Emily Strasser

I LOVE @thesundaylongread.bsky.social and frequently peruse for new stories to teach. Such a fun surprise to see my Doomsday Clock piece in this week’s edition!

Humanity Is on a Fast Track to Destruction, Scientists Say. I Met the Experts Counting Down to the Apocalypse. “We’re driving at the edge of a cliff with dim headlights.”

For Popular Mechanics, I went behind the scenes to meet the people behind the @thebulletin.org’s Doomsday Clock. I asked—what does it mean to anticipate apocalypse as your job? www.popularmechanics.com/science/a695...

A power struggle over the succession of leadership, a general committed to an outdated and insane military doctrine, a national leader who won’t pick up the phone due to a perceived slight…It left me infuriated at the resources that have been poured into weapons that could literally end us all.

Nuclear War: A Scenario A Scenario

I recently (finally) read Annie Jacobsen’s terrifying Nuclear War: A Scenario. While the description of weapons systems and nuclear effects were alarming, what was most upsetting was the way the individual egos and paranoia determined the catastrophic outcome. bookshop.org/p/books/nucl...

Trump redeploys nuclear submarines after ex-Russia leader’s menacing tweet Order suggests president might be ready to launch nuclear strike against Russia as tensions rise over Ukraine war

This is extremely alarming?! Words like this, even if they are only threats right now, can lead to devastating escalation. There have been dire close calls in the past, and the international architecture to prevent nuclear war is dangerously fragile right now.
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Calling fiction writers!

Thank you so much for coming, @substockman.bsky.social. It was so buoying to be in conversation with these writers I so admire! @manjula.bsky.social, @rahawahaile.bsky.social, @latriagraham.bsky.social, @maggiemertens.bsky.social

Happy to be at TN Tech for #appstudies2025! Find Half-Life at the @kentuckypress.bsky.social table, and me at the Power of Stories panel at 9:30 am Saturday. #appalachianstudies, #ruralreimagined

A Teenager Lost Her Legs in Gaza. To Walk Again, She Had to Travel 6,000 Miles. The story of Layan Albaz, one of thousands of Palestinian children who have lost limbs in Israeli air strikes—and one of the very few evacuated to the U.S. for medical care.

And this one:
magazine.atavist.com/coming-to-am...

The shelter and the storm What happened when the nation’s immigration crisis came to a small town in Massachusetts?

Also this one is a quiet piece that relies almost completely on immersion and observation, but speaks to an (inter)national story. www.washingtonpost.com/nation/inter...

I find in my classes that it leads to really interesting conversations about what we can learn when the subjective first person voice becomes lens and tool. And what are the limitations and pitfalls.

A Most American Terrorist: The Making Of Dylann Roof In June 2015, he shot and murdered nine black church-goers in Charleston, South Carolina, hoping to ignite a race war. Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah spoke with Roof's family, friends, and the victims' familie...

I’m sure you already know this one? www.gq.com/story/dylann...

Definitely!

Can't wait!

Buy audiobooks & support local bookstores Libro.fm makes it possible for you to buy audiobooks directly through local bookstores.

I recommend libro.fm! Also overdrive and libby for free audiobooks from libraries

Half-Life of a Secret - The University Press of Kentucky In 1942, the US government began construction on a sixty-thousand-acre planned community named Oak Ridge in a rural area west of Knoxville, Tennessee. Unmark...

Thanks for doing this! Would love to be added— my deeply researched memoir traces the intimate, global, and environmental legacies of Oak Ridge through my grandfather’s work there — www.kentuckypress.com/978081319719...

Half-Life of a Secret - The University Press of Kentucky In 1942, the US government began construction on a sixty-thousand-acre planned community named Oak Ridge in a rural area west of Knoxville, Tennessee. Unmark...

My deeply researched memoir, HALF-LIFE OF A SECRET, traces my journey to reckon with the toxic legacy of my grandfather’s work building nuclear weapons on intimate and global scales.

www.kentuckypress.com/978081319719...

Thank you 💜