what happened to let's go travel books

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Let’s Go: Gone at 63

Luke A. Williams ’23 was offered $15,000 and a college student’s dream: the chance to travel the world.

The summer after his freshman year, Williams pounded pavement in Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, visiting hundreds of attractions, hotels, and restaurants.

Such was the life of a researcher-writer for Let’s Go, a travel guide written and produced by student members of Harvard Student Agencies. In decades past, Let’s Go was a well-known publication, appearing in Seinfeld and on the cover of the Economist. It counts acclaimed novelist Elif Batuman ’99, radio host Peter D. Sagal ’87, and food writer and YouTube personality Claire J. Saffitz ’09 — a former Crimson Arts editor — among its former employees.

Today, it has all but disappeared from travelers’ pockets, from the internet, and from Harvard’s campus. Its demise was seemingly caused by a perfect storm of flagging sales, a structure of high staff turnover, increasing competition from other travel companies like Lonely Planet and the growing army of travel influencers, a structure of high staff turnover, and the utter disruption of the Covid-19 pandemic.

HSA did not respond to a request for comment.

G. Oliver Koppell ’62 founded Let’s Go as a Harvard freshman, first as a pamphlet in 1959, then as a full guide in 1960.

“I meet people all the time that when I tell them I founded ‘Let’s Go.’ They often say to me ‘Oh! We used that! That was great. We used that when we first went to Europe!’” he says. “I’ve heard that dozens of times during my life.”

In the decades following its founding, Let’s Go steadily grew, reaching its peak in the late ’90s and early 2000s. By 2005, the Let’s Go website claimed a repertoire of over 50 titles translated into seven languages, with destinations for intrepid travelers on six continents. By 2009, the website claimed over 3.5 million guides sold in a decade. Now in his 80s, Koppel described Let’s Go as one of his top life accomplishments,

Though the organization is now defunct, in the 2000s, business was booming. With a staff of more than 90 employees and enough funds to send dozens of researcher-writers abroad, Let’s Go made a significant impact on campus life.

One Crimson article from 2000 mocked the supposed glamor of working for the guide , portraying the “r-dubs” as overworked and lonely and the offices in Cambridge as plagued by brutal editing sessions, favoritism, and intrigue.

But a Crimson article from 2007 suggested ill omens for the beloved travel guide, documenting the publication’s split from longtime publisher St. Martin’s Press. The global shift into digital media portended hard times for Let’s Go, facing the encroaching obsolescence of print travel guides.

The death blow came during the pandemic, when international travel was shut down. At the start of Covid-19 pandemic, Brammy Rajakumar ’23 had been recently hired to oversee all publications and was about to start searching for the next crop researcher-writers. “Based on the Harvard travel policies and the fact that students wouldn’t even be allowed to stay on campus, let alone travel, we couldn’t, in good faith, send anybody out to travel in Europe that year,” she says.

Rajakumar stepped back from the organization after her term ended, and, when students returned to campus en masse in fall 2021, Let’s Go never resurfaced.

Some at Harvard mourn the disappearance of Let’s Go.” “Many of the writers felt that their work with ‘Let’s Go’ was a very important part of their education actually. And some of them became journalists and they were pushed in that direction because of their work,” Koppell says.

“It changed the way that I travel in that I like to really spend time with the city now. The idea of Euro tripping and spending two days in Budapest makes me shiver,” Williams says. “But also, nothing built my confidence and independence and curiosity and wonder like this job did. Oh, it was really something special.”

“I wish that I was still around so that other people at Harvard would have the chance to have a once in a lifetime summer,” says Megan Galbreath ’20, who spent the summer before her senior year traveling Germany and Austria for Let’s Go.

HSA still lists Let’s Go as one of its subsidiaries, but contains only a short bio of the organization and a broken hyperlink. With the erasure of Let’s Go from the internet, writers like Williams and Galbreath lost the blog they’d toiled on, which Williams said he would occasionally look at and reference in job applications.

HSA leadership did not respond to several requests for comment.

Koppell was upset with the news that Let’s Go is now gone. “I just learned about a year ago that they had discontinued. I was very disappointed and shocked to hear it. I don’t know why they didn’t continue it, at least on the internet,” he says. “Now I think that HSA is doing tours of the Harvard campus, I think that’s a lot less interesting.”

As we speak, Williams becomes animated, recalling his adventures with passion and excitement. “It was literally everything that I had wanted to do for years of my life,” he says. “It makes me so sad that it’s gone.”

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'Let's Go' Travel Guides On The Road At 50

Fifty years ago, a scrappy new travel publication aimed at budget-conscious students offered this guarantee: a trip from Europe to Asia for only four cents. That was the cost of the ferry ride across the Bosporus Strait dividing the East and West in Turkey. The guide was called Let's Go: The Student Guide to Europe , founded by 18-year-old Harvard undergrad Oliver Koppell. Since then, millions of backpackers have toted the guides to destinations around the globe. Guest host Ari Shapiro speaks to Koppell and Charlotte Alter, one of the publication's current student editors.

ARI SHAPIRO, host:

Fifty years ago, a scrappy new travel publication aimed at budget-conscious students offer this guarantee: a trip from Europe to Asia for only four cents. That was the cost of the ferry ride across the Bosporus Strait in Turkey. The travel guide was called "Let's Go: The Student Guide to Europe." It was founded by 18-year-old Harvard undergraduate Oliver Koppell.

Since then, millions of backpackers have toted the guides around the globe, and today Oliver Koppell is a councilmember for New York City's 11th District in the Bronx. He joins us from our New York bureau. Welcome.

Mr. OLIVER KOPPELL (Councilmember, 11th District, New York City): Thank you, and thank you for your interest in "Let's Go." Of course, I'm very proud of it.

SHAPIRO: And the "Let's Go" guides have been written and researched all these years by Harvard undergraduates. So, also joining us now from New York is one of the current managing editors of the guide, Charlotte Alter. Hi, Charlotte.

Ms. CHARLOTTE ALTER (Managing Editor, "Let's Go"): Hi. Thanks for having me.

SHAPIRO: So, Mr. Koppell, when you started these guides 50 years ago, what was your goal?

Mr. KOPPELL: Well, our initial goal was to provide students and other young people with the tools that they needed to have a successful and particularly, an inexpensive visit to Europe. This was in the early '60s, and Europe was still sort of unchartered territory for many people. The real travel boom only started maybe 10 years before "Let's Go." And so things that are much more familiar to people today and more comfortable were at that point kind of challenging.

You know, we had a student who went over to Europe, who visited hotels, who visited clubs, who visited attractions and put together, you know, a basic series of recommendations for people to use. And of course now it's so much expanded and it covers so many countries. It's a, you know, a huge oak tree. We had the acorn.

SHAPIRO: And, Charlotte, I understand you spent the summer after your freshman year researching the travel guide to Greece. You're now a sophomore. Tell me about one of the most surprising adventures you had in your work in Greece.

Ms. ALTER: Well, actually, I think my most unexpected adventure was I found myself crashing a Greek wedding in the mountains of Niceros, which is an island near Turkey. Through some travel planning mishaps - I, like, missed some buses and missed some connections and ended up driving across the island with a fellow traveler. And he was going to this wedding in this village and I kind of crashed with him and ended up having a lot of food spilled on my head, because they carry all the feast for the wedding on these big tabletops that they kind of hoist over their heads as they're serving people. And, of course, they tripped and, of course, the one person that they spilled all over was the person who was not invited to the wedding.

SHAPIRO: Is it essentially a vacation working on these guides? What's the experience like?

