Recently the daughter of one of our regular readers (Roy Turrentine) posted a comment.
She wrote in response to the reports of politician
Bob Shepherd was delighted by her writing, and he offered her a reading list of some of his favorites (unlikely that these are on the Common Core reading list, since CCSS privileges “informational text” over fiction).
Bob wrote:
Have you read Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse, yet? I fell head over heels in love with that book when I was your age. And take a crack at 1984, by Orwell, which may be the most important book to be read at this time in history. And here, a few suggestions for short fiction:
MY CANDIDATES FOR THE BEST SHORT STORIES EVER WRITTEN
Asimov, Isaac. “The Last Question”
Atwood, Margaret. “Bread”
Benet, Stephen Vincent. “By the Waters of Babylon”
Bierce, Ambrose. “Chickamauga”
Bierce, Ambrose. “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”
Borges, Jorge Luis, “The Library of Babel”
Bostrom, Nick. “The Dragon Tyrant”
Bradbury Ray. “The Veldt”
Bradbury, Ray. “The End of the World”
Bradbury,. Ray. “There Will Come Soft Rains”
Chiang, Ted. “Stories of Our Lives”
Chopin, Kate. “Story of an Hour”
Crane, Stephen. “A Mystery of Heroism”
Du Maurier, Daphne. “The Birds”
Faulkner, William. “The Bear”
Gallico, Paul. “The Snowgoose”
Goldstein, Rebecca. “The Legacy of Raizel Kaidish”
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “Rappaccini’s Daughter”
Hathorne, Nathaniel. “Young Goodman Brown”
Hemingway, Ernest. “Hills Like White Elephants”
Hemingway, Ernest. “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”
Hemingway, Ernest. “The Long Wait”
Liu, Ken. “An Advanced Readers’ Picture Book of Comparative Cognition”
Jackson, Shirley. “The Lottery”
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia. “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”
O’Conner, Flannery. “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”
Roth, Phillip. “The Conversion of the Jews”
Thurber, James. “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”
Tolstoy, Leo. “The Life and Death of Ivan Illych”
Updike, John. “A & P”
Updike, John. “The Music School”
Vonnegut, Kurt. “Who Am I This Time?”
Walker, Alice. “Everyday Use”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
A “Best short stories list” without a Poe is like a pit without a pendulum.
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LOL. The Fall of the House of Usher. Or The Cask of Amontillado.
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Poe is not much to my taste, but Roy’s daughter loves him, so she will definitely appreciate your comment. Poe was the genius who invented BOTH the detective story AND the ambiguity between whether what are being related are supernatural events or the results of madness on which so much horror fiction relies. So, pretty major accomplishments, those.
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“Best Short Stories”
The list without a Poe
Like pendulum, you know
Without the rat-filled pit
Without the man, to wit
Like murders in the Morgue
Without the angry ape
Like heart beneath the board
Without the nervous knave
The list without a Poe
I really must implore
Is poem without a crow
Who utters “Nevermore!”
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The Best Short Stories list without a Poe is usherly lacking
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You should be ushamed.
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The Fall of the House of Shepherd
He left Poe off “The List”
Of Stories that are “best”
And Bob will pay for this
Cuz Poe is Maker’s guest
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LOL,
SomeDAM:
I am.
How frightfully lame
Should I bury my shame
In amontillado?
For you, I know,
Will not let it go.
This woeful lack
Will keep coming back
A dark, spectral black
Raven or cat
Or a rat-a-tat
Of that the old man’s heart.
In your future posts
A revenant ghost.
O where shall I start
O where to begin
To make amends?
I shall not be free
Of this curse, I fear,
Till I lie on my bier
Finally free
Beside Anabelle Lee.
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Your worry is not me
But Poe — and God — you see
Cuz pendulum will swing
And chasten everything
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And death will be the pits
For keeping Poe from list
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“Your worry is not me
But Poe — and God — you see
Cuz pendulum will swing
And chasten everything”
Oh my Lord. Rolling on the floor here. Perfect, SomeDAM. Positively Poe-tic.
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Bob, little did I expect that your reading list would provoke a tsunami of responses.
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LOL. All these wonderful stories that people are mentioning! That’s just awesome. Thank you, Diane!
