What to Do When
From Motherboard: It’s a fact of modern life. You’re going to get hacked, and your information is going to fall into the hands of nefarious actors. (In all likelihood, it has already happened many times over.) But all hope is not lost! This easy-to-follow guide will walk you through some simple, basic steps you can take to protect yourself online. — Tim Herrera, Smarter Living editor
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More, More, More
From Chartbeat: What We’re Reading is off next week, but we didn’t want to leave you without plenty of great reads. This list is the 100 stories that got the most engagement this year, as compiled by the analytics company Chartbeat (full disclosure: The Times is a client). Proud to see so many fine pieces from my Times colleagues here, and delighted that so much of the other extraordinary work has been highlighted in this newsletter. Read on, and see you in 2018. Happy New Year! — Andrea Kannapell, editor, What We’re Reading
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