Ms. ALTER: No. It's definitely not a vacation. Because while you are in these, like, beautiful, exotic surroundings, you're not relaxed because you have work to do there. You need to be constantly on. There's a lot of footwork, there's a lot of talking to people. You can't just kind of relax in your hotel and do nothing.

SHAPIRO: You have to visit five hotels a day, have six lunches, visit 12 museums.

Ms. ALTER: Exactly, exactly. And so that's not really the typical vacation experience. On the other hand, what's great about "Let's Go" is you get paid for doing something that's real, that matters. And, you know, if you mess up and if you miss an island or you miss three or four hotels, that matters because it means that those listings aren't going to get into the guide and that travelers are going to have a less fulfilling experience.

SHAPIRO: Mr. Koppell, you're no longer a student, but when you travel abroad do you still take the "Let's Go" guides with you?

Mr. KOPPELL: Actually I do. I always buy "Let's Go." And the fact is that it's useful not only for students, it's useful, I think, for everybody. They have listings in the "Let's Go"s that I've used that are kind of the high end listings for students and sort of the low end listings for middle-class people like me.

So that when we went to Ireland a few years ago, we liked staying in bed and breakfasts, and I got all my bed and breakfasts from "Let's Go."

SHAPIRO: What's it like to hear about this thing that you created as an 18-year-old at Harvard now creating dozens of guides, employing more than 100 Harvard students each year? It's really become an empire.

Mr. KOPPELL: Yeah, it has. In fact, it's not only an opportunity for young people to get to travel and to write about their travel experiences, but it's an employment opportunity. And over the years, thousands of students have earned significant income. And that was one of our ideas actually, because the guide is put out...

SHAPIRO: Better than washing dishes in the dining hall.

Mr. KOPPELL: Absolutely. When I started...

Ms. ALTER: Definitely.

Mr. KOPPELL: ...at Harvard, I was on the dorm crew, which meant I cleaned the bathrooms. And when I...

SHAPIRO: So, you decided to go to Europe instead.

Mr. KOPPELL: ...when I transitioned to the travel area, that was a very welcome change.

SHAPIRO: I'm sure. Charlotte, when you were admitted to Harvard, did you know that you wanted to get involved with the "Let's Go" guides?

Ms. ALTER: Yeah, I did, actually. I was lucky enough to take a year off actually before going to Harvard. And I did a lot of traveling over that year and I actually used "Let's Go" guides. And so that was really exciting to then come to school and be able to work for them. Also, my mother, 30 years ago, also worked for "Let's Go."

SHAPIRO: Wow. Which guide did she write?

Ms. ALTER: She worked for the "Road Tripping America" guide and she covered the American South. So, that's something that she remembers fondly. That was back in the day when you could bring your boyfriend with you.

Mr. KOPPELL: One of my greatest regrets is that my son, who went to Harvard, wasn't interested in working on "Let's Go."

SHAPIRO: You're kidding me.

Mr. KOPPELL: That's right. I couldn't get him to do it.

SHAPIRO: No way.

Ms. ALTER: You know what though?

Mr. KOPPELL: He was more interested in the Kennedy Institute of Politics.

SHAPIRO: Well, congratulations to you both on the 50th anniversary of "Let's Go."

Mr. KOPPELL: Thank you so much.

Ms. ALTER: Thanks a lot.

Mr. KOPPELL: Thanks for your interest.

SHAPIRO: Oliver Koppell is the founder of the "Let's Go" travel guides, and Charlotte Alter is a writer, researcher and managing editor. They both joined us from our New York bureau. And Happy New Year to you both.

Mr. KOPPELL: Thank you, and to you.

Ms. ALTER: Yeah, you too, Ari.

Copyright © 2010 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

1960's

1970's

1980's

1990's

The expansion era, bye bye, miss american guide.

For the 1970 series, British West Indian Airways, “the un- heard-of airline,” sponsored the 200-page Let’s Go: Caribbe- an, which covered more than 30 islands, cays, and rocks. This one-hit wonder included special sections on “Hitchhiking Be- yond the 12 Mile Limit,” “Surfing,” and “Rum” and encouraged readers to lose themselves in “an unreal fantasy world of escap- ist, sun-and-sea fun and adventure.” In the meantime, Publish- ing’s mainstay, Let’s Go: Europe, clocked in at 384 pages. Its solid green cover easily wins the award for least creative of all time.

Hot Dutton Issues

In 1971, Let's Go: Europe marked a significant milestone as the first edition published and distributed by EP Dutton. The book expanded to 496 pages and a price of $2.25. It included maps of hitchhiking routes and nine cities, along with advice on drug use in the Netherlands. New coverage was added for Hungary and Finland, and the saunas of Stockholm were vividly described. After the 1971 edition, Let's Go returned to its original location at 4 Holyoke St, joining the rest of HSA.

Team Huddle

The 1972 edition of Let's Go: Europe saw the return of Eastern European and North African countries that were previously excluded. EP Dutton offered a guaranteed advance on royalties for the first time on the 50,000 copies produced. Frank "Pancho" Huddle, Jr., the Editor, along with Assistant Editor Peter Wilk and 19 Researcher-Writers, formed one of Let's Go's first formal book teams. Huddle added seven countries and 208 pages to the 13th edition, increasing the price to $3.25. The bookteams' process involved RWs sending regular batches of copy from the field to Cambridge, where the Editor and AEs transcribed and edited the content. The 1972 series also brought back Let's Go: The Student Guide to the United States & Canada, researched by 40 students and featuring budget tips for all 50 states, Canada, and information on drug use. Sadly, it was later discontinued.

In its historic debut, Let’s Go’s long-time thumb logo—originally a reference to hitchhiking, but later used to recommend sights and establishments—graced the dark-blue cover of Let’s Go: Europe 1973. After two years of going large, the guide slimmed down to 672 pages but added coverage of the USSR. Production ran two months behind schedule as HSA trusted The Harvard Crimson (for the first and last time) to typeset the finished text. This year, the price also went up to $3.95.

A Jolly Good Idea

Price and page count remained constant for the 1974 edition, whose cover was now blushed red. (It returned to blue for 1976.) Perhaps to atone for its typesetting fiasco, The Crimson ran a glowing review that declared Let’s Go superior to Frommer’s.

Region for the Stars

For 1975, Let’s Go: The Student Guide to Europe transformed into Let’s Go: The Budget Guide to Europe as those who had worshiped the early guides entered middle age and Let’s Go increasingly wooed the entire budget travel universe. Despite that fact, its cost rose again to $4.95.

Meet the Press

To this point, Let’s Go had published multiple travel books other than the flagship Europe guide, but they were all one-off events. It wasn’t until 1976 and the advent of Let’s Go: Britain & Ireland that a new project became a permanent member of the Let’s Go family. It came to be over dinner in a university dining hall. 

Congrats, You Have Twins!

Britain & Ireland blew away Dutton’s sales expectations and left them drooling for more. The publisher even requested the use of the thumb logo on separate guides to Asia and Latin America compiled by researchers from the Council on International Educational Exchange, but the HSA Board of Directors vetoed the proposal. Meanwhile, Let’s Go: Europe 1977 returned to a red cover and a hefty 704 pages.

L(ow-C)ost in translation

By the time Ryan left Dutton in 1978, the series had added a second new title, Let’s Go: France. With a back cover devoid of advertisement for the first time, the orange Let’s Go: Europe 1978 ordered readers to “take us along [or suffer through an unspeakable agony of longing and desire for the book you left behind].”