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J.D. Salinger • For Esmé—with Love and Squalor
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Oh yes.
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Alice Munro “Day of the Butterfly” —one of the most honest depictions of middle school social dynamics I’ve ever read.
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Wow. Thank you, Ponderosa! I had not read this. I just did. It’s so delicate and horrifying at the same time. What. A. Story!!!!
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Chekhov.
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Hey buddy, Chekhov yourself! Sorry. It’s the sixth grader in me who won’t leave.
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Ha. Pavlov.
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Spock, Uhura , Scotty, Bones, Sulu and Captain Kirk, too.
That’s the Trekkie in me
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And actually, Spock did write a book, though I don’t know about short stories.
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Spock was more of nonfiction guy.
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Thanks, Diane, for posting this. It’s already generated some magnificent additions to the list. What fun!
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Making a list of “Best short stories” is a bit like making a list of “best guitarists”. It depends upon one’s taste and definition of”best”
Personally, I would also have included The Lorax by Dr. Seuss
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Agreed. Any such list is going to be indefensible except to the extent that it serves the teacherly purpose of pointing people, especially young people, to some wonders. Wow. Look at that.
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And I must say, The Lorax is awesome.
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But your point, SomeDAM, is very well made. And I agree.
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I would have done better to have simply pointed at these stories and quoted Vonnegut: “Well, if this isn’t nice, what is?”
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The list actually doesn’t have to be very long because it’s more like a door.
Once it is open a crack, way leads on to way (as a wise man once said)
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And revisions of sugarplums danced in his head.
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Beautifully said, SomeDAM!
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The Literadoor
Once the door
Is open a crack
Never more
Will readers come back
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A hit! A very palpable hit, SomeDAM. This Noel Prize is conferred, I suppose, by the Pole-ish peoples?
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Well said about the door. But usually, when way leads on to way, I doubt that I should ever come back. In this case, it’s good to take the road not taken and the one taken again. By the way, two stories that stayed with me from adolescence, when I was more of an adventurer: The Interlopers and Leiningen Versus the Ants. They’re not too deep, but fun.
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Thanks, LeftCoast. Just read them both. Both well-crafted stories. And Lord, what is a list of great stories without a few by Saki?
As I was reading “Leiningen Versus the Ants,” however, I couldn’t help but notice the shocking (but common at the time) racism of the story, which appears to have been shared by its author and not simply to be an attribute of the protagonist. In fact, given the man v. nature theme of the story, that racism is probably central to the worldview held by the author of what was probably, to him, a stirring tale of the triumph of the colonial Übermensch.
So, here’s a question: What should one do with this as an editor of textbooks? NOT anthologize it? Rewrite the story to deal properly with the offensive stuff (there’s a lot of it). Postpone putting the story before an audience until that audience is old enough for it to be curated and for its abominable aspects to be dealt with in accompanying notes? The last of these, I suspect.
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I think that by 8th grade or so, young people are able to understand and discuss the historical background of a story like Leiningen and its author. If we only read things with which we completely agree, something will go terribly wrong. Looking at you, search and social media algorithms that have siloed society into extremists who won’t get vaccinated and storm the U.S. Capitol. That’s not to say we should read Mein Kampf in grade school, but there must be a thoughtful middle.
As an editor of textbooks, you should be complimented if you put a great deal of thought into how subjects like colonial plantations in Brazil will be discussed in class, and ashamed if you don’t think much about it and merely select stories because they are clean to the point of sterile. As we all have been saying for weeks, students will not feel ashamed of themselves when confronting racism. They even want to.
Why do big districts like mine select English textbooks, anyway? There should be many different anthologies in circulation, and English departments in schools should be allocated funds to buy what they feel best suits their students. Let teachers decide instead of textbook companies. And no, not ebooks. Books. With paper.
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Agreed, LCT. My sentiments exactly. However, don’t get me started on the horror stories about the pressures on textbook editors, in house and from the outside, to publish only utterly sanitized pablum. The story of my life, dealing with that idiocy. Heidegger was a truly horrible person. Despicable. A freaking Nazi who was capable of turning on the mentor who had made him. And he was a terrible writer. But is he worth reading? Yes.
