Bertelsmann

German media giant Bertelsmann has admitted it lied about its Nazi past and that it made big profits during Adolf Hitler's reign in Germany using Jewish slave labour.

Staff at Bertelsmann were notified by Chairman Gunther Thielen in an email on Monday 7 October 2002: ‘I would like to express our sincere regret for the inaccuracies the Commission has uncovered in our previous corporate history of the World War Two era as well as for the wartime activities that have been brought to light.’

Guilty pleasures: What makes one person choose painting and another robbery? A controversial theory suggests that artists and criminals have a lot in common: they both break the rules.

Both express a primal rage. Love, hate, fury, despair and passion can be given utterance with brushes and pens, or with guns and knives. Artists enjoy seeing themselves as raffish outsiders, people of dubious morality.

In Praise of PAPER PLEASURES: Will electronic publishing kill books? ‘The first steps of electronic publishing have been faltering. The e-book has not - yet - been a bestseller, or even a viable commercial proposition. One day, however, such ventures will succeed and when electronic publishing becomes the norm, the more desirable (and expensive) the traditional book will correspondingly become.

A Reader's Cold Revenge

B. R. Myers, the author of A Reader's Manifesto, argues that the time has come for readers to stand up to the literary establishment. Myers's goal, he explains, is to convey to fellow readers that they shouldn't feel cowed into reading and pretending to be engaged by the latest dull and pretentious book just because the literary establishment has pronounced it evocative and compelling. Rather readers should trust their own instincts, and decide for themselves what books speak to them in meaningful ways.