A thing about writing a book about literary agents is that everyone that you've ever met (and many people that you haven't), will ask you how to get one.

Next up in On Our Nightstands, Print/Screen section editor Leah Price shares that she’s reading “Middlemen: Literary Agents and the Making of American Fiction” by @lbmcgrath.bsky.social, from @princetonupress.bsky.social.

On Our Nightstands: July 2026 - Public Books

At “Public Books,” our editorial staff and contributors are hard at work to provide readers with thought-provoking articles. But when the workday is done, what is actually on our nightstands? Here we…

publicbooks.org

In chapter 4 of Middlemen now. Going slowly because it is mostly my reading while bottle feeding the six-month-old. Really powerful mix of archival work, sociological method, zooming in for literary analysis of canonical examples. Quite inspiring. Also it’s very funny. Hard to do in academic work!!

August is here, & with it my 287th #ScholarSunday thread of great public scholarly writing & work, podcast episodes, new & forthcoming books from the past week. Add more below, please share as widely as possible, & enjoy, all! 🗃️ + blackwhiteandread.com/scholarsunda...

#ScholarSunday Thread 287 (8/2/26) – Black and White and Read All Over

August is here, & with it my 287th #ScholarSunday thread of great public scholarly writing & work, podcast episodes, new & forthcoming books from the past week. Add more below, please share as widely ...

blackwhiteandread.com

It is good for the culture to have widely popular, capably made, aspirational middlebrow artworks.

Anna Kornbluh@annakornbluh.bsky.social · 5d ago

for a few shining weeks, we have culture! lovers, haters, nerds, auteurs, popcorners, stunt guys all communing, summer action blockbuster meets humanist canon, art making ideas making more ideas, this is the middle ground

I am sincerely happy for everyone involved in all of this. God bless them, it’s like twitter 2017. If this be our swan song, so be it.

Anna Kornbluh@annakornbluh.bsky.social · 5d ago

medium specificity, close reading and hot take reading, classicist on classicist friction, "all of civilization would collapse in punishment" keep it up! slate.com/culture/2026...

Terry Belanger would begin his Rare Book School classes by physically destroying/dismantling a (well-chosen) old book. This is NOT the same as what Anthropic is doing! But there is a popular culture of preciousness around books that is belied by the material realities of their circumstances. +

Daniel Bellingradt@dbellingradt.bsky.social · 7d ago

AI companies scanning and shredding old and rare books is bad, but you should be aware that shredding new, old, and used books is an established practice of selling and marketing books. In fact, hundreds of millions of books are shredded every year discretly, and legally, in Europe alone. #booksky

I am absolutely gobsmacked. And trying not to pass out from hyperventilating. Thank you @barackobama.bsky.social — you just made my secret dream for DATA EMPIRE, spoken aloud to NO ONE, come true.

Barack Obama@barackobama.bsky.social · 7d ago

It’s that time of year again: here are some of the books I’ve enjoyed this summer. If you’ve read any good ones, let me know!

👨‍⚖️ TL;DR: AI doesn't need to write high-quality books for non-AI book writers to get hurt. Cheap books at massive volume are enough and they've cut what the average human-written book earns in most genres and pushed human titles down the bestseller ranks. (10/n)

If all nonfiction got fact-checked, most books and basically all the industry’s top sellers would disappear from traditional publishing 👍

*whispers* you know we can do this cultural debate about art thing all the time, right? Websites and news organizations used to have culture critics on staff whose entire job was writing about books, movies, and TV. People read them and then discussed them. We have the technology to do this again.

One of the most common misconceptions I find myself debunking for academics that a *legal read* is not the same thing as a fact check. (And peer review is neither of those things.)

Alex Shephard@alexshephard.bsky.social · last wk.

this post suggests there is "no good reason" for publishers not to fact check serious works of nonfiction, even though doing so would probably cause the nonfiction publishing industry to collapse welovehistory.substack.com/p/a-historia...

