7 Fires Publishing

12/28/2025

12/28/2025

In the late 1980s, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary was on the Times best-seller list for 155 consecutive weeks; 57 million copies were sold, a number believed to be second only, in this country, to sales of the Bible. Then came the internet and, with it, ready-to-hand answers to all questions lexical. If you are writing on a computer, it’s almost impossible to misspell a word anymore. And, if you run across an unfamiliar word, you can type it into your browser and get a list of websites with information about it. Like the rest of the analog world, legacy dictionaries have had to adapt or perish.

What happens if dictionaries die out? The relationship between word and meaning is arbitrary, Louis Menand writes. “We can live with arbitrary. We just need the relationship to be stable, and the old Merriam-Webster was a touchstone of stability. We’ve lost that.” Menand writes about how we’ve catalogued our ever-changing language—and what happens without a single source of authority on it: https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/uMitlU

12/28/2025

As 2025 comes to an end, our editors and critics have selected a dozen essential reads in nonfiction and a dozen, too, in fiction and poetry. See the full list: https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/_3K0Ek

12/28/2025

It's a great time for reading.

What were the most popular books in US public libraries this year? We've looked at 40 lists nationwide and the results are in!

12/28/2025

The PURGE!