Confidence and resources (in the form of able writers and editors) were so strong that Let’s Go: Italy was put into production within months of the appearance of France; in early 1979, this third Let’s Go regional guide appeared. Still, no upstart regional guide challenged the 752-page blue goliath of Let’s Go: Europe 1979 for pack supremacy. The next year’s 1980 edition was tinged turquoise and inspired The Boston Globe to call Let’s Go “the Bible of the budget traveler.” It was also the first guide developed from HSA’s new home under Thayer Hall B in Harvard Yard.

clock This article was published more than  2 years ago

Travel guidebooks aren’t dead, but they’ll never be the same. Maybe that’s a good thing.

This story has been updated.

Rick Steves is hyped. That’s not so unusual: Infectious joy is surely one key to Steves’s success as America’s kindly vacation guru. Still, when he leaves next month on a 40-day trip to update his European guidebooks — a ritual he used to perform each spring — it will be the first such journey since covid-19 erased his travel calendar, which explains his current level of euphoria.

“Just to get back in the saddle has got me so filled with adventure, with energy,” he said. “I can hardly wait.” The trip follows a pandemic-long dry spell that quieted presses across the guidebook industry. U.S. travel book sales in 2020 were down about 40 percent from the previous year, according to NPD BookScan. (The category includes, but doesn’t single out, travel guidebooks.)

Facing stalled sales and the prospect of ongoing upheaval amid the pandemic, many guidebook print runs were postponed or canceled. “We put all the guidebooks on pause,” said Pauline Frommer, co-president of the guidebook company her father, Arthur Frommer, founded in 1957. “It was very clear from the beginning of the pandemic that things were going to change drastically, and I did not want to print guidebooks that were not worth the paper they were printed on.”

The books were re-researched in 2021. Some have already been released, with more due out in the coming months.

The pandemic knockdown came following uncertain decades for the guidebook industry. After reaching 19,005,029 in 2006, U.S. travel book sales halved over the next decade. In 2013, BBC Worldwide sold Lonely Planet, a move followed by massive layoffs . Then, having acquired Frommer’s, Google quietly stopped all production of Frommer’s print guidebooks. (The Frommers acquired rights and resumed printing them.)

While everyone else is decluttering, I’m keeping the books that made me a traveler

That’s how 2013 became the year of essays trumpeting the demise of travel guidebooks, each attributing cause of death to some combination of apps, influencers, online searches and digital powerhouse Tripadvisor . But the doomsaying was nothing new. “The whole time I’ve been working on guidebooks, people have been like, ‘The end of guidebooks is nigh,’ ” said author Zora O’Neill, who wrote her first travel guidebook in 2002 and has penned titles for both Moon and Lonely Planet.

Although the end never came, O’Neill saw the industry change. Rates have fallen or stagnated in the past two decades, while in many cases, work-for-hire arrangements replaced traditional royalty contracts. And the once-dominant role of guidebooks in travel culture changed, too.

As an old millennial who started traveling in guidebooks’ supposedly halcyon age, I’ve watched that transformation with interest. Sometimes with nostalgia, too: I miss swapping annotated, dog-eared books with fellow travelers in bars or hostels. Now, you can reliably find those same places filled with people glued to their screens.

Twenty years ago, however, I would have said guidebooks contributed to an informational monoculture I found aggravating. I noticed that people using the same brand of travel guides seemed to follow each other, slightly abashed, from place to place.

On one months-long trip through Central America in 2002, fellow owners of Lonely Planet’s hefty “Central America on a Shoestring” became familiar faces as we popped up at the same places in city after city. When new businesses opened, owners struggled to get the word out. Lurid tales of questionable guidebook ethics circulated. Outdated or incorrect entries in a book could leave you stranded, but few other sources existed.

“When I started writing, the problem was that there was not enough information,” said Steves, noting that, at one time, guidebooks were almost the only way to decide where to stay in an unfamiliar city. As times changed, that sameness gave way to the untamed, thrilling diversity of today’s digital wilderness.

Sales of camping, hiking guides rise as Americans take to the outdoors

“It got to the point where there was too much information,” he said, noting that proliferating sources made it harder to know what was reliable. Researching a trip online can be a Mad Max infinity loop of unvetted user-generated reviews and self-appointed experts. Trading free trips for sunny features is common practice in the world of travel influencers, with little transparency about who is footing the bill for a given blog post or YouTube video.

While earlier travelers just needed some basic info, Steves said, guidebooks’ main value proposition might now be an escape hatch from that digital overwhelm. “Part of my job is to curate all the options — the glut of information — with a consistent set of values,” he said. What’s more, a print guidebook offers a chance to unplug, allowing travelers to put down their phones, Steves noted. With a screen close at hand, it’s too easy to let your attention drift away from that chic Parisian bistro and into drearily quotidian scrolling.

It seems to be working out, because Steves’s 2019 royalty checks were the highest of his career. Despite apocalyptic warnings, in fact, guidebooks are generally doing okay. After the rocky industry news of 2013, travel book sales stabilized, then stayed roughly even until the pandemic hit.

Most travelers who still buy print books, though, now seem to read them in conjunction with, not instead of, online resources. In recent Facebook and Twitter posts, veteran traveler and content creator Abigail King queried followers about how they use guidebooks today, noticing some buy for pre-trip research, reverting to the Internet for facts on the ground. Others turn books into a kind of souvenir stuffed with ticket stubs and handwritten notes.

“I use them in a really different way now, too, mainly for reading about the country and planning an itinerary,” said King, who lives in the United Kingdom. She noted that, when traveling to destinations in Europe with consistent cell coverage, she’s unlikely to bring a hard copy along.

“Guidebooks are now among a suite of tools people use,” said Grace Fujimoto, acquisitions director at Avalon Travel , which oversees the Moon Travel Guides imprint that is the United States’ top guidebook seller. (Disclosure: I’ve written several Moon guidebooks.) Fujimoto said the pandemic accelerated that shift toward book-plus-digital, partly because information has changed so quickly in the past two years.

But it just underscores a broader trend of recent years, she said. “Guidebooks are becoming more and more inspirational, in addition to just being repositories of information,” Fujimoto said, offering a forthcoming guidebook to Spain’s Camino de Santiago pilgrimage trail as an example. “It does have a lot of good practical information, but it combines it with ways of appreciating what you’re seeing and doing almost every step of the way,” she said.

Lonely Planet is another publisher leaning into the shift. “Guidebooks are evolving into this experiential, curated collection,” said Lonely Planet spokesman Chris Zeiher. This month, the company released a new line of photo-heavy “Experience” guides, which Zeiher said are designed to inspire.

The first titles in the series, guidebooks to Italy, Portugal, Japan, Ireland, Scotland and Iceland, are noticeably lacking in the old-style comprehensive listings of hotels and restaurants. In their place are expert interviews and short, magazine-style features on the kinds of experiences travelers might build a trip around.

Flip through these to get fired up for chasing waterfalls in Iceland, for instance, or to dream up an itinerary focused on visiting Japanese temples. And unlike the earliest Lonely Planet guides, which were oriented to longer, more comprehensive trips, these are tailored to the shorter vacations increasingly common among travelers from the United States.

Zeiher, too, heard predictions of print guidebooks’ demise since he joined Lonely Planet nearly 17 years ago. But he’s optimistic about the coming decade. “One thing that Lonely Planet’s always done, is we’ve always evolved,” he said. “I think we’ll continue to do that.”

As the pandemic recedes and travelers return to the world, he’s betting there’s room in their bags for a book.

Smith is a writer based in Vermont. Her website is jenrosesmith.com . Find her on Twitter and Instagram : @jenrosesmithvt.

PLEASE NOTE

Potential travelers should take local and national public health directives regarding the pandemic into consideration before planning any trips. Travel health notice information can be found on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s interactive map showing travel recommendations by destination and the CDC’s travel health notice webpage .

