California Literary Review

Carol Ann Duffy named as Poet Laureate: The new Poet Laureate was named today as Andrew Motion’s 10-year tenure comes to an end, with Carol Ann Duffy becoming the first female to hold the title. [Independent]

Roosevelt and the Jews: A Debate Rekindled: Now a piece of his foreign policy is also being re-evaluated in a soon-to-be published book that upends a widely held view that he was indifferent to the fate of Europe’s Jews, and asserts that new evidence shows that the president pushed for an ambitious secret rescue plan before the war began. [NYT]

Bertrand Russell’s mathematical quest adds up to unlikely graphic novel hit: First published in Greece last year, where it has become an unexpected bestseller, Logicomix, subtitled An Epic Search for Truth, is the brainchild of maths expert and novelist Apostolos Doxiadis, who was admitted to Columbia University at the tender age of 15. [Guardian]

Earliest-known book jacket discovered in Bodleian Library: A librarian at Oxford’s Bodleian Library has unearthed the earliest-known book dust jacket. Dating from 1830, the jacket wrapped a silk-covered gift book, Friendship’s Offering. [Guardian]

A very hungry caterpillar found a hungry readership: “He’s very good at remembering how he felt as a child,” says Carle’s longtime editor, Ann Beneduce. “I can’t remember kindergarten at all, but he can go back to his childhood and feel it. He remembers that fear, when you change grades: ‘Will I have a friend?’ ” [LA Times]

Book Of A Lifetime: The Poetics of Space, By Gaston Bachelard: This is what the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard called “the poetics of space”, and his highly original study of the magical “cosmos” of the childhood home and its imaginary spaces is one of the few literary texts that architectural students are required to read. [Independent]

Revolutionary Espresso Book Machine launches in London: Launching in London today, the Espresso Book Machine can print any of 500,000 titles while you wait [Guardian]

Unesco Puts World’s Major Works Online: “The Tale of Genji,” an 11th-century Japanese romp that is sometimes called the first true novel, is among about 1,250 books, maps, artworks and other cultural items that went on display online Tuesday in an international library supported by Unesco and the U.S. Library of Congress. [NYT]

Prince Charles to publish attack on big business in eco book and film: The book, called Harmony, due to be published in 2010, calls on our ‘duty of stewardship of the natural order of things’ [Guardian]