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Every major lit anthology series has Romeo and Juliet at Grade 9. But they typically cut 1/5th to 1/3rd of it without saying a word about having done so.
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And if it were up to me, Dr. Seuss would definitely have a Noel Prize in literature for How the Grinch stole Christmas.
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The First Noel Prize, at that.
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SomeDAM, must I remind you that the First Noel was to certain poor Shepherds?
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Ha ha ha
Good point.
I should have said The First Noel Prize in literature.
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I kept the list short, SomeDAM. I was going for the ignoble Prize in Economics.
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I do not like econ and VAM
I do not like, SomeDAM I am
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I had the thought of writing a little workers’ parable, SomeDAM, with Jeff Bezos as Santa and the elves, those poor Claus-ette cases, as Amazon workers. A kind of contemporary Animal Farm, but with humans reduced to the level of barnyard chattel.
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I might be writing a book….I played my saxophone in vietnam on firebases for first air cavalry—neil larsen—who returned to play with george Harrison, greg allman, whitney houston and fulfilled a lifelong dream of not only playing piano for Miles Davis—Miles told him to produce his next album….I returned and played a few dozen nights with Chuck Berry, I raised a lot of complaints about bigshots in st. louis for the damage they inflicted on public schools….cancelling school board elections so they good ram their charters and other nonsense into city…I helped Jeff Bryant with this…https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/09/07/the-sad-story-of-public-education-in-st-louis/.
I recorded an album several decades ago…only 1000 copies were pressed, and it is still being discussed all over the world..”My impossible dream…redo rose petal lady with a girl singer who needs final touches on her ability to really scorch a blues..ksenia buzina..with big rich McDonough on guitar”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAsjSPdvXD0
I told ksenia buzina that my new friend from Iran is “precious”. Doubt if it reaches her….but….Playing blues at bb’s blues, jazz and soup in st. louis (on my sax) a lady from Iran took photos and talked to me about lots of stuff —she is precious( Sara Parhizgari….INSTRUCTOR
BollyX Badge
Sara
Edina, MN
Sara was born and grew up in the revolutionary Iran where public dancing was banned by the Islamic Republic. As a result, she grew up in a world of underground dance and came to associate dancing not only with joy and passion, but with freedom and resistance. As a child, she danced not only to Iranian tunes but sometimes to Bollywood dance videos! Ever since she has left Iran, she has dabbled in many forms of dancing and fitness but nothing has resonated as much as BollyX!
What she likes most about BollyX is its inclusivity and its uniting of Eastern and Western dance styles. She looks forward to sharing this wonderful form of dance and exercise with people of all backgrounds. She believes that people can shake off bad moods, bad social structures, and perhaps bad governments when they find the joy of dancing inside!
BollyX member since September 2021
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WOW!!!!
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I forgot to mention…I taught sixth grade for 19 years…outside of Desoto, Missouri….One of my students was Bob minner….the 11 year old brought his guitar into my classroom…..I jammed with him on piano…..he went on to become a musician for Tim McGraw and Faith Hill—-I heard him talking on kmox, and called in and said….lasting 29 years with people like that spoke well for the kind of person Bob was…..he was talking about his recording of America the Beautiful—those kids did not have only my liberal slant about the world thrown at them…we all spent fifteen minutes every day listening to paul harvey and the news…..if only the conservatives still had people like paul harvey making a lot of sense when he spoke…..good day…..also the plastic duck not unlike Groucho Marx had on you bet your life….if the kids said the secret word…….not sure I could get by teaching the way I wanted nowadays…….
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I would definitely read this book! And the recording is wonderful:
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She believes that people can shake off bad moods, bad social structures, and perhaps bad governments when they find the joy of dancing inside!
Oh my Lord, that’s beautiful.
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She can explain all about stuff…..The lady I met from Iran who thinks dancing can solve problems…..she must be a pretty smart cookie…..
Sara is currently completing her dissertation on The Irrefutable Object and the Syntactic Priority Thesis.
Background of Fellowship:
The Josephine De Karman Fellowship Trust was established in 1954 by the late Dr. Theodore Von Karman, world renowned aeronautics expert and teacher and first director of the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at the California Institute of technology…..