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Let's Go Italy: The Student Travel Guide Paperback – January 8, 2013

• Print length 648 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Let's Go
• Publication date January 8, 2013
• Dimensions 5.1 x 1.1 x 7.7 inches
• ISBN-10 1612370233
• ISBN-13 978-1612370231
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Let's Go; 32nd edition (January 8, 2013)
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• #830 in general Italy Travel Guides

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LET'S GO LET'S GO LET'S GO

by Cleo Qian ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 15, 2023

Luminously written stories that do not quite finish telling their tales.

Qian’s debut collection navigates between New York and Los Angeles, the U.S. and China, as it follows its young Asian and Asian American women through the languid menace of youth.

In this promising collection’s opening story, “Chicken. Film. Youth,” Luna is back in her childhood city, LA, meeting up with friends who have all reached the point in their late 20s when they have “switched from wanting to get older to feeling like [they] could stand to be a little bit younger.” When the reader sees her again in “Zeroes:Ones,” she is just out of college, living in Suzhou, and working at the university language center as a tutor while she explores her complicated feelings about China as a “country both homeland and exotic.” Luna’s wanderings thread through the collection—she appears as a main character in four of the 11 stories—but the interstitial longing she feels about her Asian American identity, her sense of isolation, the aimlessness of adulthood after the driving promise of youth, and the driving question of what comes next are the guiding forces behind all the stories in this lovely but sometimes listless book. Often, the dominantly female main characters are lured into situations that fizz with menace—such as Nora in “Monitor World,” who matches with the mysterious agamemnon_the_king on a site for “lovers of the underground” only to discover that his sexual prowess hides darker, and somehow more quotidian, desires; or Emi in the title story, who runs into a childhood friend in Tokyo and shortly afterward finds herself isolated in a house on the slopes of Mount Haruna, participating in an ominous conceptual art project sponsored by the cultish Anti-Civilization Committee. Sometimes, as in the standout stories “The Girl With the Double Eyelids,” “Power and Control,” and “Seagull Village,” a world with alternative rules in which visions reveal hidden truths, alchemy is a black-market hobby, and spirits roam freely is laid over our own to reveal startling and subtle truths. More often than not, however, both the sense of threat and magic fizzle out in the face of the stifling ennui that keeps most of Qian’s characters enacting the same apathetic orbits even when they attempt radical escape.

Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2023

ISBN: 9781953534927

Page Count: -

Publisher: Tin House

Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023

LITERARY FICTION | DYSTOPIAN FICTION | SHORT STORIES | GENERAL FICTION

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by Percival Everett ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 19, 2024

One of the noblest characters in American literature gets a novel worthy of him.

Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as told from the perspective of a more resourceful and contemplative Jim than the one you remember.

This isn’t the first novel to reimagine Twain’s 1885 masterpiece, but the audacious and prolific Everett dives into the very heart of Twain’s epochal odyssey, shifting the central viewpoint from that of the unschooled, often credulous, but basically good-hearted Huck to the more enigmatic and heroic Jim, the Black slave with whom the boy escapes via raft on the Mississippi River. As in the original, the threat of Jim’s being sold “down the river” and separated from his wife and daughter compels him to run away while figuring out what to do next. He's soon joined by Huck, who has faked his own death to get away from an abusive father, ramping up Jim’s panic. “Huck was supposedly murdered and I’d just run away,” Jim thinks. “Who did I think they would suspect of the heinous crime?” That Jim can, as he puts it, “[do] the math” on his predicament suggests how different Everett’s version is from Twain’s. First and foremost, there's the matter of the Black dialect Twain used to depict the speech of Jim and other Black characters—which, for many contemporary readers, hinders their enjoyment of his novel. In Everett’s telling, the dialect is a put-on, a manner of concealment, and a tactic for survival. “White folks expect us to sound a certain way and it can only help if we don’t disappoint them,” Jim explains. He also discloses that, in violation of custom and law, he learned to read the books in Judge Thatcher’s library, including Voltaire and John Locke, both of whom, in dreams and delirium, Jim finds himself debating about human rights and his own humanity. With and without Huck, Jim undergoes dangerous tribulations and hairbreadth escapes in an antebellum wilderness that’s much grimmer and bloodier than Twain’s. There’s also a revelation toward the end that, however stunning to devoted readers of the original, makes perfect sense.

Pub Date: March 19, 2024

ISBN: 9780385550369

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024

LITERARY FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION | GENERAL FICTION

More by Percival Everett

BOOK REVIEW

by Percival Everett

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Kirkus Reviews' Best Books Of 2022

New York Times Bestseller

Pulitzer Prize Winner

DEMON COPPERHEAD

by Barbara Kingsolver ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 18, 2022

An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.

Inspired by David Copperfield , Kingsolver crafts a 21st-century coming-of-age story set in America’s hard-pressed rural South.

It’s not necessary to have read Dickens’ famous novel to appreciate Kingsolver’s absorbing tale, but those who have will savor the tough-minded changes she rings on his Victorian sentimentality while affirming his stinging critique of a heartless society. Our soon-to-be orphaned narrator’s mother is a substance-abusing teenage single mom who checks out via OD on his 11th birthday, and Demon’s cynical, wised-up voice is light-years removed from David Copperfield’s earnest tone. Yet readers also see the yearning for love and wells of compassion hidden beneath his self-protective exterior. Like pretty much everyone else in Lee County, Virginia, hollowed out economically by the coal and tobacco industries, he sees himself as someone with no prospects and little worth. One of Kingsolver’s major themes, hit a little too insistently, is the contempt felt by participants in the modern capitalist economy for those rooted in older ways of life. More nuanced and emotionally engaging is Demon’s fierce attachment to his home ground, a place where he is known and supported, tested to the breaking point as the opiate epidemic engulfs it. Kingsolver’s ferocious indictment of the pharmaceutical industry, angrily stated by a local girl who has become a nurse, is in the best Dickensian tradition, and Demon gives a harrowing account of his descent into addiction with his beloved Dori (as naïve as Dickens’ Dora in her own screwed-up way). Does knowledge offer a way out of this sinkhole? A committed teacher tries to enlighten Demon’s seventh grade class about how the resource-rich countryside was pillaged and abandoned, but Kingsolver doesn’t air-brush his students’ dismissal of this history or the prejudice encountered by this African American outsider and his White wife. She is an art teacher who guides Demon toward self-expression, just as his friend Tommy provokes his dawning understanding of how their world has been shaped by outside forces and what he might be able to do about it.

Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022

ISBN: 978-0-06-325-1922

Page Count: 560

Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: July 13, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022

LITERARY FICTION | GENERAL FICTION

More by Barbara Kingsolver

by Barbara Kingsolver

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Donald Trump could face prison time if he is convicted in upcoming NY hush money trial

If former President Donald Trump is convicted on all counts in his New York criminal hush money trial that begins April 15, he could theoretically face more than a decade in prison.

But most legal experts who spoke to USA TODAY said such a dramatic outcome is unlikely. Instead, he would likely be sentenced to something between probation and four years in prison. And he would probably still be out, free to campaign for president as the presumptive or actual 2024 Republican nominee, while his all-but-certain appeal was pending.

Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Each count carries a maximum sentence of four years.

While Trump could in principle be sentenced to serve multiple counts consecutively, several experts said that is unlikely because he has no felony criminal record and the charges don't involve allegations of physical violence.

On the other hand, Trump has tested boundaries and feuded with the judge who may determine his fate.

