The Players: Niall Ferguson, writer, historian, brainy professor at Harvard who isn't afraid of rebutting a bad review with a lawsuit; Pankaj Mishra, writer, essayist, brainy reviewer for the London Review of Books who isn't afraid of unleashing a scathing review.
Today in books: Universal options Erik Larson's non-fiction chiller In the Garden of Beasts as a possible Tom Hanks vehicle, Niall Ferguson threatens to call in the lawyers over a bad review, and the many theories about literary criticism's decline.
It includes Barack Obama, Rupert Murdoch and, for some reason, Brian Kilmeade
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