The purpose of this Fellowship program is to recognize and assist students whose scholastic achievements reflect Professor Von Karman’s high standards.
Approximately eight (😎 dissertation fellowships, in the amount of $25,000 each, will be awarded for the regular academic year (fall and spring semesters or the equivalent where the quarterly system prevails), paid through the fellowship office of the university in which the recipient is enrolled for study in the United States. Study must be carried out only in the United States and all funds must be expended only within this country.
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The Irrefutable Object and the Syntactic Priority Thesis
Whoosh. Over my head. Where is Jon Awbry? I need him to explain these terms to me. Some quick Googling tells me that the latter is related to Frege’s attempt to reduce arithmetic to logic. but I could find no definitions that I could follow, alas.
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I reported that both of us found the words kind of challenging…she explained….Happy New Year!🎉🎉🎉I think you should write a book about your experiences. Everyone’s story is so unique and important. Haha you are looking my thesis up.You are correct about Frege being relevant here. The ‘irrefutable object’ is a typo. Whenever I get an award, I get a lot of typos in the description. The title is about ‘irreferable object’ and it was actually the subject of a presentation. I am not sure why it is reported as my dissertation title.
Anyways, I work on the foundations of math and its relevance to metaphysics. Fun stuff but music is even more fun:) have a great day!
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Awesome record.
Your keyboard and sax work are fabulous.
As are the guitar and flute.
Who were the other musicians?
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Thank you….http://www.stlmusicyesterdays.com/Gibraltar.htm Vincent West was the guitar player.Norman Pelot was the drummer. Dave harmon played bass, and sang his song about the blind man who showed him the way……They were from Desoto,missouri, and they all passed away in the last five years….Steve armstrong was the vocalist on rose petal lady, and he played flute. I sang the machine is small enough….I was running for state representative, and lost the democrat primary to a st. louis policeman—–in st. francois county. We debated on the parking lot of mineral area college….me, my opponent, and a reporter….no one showed up……Nixon resigned from office the week of the election….Juvenile officer Dewey Smallen ran the political machine…(get it—the machine is small enough) “you don’t always have take what comes out of a juvenile officer’s trunk” Dewey came to see me play at the holiday inn in farmington missouri, and told me the only thing he had in his trunk was a big old rusty tire tool….after I stop singing…..the music was very ahead of things for rock and roll of that era…..the bass and drums made it easy to just play…..the album was not very important to the band….it was a warm up trial…..and I was not a permanent member…..but there are several places where it is discussed all over the world….I think the music was pretty good.
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The link about the musicians shows lots of photos, but none of me….they did print the note I wrote to them….
“”My 1974 Gibraltar album was recorded in Cape Girardeau, and the band considered it to be a warm- up exercise for much more important projects…I am not sure if there was anything in writing about publishing and copyrights. I was happy that we sold enough of them locally to make a profit on them.
I sold a couple hundred of the vinyl copies out of the 1000 we had pressed 22 years later, for 200 dollars and contacted everyone to split the money five ways—it was forty dollars for each of us—story over—not quite. The guy was from Switzerland, or maybe Belgium, and he found a way to market them, and they are still sold in Australia, and god knows where else as CDs. I learned this year that five of the vinyl copies I sold brought him …
about 2000 dollars—which is what we paid for 1000 of them in 1974.””
In the last year, I have seen several vinyl copies offered for 500-1000 dollars…….since they are easily available online….I have to wonder….how successful any of these were in the marketing of them.
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Thanks so much for all the information.
I agree the music was ahead of it’s time.
And “pretty good”?
You are pretty humble.
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Never read that one.
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You don’t have to read it. We’re living through it.
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I could write a story and call it The Test. It would be like The Lottery by Jackson. Testing is just like The Lottery. It’s a ritualistic exercise in random human sacrifice, and no one remembers why we’re doing it. “Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.” Testing in May, keep your school open — for today.
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If you’re going to read Daphne Du Market, read “Rebecca.” Hands down the best opening chapter in literature.