Prep for the polls: See who is running for president and compare where they stand on key issues in our Voter Guide

Trump has antagonized Judge Juan Merchan

Trump's sentence would be decided by Judge Juan Merchan, who has grown exasperated by the former president's pretrial behavior. Merchan expanded a gag order this month after Trump attacked the judge's daughter on social media over her marketing work with Democratic candidates, including posting a photo of her. Merchan said Trump has a history of attacking the family members of judges and lawyers in his legal cases.

"The average observer, must now, after hearing Defendant's recent attacks, draw the conclusion that if they become involved in these proceedings, even tangentially, they should worry not only for themselves,  but for their loved ones as well ," Merchan wrote in his gag order decision .

John Moscow, a New York lawyer who spent 30 years in the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, told USA TODAY that type of behavior could worsen any sentence Trump faces.

"If I were representing somebody in (Trump's) position, I would suggest to him that the judge is the one who imposes sentence and he ought to be careful," Moscow said.

If Merchan did consider a hefty sentence, it wouldn't be the first time he has taken a harsh view about behavior in Trump's orbit.

In 2023, Merchan was forced to sentence former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg to only five months in jail because Merchan had previously accepted a plea bargain agreement between Weisselberg and prosecutors specifying that jail term. Weisselberg pleaded guilty to tax and record falsification charges and agreed to testify against the Trump Organization at trial in order to get that sentence.

The judge said, however, that he "would be imposing a sentence much greater than that" had he not accepted the plea bargain before hearing all the evidence at the trial. Without the plea deal, Weisselberg could have faced many years in prison.

What is Trump charged with?

Trump has pleaded not guilty to all counts in the case, which focuses on whether he falsified business records to cover up reimbursements to his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, for a $130,000 hush money payment to Daniels. Daniels has said she had a sexual encounter with Trump soon after Melania Trump gave birth to their son, Barron Trump. Trump denies the claim.

In order to secure felony convictions, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office must convince a 12-person jury that Trump falsified the records in order to commit or conceal another crime. In this case, Bragg argues Trump was trying to conceal a federal campaign finance law violation by falsely recording his reimbursements to Cohen as payments for legal services. The federal violation was a limit-exceeding contribution to Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, as the payment was allegedly designed to keep Daniels' story from hurting the then-Republican nominee's election prospects. Bragg also alleges Trump was trying to conceal a plan to violate New York tax and election laws.

Nothing in the Constitution prevents Trump from becoming president even if he is convicted or sentenced to prison. If he won the election, however, courts may delay any prison time until after his term in office expires .

What is the maximum possible sentence?

The 34 felony counts Trump faces are classified as "Class E felonies" under New York law – the lowest level felony in the state. The maximum penalty on each count is four years of prison, and a judge would have discretion over whether to order Trump to serve sentences on each count at the same time or one after the other. However, New York caps such sentencing for Class E felonies at 20 years .

In addition, New York judges often impose sentencing ranges, where an incarcerated person becomes eligible for parole at the low end of the range. For Class E felonies, the lowest end of a range would be one-and-a-third years per count, while the highest would be four years. Good behavior in jail or prison can speed things up even more.

A sentence limited to probation?

Merchan would also have discretion to order a fixed sentence of less than those ranges, including probation.

That's what Mitchell Epner, a New York lawyer with decades of criminal law experience, expects would happen even if Trump were convicted on all counts. Epner noted the felony charges aren't violent and don't involve drugs.

"With a defendant who has no prior criminal record, my absolute expectation would be a sentence of probation," Epner told USA TODAY.

Epner wasn't alone in thinking that could be the sentencing outcome.

"This is a case that does not involve any physical violence, and it doesn't – there's not sort of a 'named victim,' so to speak – and so the court is going to take that into consideration," Anna Cominsky, who directs the Criminal Defense Clinic at New York Law School, told USA TODAY.

"In addition, I think it is unlikely that he would be sent to prison given who he is, given both the fact that he has no criminal record, and there is no getting around the fact that he is a former president of the United States," Cominsky said.

Incarceration a real possibility

Norman Eisen, a Brookings Institution senior fellow who served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during Trump's first impeachment, thought a sentence that includes some incarceration is likely.

Eisen co-authored a report looking at sentencing for other defendants with no criminal history who were convicted of falsifying business records in New York. There, he noted one construction executive was sentenced in 2015 to spend two days each week in jail for a year for falsifying records to conceal payments in a bribery scheme. In 2013, two corporate executives were ordered to spend four to six months in jail for falsifying records to misclassify their salaries as expenses under their employer's larger bribery and fraud scheme.

"I think he's likely to face a sentence of incarceration if he's convicted," Eisen told USA TODAY.

Cominsky said the evidence Merchan hears at trial could also influence his thinking when it comes to sentencing.

"Often you'll hear judges refer to testimony at trial, evidence that was presented at trial, and say, 'This is why I'm imposing this sentence, because I heard from this particular witness or I saw this particular piece of evidence,'" Cominsky said.

Moscow pushed back against the assumption that Trump's sentences on each count would run simultaneously, instead of being stacked on top of each other. Just as a judge may take into account that a defendant has won a Nobel Peace Prize or lifted orphans from poverty, the judge may look at significant evidence of bad acts, Moscow said.

"When you start attacking the judge's daughter, and making her out to be a target, you have just breached the normal rules," Moscow said.

Trump has also posted a photo of himself wielding a bat, with his eyes directed toward an adjacent photo of Bragg, among other attacks on the district attorney. Bragg's office has received thousands of harassing emails, calls, and texts – including death threats – after Trump's social media attacks, it said in a court filing .

Diana Florence, a New York lawyer who spent decades in the Manhattan District Attorney's office, said Merchan's sentence would need to have some relation to what other white-collar defendants in similar cases have received, and she would be surprised if someone had ever gotten a sentencing range for falsifying business records with a minimum of 10 years or more.

Such a long sentence "would be very, very, very, very unusual, and if Judge Merchan wanted to make a point and do that, I highly doubt the appellate division would allow that to stand," she said. "It's just too much time for the conduct."

However, Florence added that a reasonable sentencing range could include a minimum period of more than a year incarcerated.

Sentencing someone with Secret Service protection?

Contemplating any jail or prison sentence would take Merchan into unchartered territory: Trump is the first former president ever criminally charged, and the Secret Service provides him with around-the-clock security.

But avoiding a sentence of incarceration on that basis risks undermining the idea of equal treatment under the law, Moscow suggested.

"If I were the judge − and I don't know what a judge would do in this case − I would reject out of hand the concept that because he was once president, and because as a matter of policy the Secret Service guards former presidents, that therefore he can't go to jail," Moscow said.

The question would then become how to reconcile equal treatment with ensuring a former president's security, according to Moscow. The judge could get creative, for example by ordering the former president to stay in a hotel wing or at a military base, where he is isolated just like any other prisoner but still has Secret Service protection.

"You can structure things to achieve the proper result without conceding that the defendant has the upper hand," Moscow said.

Chances of immediate prison? 'Less than 1%'

Many convicted defendants are "remanded" pending sentencing, a process in which they are taken into custody while they await their sentence, Florence said.

But Florence didn't expect Merchan to give that order when it comes to Trump, and even if Merchan did, Trump would likely be able to get bail set by an appeals court in the thousands of dollars to stay free during his appeal. That's all the more likely if Trump receives a low sentence, since the appeal could take longer than his actual sentence, she said.

"The chances of him going to prison immediately, even if he's convicted in whatever, six weeks from now or whenever, are I would say less than 1% because he would immediately be released on bail pending appeal," according to Florence.

Eisen agreed Trump probably wouldn't be incarcerated by Election Day, even if he's convicted on all counts.

"I think he's extremely unlikely to be forced to serve that sentence pending appeal," Eisen said.

Highlights from Day 3 of Trump’s hush money trial

What to know about trump's hush money trial.