Ok now that I’m done live posting on Data Empire next up is Middlemen by @lbmcgrath.bsky.social. Been looking forward to this for a while.

Nothing is more pleasing to me than when my crackpot ideas actually come to fruition and become brilliant plans. Can’t say more right now, but Literary Philly is shaping up to be the coolest English class ever.

So this arrived today, just in time for the summer break… Very excited to finally read this book. Looking forward to Martinis in Germany 😊 @lbmcgrath.bsky.social

Listen, I am an Amtrak enthusiast. Yet, I once again find myself on a train in Germany, wondering for the umpteenth time why we can’t have nice things.

One of my favorite games while I waited for publication was imagining which celebrities should narrate which chapter/agent in my book. 🧵

Brandon Walsh@walshbr.bsky.social · 3w ago

Your posts making me so jealous as I wait for the audiobook version I might have to make time for PRINT.

You heard it here: MIDDLEMEN is a danger to academic administrators everywhere.

Roopika Risam@roopikarisam.bsky.social · 3w ago

I am completely fascinated by Laura’s assessments of the function of the short story in the literary marketplace 🤯 This is also such an enjoyable read that I am conspicuously avoiding all the chair emails piling up in my inbox so I can keep reading.

How I’m spending my morning! @lbmcgrath.bsky.social

Blown away by the fact that Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies has to date sold over 15 MILLION copies (via @lbmcgrath.bsky.social’s book Middlemen). Actually I think I have a signed one somewhere, from a Bookexpo back in the day!

Next week, I’ll be giving a keynote at the Homegrounds conference at Universität Heidelberg (hosted by @guenterleypoldt.bsky.social and @vlopezliendo.bsky.social). I’ll be speaking at the Heidelberg Center for American Studies at 18.15 on 16 July (Thurs). Come say hello!

We are not meant to play favorites, ofc, but this might be my most beloved chapter. Love letters abound.

Martin Shaw@thebooksdesk.bsky.social · last mo.

“They make decisions because of something like love”. That’s been me… - many a time! On legendary agent Lynn Nesbit in @lbmcgrath.bsky.social’s fantastic book on literary agenting in the US, Middlemen

“They make decisions because of something like love”. That’s been me… - many a time! On legendary agent Lynn Nesbit in @lbmcgrath.bsky.social’s fantastic book on literary agenting in the US, Middlemen

In my hands, @lbmcgrath.bsky.social’s Middlemen…and there’s even pictures! e.g. The Dial Press’s “New Novelists Plan” from 1954…

@nplusonemag.com veteran World Cup correspondent Kathryn Winner is BACK! And her first dispatches from the field, the FIFA Fan Festival™, and the family reunion are here. As far as I’m concerned, when it comes to sports reporting, this is what peak performance looks like!

No Place for Selfish Behavior | Kathryn Winner

The Scottish national team, playing in the World Cup for the first time in twenty-eight years, is based out of Boston for the group stage. Fifty thousand Scots traveled here for the tournament, equal ...

nplusonemag.com

Listen: you teach ERASURE, I teach ERASURE. It’s great in the classroom. but why, oh why, have we all been sleeping on THE WIFE???

You can now snap this baby up in the UK!

Princeton University Press@princetonupress.bsky.social · last mo.

A revealing account of how agents have shaped book publishing and the literary canon from the 1950s to today. @lbmcgrath.bsky.social's Middlemen is now available worldwide! Order yours: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

A revealing account of how agents have shaped book publishing and the literary canon from the 1950s to today. @lbmcgrath.bsky.social's Middlemen is now available worldwide! Order yours: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

Guys, it finally happened. Academia dot edu accurately identified something I wrote.

I spent a lot of last summer doing a deep dive on the business of Christian publishing and mainstream publication of Christian media, and it went nowhere. And this summer, book media is going crazy about Yesteryear and the new JD Vance book. Someone please, for the LOVE, interview me.