The Best Book Covers You’ll Never See, Why Nothing Works, What Makes a Good Cat

PLUS: Chimps & Humans, The Leopard, The Worst Noël

𝐈𝐍𝐕𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐆𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒:

𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐤: 𝐍𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐈 𝐁𝐮𝐲 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬

Walter Kirn | Unbound | December 10, 2012

“About five years ago, for seven dollars, I bought an old citrus juicer at a thrift shop.  It was one of those vintage small appliances which seem built to survive gas explosions and hammer attacks. When I turned on the motor with a metal toggle switch, a drive shaft spun a heavy ceramic knob that gouged out the hearts of lemon and orange halves, leaving not a scrap of pulp uncrushed. The thing worked beautifully, almost like new, so I looked up its serial number on the internet to see when the unit was manufactured, guessing it might be almost forty years old. Wrong. It dated to the 1940s. It was seventy, the stubborn monster, still giving satisfaction with every use. … I can’t say the same about my coffee grinders.”....

𝐎𝐧𝐞 𝐙𝐨𝐨, 𝐒𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐄𝐬𝐜𝐚𝐩𝐞𝐝 𝐂𝐡𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐳𝐞𝐞𝐬

Imogen West-Knights | Guardian | December 5, 2023 

Superb piece of reporting that amply lives up to its title. A moment’s forgetfulness by a keeper at Furuvik Zoo in Sweden resulted in seven chimpanzees leaving their enclosure. It was winter, below -15C, and experts said that tranquilizer darts would freeze before they worked. Hunters were summoned and fatal shots authorized. Chimps are very like us. Was it the right thing to do?

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐁𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐂𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐘𝐨𝐮’𝐥𝐥 𝐍𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐒𝐞𝐞

Zachary Petit | Fast Company | 11th December 2023

The book covers that you see in bookshops are just “the tip of the iceberg”. Beneath them, unseen, lies a mass of designs that rarely see the light of day — different ways of selling a book that were ultimately discarded on the journey to the final product. Here, a series of designers show an early draft cover for a book alongside the published final and explain what changed and why.

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐌𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐬 𝐀 𝐆𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐂𝐚𝐭?

Emily Stewart | Vox | 11th December 2023

It is a mistake to assess cats by human or even canine standards. “Cats aren’t here to serve us; the relationship is more of a push and pull. They require boundaries. When a cat is dissatisfied, owners know it, and its surroundings are often at fault. If you’ve got a ‘bad’ cat, the bad is on you. Cats are not as eager to make people happy in the way dogs are, nor are they as motivated by food”