• Former President Donald Trump's hush money trial resumes in New York City for the third day today with jury selection. Twelve jurors have been seated so far, with new additions today including a man who works in investment banking and a security engineer.
• Tuesday's proceedings in state Judge Juan Merchan's courtroom were marked by fiery exchanges over Trump's behavior and old Facebook posts of prospective jurors.
• Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a $130,000 payment made to adult film actor Stormy Daniels at the end of the 2016 election cycle to keep her quiet about her allegation that she and Trump had a sexual encounter. Trump has denied the affair.
• Catch up with what you missed on Day 2 .

Trump returns to Trump Tower

Megan Lebowitz

The former president's motorcade has returned to Trump Tower after the third day of the hush money trial.

Meet the 12 jurors at Trump’s hush money trial

Rebecca Shabad is in Washington, D.C.

All 12 jurors, plus an alternate, were selected this week to serve on the jury after they made it clear to both sides that they could render a fair and impartial verdict.

Prosecutors and the defense team whittled down a pool of nearly 200 people to 12 jurors and an alternate after having grilled them about their personal histories, political views, social media posts and ability to remain impartial despite any opinions they might have about the polarizing former president.

Here's a brief description of each juror.

Read the full story here.

Trump attorney asks who the DA plans to call as first 3 witnesses

Zoë Richards

Trump attorney Todd Blanche asked whom the district attorney's office plans to call as its first three witnesses. Joshua Steinglass of the DA’s office refused on the basis that Trump has been tweeting about them.

Judge Merchan said he does not fault the DA’s office for its position. Blanche said Trump will not tweet about the witnesses, which Merchan said Blanche cannot promise, and he told him to treat the information as “attorneys’ eyes only.”

Merchan declined to order the DA’s office to name its first three witnesses, and Steinglass did not otherwise agree to do so.

Trump continues criticizing the case after court proceedings end for the day

Trump addressed reporters after court was dismissed for the day. He said that he was supposed to be in states like Georgia, New Hampshire and North Carolina to campaign but that instead "I've been here all day" for an "unfair trial."

Trump held up a stack of news stories and editorials that he said were critical of the case. He continued railing against the trial. "The whole thing is a mess," he said.

Trump did not respond to shouted questions from reporters.

Judge gives instructions to newly sworn-in jurors

Matt Johnson

Judge Merchan gave instructions to the jurors who were sworn in minutes ago. Among them: Do not discuss the case.

The jurors were then escorted out of the courtroom and walked past the defense table, from which Trump stared at them.

Court ends for the day. Dismissal on Monday and Tuesday will be 2 p.m.

Gary Grumbach

The court has decided that 2 p.m. will be the trial end time next Monday and Tuesday.

Here's the gender breakdown of the 12-person jury

Ginger Gibson Senior Washington Editor

The jury is seven men and five women.

Jurors are sworn in

The jurors selected today to sit on the panel were sworn in, vowing to hear the case in a "fair and impartial manner."

Trump watched as they raised their right hands for the swearing-in.

Jury selection will continue tomorrow for the six alternates.

Twelve jurors have been selected

The court has now seated 12 jurors.

“We have our jury,” Judge Merchan said when the 12th juror was picked.

The next six jurors selected will serve as alternates.

“I’m hopeful we will finish tomorrow,” the judge added.

Potential juror says she was a Bernie Sanders supporter when posting critically about Trump

A potential juror has been brought back into the courtroom for questions about her social media posts.

As she read one of her posts to the court, she said she was a Bernie Sanders supporter at the time.

“I was in a disturbed frame of mind during that election cycle," she said, adding that she no longer holds the positions expressed in the post.

Two more jurors seated, bringing the total to seven

Two new jurors have been seated, bringing the total seated back to seven after two were dismissed earlier.

The jurors are a man who works in investment banking and a man who is a security engineer.

Trump attorney questions juror's social media posts about former president

Alexandra Marquez is based in Washington, D.C.

Susan Necheles, a Trump attorney, is challenging Juror No. 430 for cause.

She alleges that the juror's posts through 2020 were vitriolic and that the juror called Trump a “racist, sexist narcissist” on social media.

Necheles also said the juror said, “Trump is an anathema to everything I was taught about Jesus … and could not be more fundamentally un-Christian.”

Defense lawyer cites book of journalist who is in the courtroom

Trump lawyer Susan Necheles referred to New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman's book "Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America."

Haberman, who is covering the trial, is in the courtroom as part of the small pool of journalists allowed inside to share information about the jury selection process.

Prospective juror says it was pretty difficult not to have strong feelings about Trump during his presidency

One potential juror said it was pretty difficult not to have strong feelings or conversations about Trump during his presidency.

"There’s so much information about him everywhere. So no matter how you feel, you’re seeing things online," she said. "I mean he was our president, everyone knows who he is.”

One juror says they're a centrist and 'everybody needs a chance'

Jillian Frankel

One juror who was just questioned during voir dire told Necheles that they are a "centrist."

The juror added, "Everybody needs a chance, regardless of who they are, to be innocent until proven guilty.”

Court takes brief break to discuss strikes

The court has taken a brief break to discuss which jurors each side would like to strike.

Both the prosecution and defense have four remaining preemptory strikes. Both sides could each request that jurors be struck for cause.

Potential juror shares encounter with Trump and ex-wife 'shopping for baby things'

One prospective juror, who says they were born and raised in Brooklyn, described encountering Trump and his ex-wife Marla Maples once while they were "shopping for baby things" at ABC Home, an iconic Manhattan home goods store known for quirky, upscale decor.

Trump and Maples were married in the 1990s and share one daughter, Tiffany Trump.

Prospective juror says she doesn't have 'strong feelings' about Trump

One prospective juror told Trump's lawyer, "His politics aren't always my politics," but said she agrees with him on some policies and disagrees with him on others.

"But as a human being, that's a different topic," she said.

Asked about social media activity, she said, "Politics just seems like a nasty thing to be posting about during a national crisis."

She added, "I just don’t have strong feelings about President Trump at this point...I don’t post about him.”

One juror previously met Trump's lawyer

One of the jurors being questioned by Steinglass says she previously met one of Trump's attorneys.

Asked by Steinglass if this juror could remain impartial despite that, the juror said she had no concerns about her impartiality.

Prosecution refers to 'accomplice liability' to explain case theory

Laura Jarrett

For the second time in a week, the prosecution has used a notable example of “accomplice liability” in explaining their theory of the case to the prospective jurors.

Steinglass says that Mr. Trump is being held liable just like a husband who hires a hitman to kill his wife would be — even if the husband is in a different city when it happens, he’s still criminally liable.

One juror says she's concerned she knows too much about the case

One prospective jurors who said during the questionnaire that she had read Mark Pomerantz's book and was worried she knows too much about the case.

"I’m worried that I know too much," she said. “And academically, I know I have put it to the side. I’m worried that it’s going to seep in, in some way.”

Pomerantz is a former prosecutor who once oversaw the Manhattan District Attorney Office’s investigation into Trump.

Trump appears skeptical as voir dire begins

Trump watched skeptically as Steinglass asked the jurors whether any of them felt the district attorney would have to prove more because Trump is not like any other defendant.

Trump's body is not turned toward the jury or Steinglass, but his head is. Blanche and Bove are watching Steinglass and the jury more intently.

Trump then scribbled on a piece of paper and handed it to Bove, who shared it with Necheles. She then had a short exchange with Trump.

Judge Merchan says voir dire of prospective jurors will begin

The judge told the group of 18 prospective jurors that previously went through the questionnaire that they will now be questioned by both sides, with the prosecution up first.

