Book Excerpts That Don't Suck

Defector Reads A Book

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This is Defector, a new sports blog and media company. We made this place together, we own it together, we run it together. Without access, without favor, without discretion, and without interference.

Defector

Grace Byron is a critic, reporter, and novelist based in Queens. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Bookforum, and elsewhere. Her debut novel Herculine is out now.

Grace Byron

Books

Can Men Stop Hating Women?

Charlotte Rosen

How Cops Consolidated So Much Power Over Local Governments

Tajja Isen

Arts And Culture

‘Famous Men’ And Ambitious Women

Neatly Arranged Scalpels Repetition Pattern on Purple Background Directly Above View.

‘New Skin’ Offers A Fresh Take On Body Horror

charismatic megafauna (they/them)

Sabrina Imbler

Interviews

Cat Fitzpatrick On Writing Transsexuals Into Iambic Pentameter

Joshua C. Kendall was born in New York City. An award-winning freelance journalist, he has written on history, 
politics, biography, health care, and neuroscience for many national magazines and newspapers. He is currently an associate fellow of Yale’s Trumbull College. His previous books include First Dads, The Man Who Made Lists, and The Forgotten Founding Father.

Joshua Kendall

“Awfulness For Decades”: A Short History Of Trump And Doonesbury

Defector Staff

A photo of a bunch of old-timey green barstools with the cover of the NYRB Classics edition of Robert Coover's Universal Baseball Association in the middle and the Defector Reads A Book logo at left.

There Is A Whole World In ‘The Universal Baseball Association, Inc. J. Henry Waugh, Prop.’

Defector At The Movies

Music

James Webster

‘The Vivisectors’ Is A Brilliant Novel In Any Reality