It might not have been the best food on Earth, but it had a legitimate claim to being the finest fare in the sky. On board a zeppelin, one of the German-owned rigid airships that traversed the Atlantic in the early 20th century, travelers ate like kings—or, at the very least, lesser nobility. From 1928 to 1937, when the Hindenburg disaster saw the once-bright future of lighter-than-air travel go up in smoke, passengers experienced food to rival modern luxury cruise ships. These rigid airships were enormous structures, the size of buildings, hanging more than 1,000 feet in the air and cruising at speeds exceeding 80 miles an hour.
I will admit that the initial reason I picked up Anna Faris’s new book Unqualified was a little dubious, though probably not rare: I wanted to see what she had to say about Chris Pratt. This August, the affable, generally well-liked celebrity couple—both known, in Pratt’s words, for portraying “intelligently played idiots”—announced that they were splitting up after eight years of marriage. Faris had at that point already written a book based on her popular relationship-advice podcast Anna Faris Is Unqualified. After they announced their split, there was something morbidly intriguing about the fact that the book’s publication seemed to be going ahead as scheduled, especially since neither had spoken directly about their breakup in the months since first sharing the news on social media. Unqualified arrived in stores on Tuesday, with a big, red coverline that now feels tragically self-defeating for a relationship-advice book: “FOREWORD BY CHRIS PRATT.” Imagine if, on the eve of Bossypants’ release, Tina Fey had been demoted.
Modern scientists continue to pour scorn on the idea, attributing sightings to carbon-monoxide poisoning and sleep paralysis. But the British are more confident about the existence of ghosts than they are of a divine creator, or heaven. This book shows why ghosts have survived amid scientific, political and religious revolutions. Best to keep a light on.
The reason is that I tried being braless, and I liked it better. It wasn’t a political decision, except insofar as everything a woman does with her body that isn’t letting someone else dictate what she ought to do with it is a political decision.