Court back in session

Merchan is back on the bench and court is back in session. Attorneys for both sides will now question prospective jurors.

Spotted outside of the courthouse: former GOP Rep. George Santos

Former Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., was spotted outside of the courthouse. He did not answer a question from NBC News about what brought him here today.

Santos was ejected from Congress in December after he was federally charged with crimes like wire fraud and money laundering. He has pleaded not guilty. He is currently running for Congress in New York as an independent.

Court goes on a lunch break

The court has recessed for lunch until 2:15 p.m.

Juror dismissed after tying Trump to Berlusconi

One juror was just dismissed after disclosing that he was born and raised in Italy and then comparing Trump to Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister of Italy.

Berlusconi, who died last June, was an infamous womanizer and was convicted of tax fraud in 2013.

Potential juror says he's a few credits short of a college degree

One potential juror said that while he graduated from high school, he is a few credits short of a college degree, "which kills my parents."

A cold courtroom

Blanche, Trump's lawyer, just asked if they could make it warmer in the courtroom, saying, "it’s freezing" in the room.

Merchan agreed, "It’s chilly in here, no question."

Merchan excuses Juror No. 4

After they had a conference with the juror, Merchan announced he's excusing juror No. 4, who had previously been seated and sworn him. His prior arrest was questioned by the DA.

Seated juror 'expressed annoyance' about his personal information becoming public

A seated juror was called for questioning, with prosecutors inquiring about whether or not he was truthful in answering questions about his past criminal history.

Following a conference between the juror and Merchan, the judge said, the juror "expressed annoyance about how much information was out there about him in the public.”

And Merchan sealed the portion of the transcript where he says the juror discussed "highly personal" information.

Trump left the courtroom while decision on Juror 4 being made

Trump exited the courtroom at 11:45 a.m. He returned about eight minutes later.

One prospective juror works in law enforcement

One potential juror said that he has worked in law enforcement for 34 years and, in his spare time, he has season tickets to New York Rangers games and enjoys going to Yankees games.

Dismissed juror has "satirized Mr. Trump, often" online

Another dismissed juror, Mark, spoke to NBC News' Vaughn Hillyard outside the courthouse, telling him that he determined he couldn't be fair and impartial because, "I have satirized Mr. Trump, often, in my artwork."

Mark added, "There’s no way that Blanche — who’s not going to rely on the kindness of strangers — would permit me to be on the jury ... There’s no way that after my online presence ... that they would regard me to be fit to serve."

Mark's online comedy hadn't yet come up in the process when he raised his hand to signal he couldn't be fair and impartial, but he was sure Trump's lawyers would figure it out.

"It would be a waste of their time and, frankly, as a taxpayer, our money —for me to clog up the process," he added. 

Juror 4 has arrived

The person previously seated on the jury has come into the courtroom. He is going to be asked about crimes he or his wife are alleged to have committed, after they were unearthed by the DA's office.

Court takes a brief break

The court has taken a brief break.

One juror has read part of Michael Cohen's book

One of the jurors responding to questions said she has read several pages of "Disloyal," a book by Michael Cohen, Trump's former personal attorney, who is a potential witness in this case.

The juror said she read part of the book for unspecified "business reasons." Earlier in her questionnaire, the juror said she works in publishing, but it's unclear whether the book was directly related to her job.

Prospective juror says while he doesn't have strong beliefs aboutTrump, he does read The New York Times

A prospective juror who was just questioned said that while he doesn't have any strong opinions or firmly held beliefs about Trump, he does "read the news, New York Times and so forth."

The same person said he follows Trump's Truth Social posts, as well as Michael Cohen on X.

Potential jurors say they have read Trump's "The Art of the Deal"

One potential juror who said she subscribes to The New York Times, mainly for the crossword puzzle, said she read Trump's "The Art of the Deal" book decades ago.

The juror also said she has a relative who works for the Justice Department.

Another juror, who said he works in finance, also said he read "The Art of the Deal."

Questionnaire highlights tension points for potential jurors

The potential juror being questioned now by the judge encapsulates how tough it is for some working professionals called for jury duty in Manhattan to say they cannot be fair and impartial. This is a person who is a practicing attorney. 

She appears not to want to say publicly she can’t be fair, notwithstanding some deep sighs we can hear from her. She also clerked for a federal judge and discussed the case with him, so she’s treading carefully.

Dismissed juror: Trump "looked less orange" than I expected

One dismissed juror spoke to MSNBC's Yasmin Vossoughian outside the courthouse following her exit from the case.

"Everyone was shocked, everyone was frozen," said the woman, identified only by her first name, Kat. She recounted the moment she and fellow prospective jurors walked into the room and realized they'd been called for the Trump trial.

“We went into the courtroom and we saw Donald Trump ... I was shocked, I was sitting in the second row, like 6 feet away," she added.

Before showing up for jury duty, “I didn’t really [follow the case], I was too busy," Kat said, but added that she just became a U.S. citizen in August and realized, "I feel the duty, I’m a citizen and I have responsibilities.”

Asked about how Trump looked in the courtroom, Kat said, "He looked less orange" than she was expecting.

She added, “He doesn’t look angry or — I think he looks bored, like he wants this to finish.”

Potential juror said she discussed former Manhattan DA Mark Pomerantz's book with others

Summer Concepcion

The first potential juror said she had discussed the case at length with co-workers, including a book written by Mark Pomerantz , the former Manhattan district attorney who led the investigation into Trump’s alleged financial crimes . She said she hasn't read any of the books written by Michael Cohen or Trump.

The woman also disclosed that she attended the Women's March after Trump took office.

48 prospective jurors excused after signaling they can't be fair or impartial

After Judge Merchan told the pool of prospective jurors to raise their hand if they can't be fair and impartial, 48 out of 96 were excused.

Trump again closes his eyes while Merchan reads jury instructions aloud

Katherine Doyle

Trump again closed his eyes while Merchan read aloud jury instructions. He didn't open them when his lawyer Emil Bove passed a note to Blanche in front of him.

Merchan is soft-spoken and his voice has a relaxing tone. Trump is seen moving his head back and forth while his eyes remain closed.

Trump yawned as Merchan reached the end of the jury instruction.

Juror issues raise questions about trial timeline

The fact that we now have one juror dismissed already this morning and one potentially on the rocks (for apparently not being forthcoming on the questionnaire) shows the challenges in predicting when a final slate of 12 jurors will be empaneled. 

It also shows how waiting several more days before the opening statements runs the risk that more jurors will drop out as they sleep on the gravity of being involved in this case.

DA's office says Trump has violated judge's gag order seven more times

Prosecutor Chris Conroy handed up a new order in response to Trump's social media posts. The DA alleges that Trump has violated the judge's gag order seven more times and he wants the posts included in the hearing scheduled for Tuesday.

Yesterday, the former president complained about the jury selection process and Conroy said that "most disturbingly" Trump quoted a Fox News host suggesting that "undercover" liberal activists are lying to get onto the jury.

Conroy said the DA's office is still considering options in terms of sanctions prosecutors are seeking.

Merchan raises concerns about "the veracity of Juror #4’s answers"

After discussion about the gag order, Merchan said he had concerns about one of the jurors and how truthfully the person had answered questions.

One of the questions on the juror questionnaire asks if the juror or any of their family members were accused of a crime.

Joshua Steinglass of the DA's office told Merchan that they discovered an article featuring a person with the same name who was arrested in Westchester in the 1990s for tearing down political advertisements.

Merchan implores the press to use 'common sense' when reporting jurors' descriptions

Merchan asked reporters to use "common sense" when describing the jurors' physical descriptions.

"There was really no need to mention that one of the jurors had an Irish accent," he said.

A juror has been excused from duty

Juror 2, the oncology nurse, has been excused from duty. As court started today, Merchan told lawyers on both sides that the juror called and conveyed that after sleeping on it, she had concerns about being fair and impartial.

She had concerns about her identity becoming public and said that friends and family have already inquired about whether she is a juror. The juror added that given these outside influences, she was concerned about her ability to be fair and impartial.

An oncology nurse, a corporate lawyer and a man with "no spare time": Meet the first 7 jury members of Trump’s hush money trial

The first seven people were selected to serve on the jury in Trump’s  hush money trial  in New York on Tuesday after they made it clear to both sides that they could render a fair and impartial verdict.

They were chosen on the second day of the trial after prosecutors and the defense team whittled down  a group of 96 potential jurors . At one point, Merchan  admonished Trump after he observed him  audibly mouthing something  in the direction of one of the jurors, who had been asked about a social media post she made the day Joe Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 election.

“I won’t tolerate that,” Merchan said. “I will not have any jurors intimidated in this courtroom.” Trump’s lawyers ultimately eliminated the woman from the jury pool.

The seven chosen so far were sworn in Tuesday and directed by Merchan to return to court Monday.

Twelve people will be seated on the jury, and each side will select alternates. The trial is expected to last as long as eight weeks.

Read more on the seven jurors selected so far.

Day 3 begins

Merchan has taken the bench — a few minutes early — and started Day 3.

Trump is taking a phone call at the defense table

Trump is using his phone in the courtroom, openly flouting the rules of the courtroom. Blanche just told him to stop and Trump tucked the phone in his pocket while looking annoyed.

Prosecutors seek to ask Trump about civil fraud, E. Jean Carroll cases and more if he testifies in hush money case

Dareh Gregorian

Prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office said in a court filing yesterday that they plan to ask Trump about the  costly verdicts  and findings of wrongdoing in his numerous civil cases if the former president decides to  testify in the criminal case  — though the permissibility of that line of questioning remains to be seen.

The prosecutors said they intend to ask Trump about the judgment in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ civil fraud suit against him and his company, as well as a pair of verdicts in lawsuits brought by writer E. Jean Carroll. The judgments in the three cases total  almost $550 million  and include findings that Trump  committed fraud  in the AG’s case and that he is liable for  sexual abuse  and  defamation  in the Carroll case.

District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office also plans to mention findings by the judge in the civil fraud case that Trump  violated a gag order  and “ testified untruthfully  under oath” during the trial.

Prosecutors said they want to be able to bring up those findings — which  Trump is appealing  — “to impeach the credibility of the defendant” if he takes the witness stand.

Trump said last week he  “absolutely“ plans to testify  but is under no obligation to do so.

Trump lawyers in Florida classified docs case seek more time to meet deadlines in order to "defend him in New York and before this Court"

In a filing today, Trump’s legal team representing him in the classified documents against him in Florida are seeking more time to meet deadlines in order for them to “defend him in New York and before this Court.”

Trump’s lawyers argue that their client and his counsel “cannot prepare — or even discuss — the required filings anywhere but an appropriate SCIF (sensitive compartmented information facility), a virtually impossible task given” the former president and his lawyers Blanche and Emil Bove’s involvement in the hush money trial.

“The special counsel’s office argues President Trump’s constitutional rights are ‘not implicated’ because his counsel has had ‘months to prepare the submissions at issue’ and will ‘only be in trial four days a week in New York,’” Trump’s lawyers wrote in the filing. “This premise is untethered to reality and disregards the substantial motion practice that has occurred before this Court.”

Trump departs Trump Tower

Brittany Kubicko

Trump has left Trump Tower and is headed to the courthouse for Day 3 of his hush money trial.

Fiery exchanges over Facebook posts and Trump’s behavior mark second day of trial

Jonathan Allen

The first seven jurors were selected for Trump’s hush money trial Tuesday amid a battle over prospective jurors’ old Facebook posts and calls to “lock him up” and the judge’s warning that the former president should not try to intimidate the panelists who will be deciding his fate.

“I will not have any jurors intimidated in this courtroom. I want to make this crystal clear,” Merchan told Trump and Blanche outside the jurors' presence. Merchan told Blanche his client was “audibly” saying something in the direction of the juror while she was “12 feet away from your client.”

Merchan said that he didn’t know what Trump was saying but that he’d been “muttering” and “gesturing” at the juror, and he directed Blanche to talk to his client about his behavior. Blanche then whispered something into Trump’s ear.

The incident underscores Trump’s penchant for acting up in court and the problems his lawyers might have keeping him in check. He spoke loudly in front of jurors during the E. Jean Carroll defamation trial and at one point stormed out of his civil fraud trial — two trials he appeared at voluntarily. His presence is required in the criminal case, and the trial could last as long as eight weeks.

The current drama came on the second day of jury selection as seven jurors were selected for the case. The jury is anonymous, so their names weren’t used in open court, but panelists include a lawyer, a salesman, an oncology nurse, an IT consultant, a teacher and a software engineer. The seven were sworn in and told to return to court Monday.

Read the full story here

The first jurors have now been chosen for Trump’s criminal hush money trial after a cross-section of Manhattan residents openly revealed their views of the likely GOP nominee. NBC’s Laura Jarrett reports for "TODAY."

On trial off-day, Trump complains about jury selection process for his criminal case

Trump ripped the jury selection process in his historic New York criminal trial yesterday, the day after the first seven jurors were selected out of a pool of almost 100 people.

Posting about the hush money trial on its scheduled off-day, Trump — who has repeatedly accused the judge in the case of being biased against him — suggested incorrectly that he should be entitled to unlimited strikes of potential jurors in his criminal case.

“I thought STRIKES were supposed to be ‘unlimited’ when we were picking our jury? I was then told we only had 10, not nearly enough when we were purposely given the 2nd Worst Venue in the Country,” he wrote on Truth Social before he decried the criminal cases against him as “election interference” and part of a “witch hunt.”

Under New York law, each side does have an unlimited number of strikes “for cause,”   but Merchan, the judge presiding over the case, can decide whether or not that cause is worthy of a strike.

The two sides are also entitled to a limited number of “peremptory strikes” — potential jurors they can dismiss. Because Trump is charged with a Class E felony, which is a lower-level felony, he and prosecutors are entitled to 10 peremptory challenges each. (The number goes up to 20 for defendants facing the highest level of felony charge, Class A.)

While Merchan has dismissed scores of potential jurors who said they could not be impartial or had scheduling conflicts, he has dismissed only two for cause in the two days since jury selection began . One was a person who had written “lock him up” of Trump in a 2017 social media post. Merchan denied some other Trump cause dismissal requests, including one for a woman who had posted on Facebook about celebrating Joe Biden’s 2020 election win.

Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche then used one of his peremptory challenges to remove the woman.

Read the full story

Trump hush money trial resumes with jury selection after day off

Jury selection is set to resume in former President Donald Trump's hush money trial in New York City after a break in action yesterday.

With seven jurors already having been selected from a pool of 96, the schedule for today will focus largely on questioning potential jurors in a second group of the same size to see whether they can be fair and impartial when it comes to Trump. State Judge Juan Merchan has said he hopes to have 12 jurors, as well as alternates, selected by the end of tomorrow.

Prosecutors and lawyers for Trump will have less opportunity to dismiss potential jurors going forward, because both used six of their 10 peremptory challenges Tuesday.

While both sides can make an unlimited number of challenges for cause, it is up to the judge to decide whether to grant those challenges and strike those jurors. Merchan dismissed two jurors for cause Tuesday, one of whom had posted a “lock him up” message about Trump on Facebook, but he denied some other challenges.