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The older I get, the more I admire the short story form. It is a gift to be able to write a good one. My favorite is anything by Isaac Bashevis Singer. A collection by Yukio Mishima, Death in Midsummer, might be the most profound I’ve read in the past decade. And why did it take so late in life until I discovered Melville’s Bartleby?
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If you read Daphne Du Marier, read “Rebecca.” Hands down the best opening chapter in literature. It bogs down for a bit after that to set up the story, but hang on for the finish. I was introduced to that book by my 9th grade English teacher, who wanted to give me a nook I hadn’t yet read (I’d read a ton of classics by that point).
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❤
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The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin
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The vast majority of Bob’s authors are male and White, totally unacceptable these days. The “guide” are “culturally relevant” texts, the world. the world changes and we have to change to remain “relevant” to successive generations. Keep in mind the “successive generations” pay for social security and Medicare/aid
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Langston Hughes. I know many culturally relevant books and poems, but not too many short stories.
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His poems often read like little stories. “Theme for English B,” for example, or “Song of a Dark Girl” (the latter extraordinarily powerful)
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key point: so much good in the list, but so much great diverse reading waiting to be recgonized
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Absolutely!!!!!!!!! Yes!!! Yes!!! Yes!!!
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And so many masterpieces that are rarely anthologized:
E.g.,
“I Am Expert in Matters of Love,” by Zeb-un-Nissa
“The Slave Auction,” from William Wells Brown’s Clotelle
“Magalu,” by Helene Johnson
“Homage to the Empress of the Blues,” by Robert Hayden”
“1 Archipelagoes,” from Map of the New World, by Derek Walcott
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I understand the point.
But I would also entreat people
Let us judge a book
By reading , to discover
And not by simple look
At author or of cover
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It’s a somewhat diverse list. Here’s an issue: for millennia, women were not allowed, here in the West, and elsewhere around the globe, to receive educations and have the leisure with which to pursue the arts. So, it is not at all surprising that the body of work produced by men would be larger. It’s tragic and disgusting but not surprising.
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And Mr. Goodman, I would argue that every work on that list is quite culturally relevant–relevant to the here and now. This is one of the things that makes a work into a classic–enduring relevance. Something lastingly valuable, important.
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For example, “By the Waters of Babylon” is the first great post-apocalyptic war” work of fiction (discounting stuff like The Book of Revelations). Literally thousands and thousands of works since–ones that swell the lists on Netflix, for example–are but thinly veiled, poor retellings of the tale that Stephen Vincent Benet ORIGINATED. To have first conceived this–that’s genius.
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We do keep retelling the same damned stories, don’t we?
And keep remaking the same damned movies too.
We humans are a very uncreative lot.
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Respectfully Bob, in the world of today’s education the “scorecard” I referenced in a previous post is the filter used by schools and school districts, in the world of educational politics we have to relate with new generations of educators and parents, … what we considered as classics are looked upon as antiquitiies …
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Ed, I have a couple responses to this post, below, but they are in moderation.
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But yes, as an editor of literature texts for publishing houses, I waded the sewers of the politics for decades. And I fought the battle to expand the canon. But I am horrified when I see ephemeral garbage in current texts, print and online. There is so much really superb contemporary writing that there’s no excuse for that. The poems of the young North Carolinian poet Brooke Baker Belk, for example.
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It should be called Plagiarflix
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The whole of our world cultural inheritance is relevant today, from the time when we first stood up on the savannah. And the older a thing is, often, the more fascinating, the more engaging it is, because of its combination of strangeness and continuity with the present. Part of the work of a teacher, I think, is to put these amazing works and history before kids and to make them accessible.
They can find Squidgame on their own.
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Consider the blockbuster series Vikings, or the books of by Tolkien and Rowlings and Riordan so popular with young people. Materials from the past made accessible. If I can tell it well enough, contextualize it enough, that a light bulb goes on in a kid’s head and Sappho, or whoever, is speaking to him or her across the ages, then I have done my job.
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it goes without saying, but Shakespeare was also a white male.
And I don’t think anyone is suggesting he be kept off “the list”.
At least I hope not.
But I don’t believe he wrote any short stories.
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Well, since others have pointed to the limitations (political) of the list as such, I’ll add a few stories: Richard Wright, “Bright and Morning Star,” Tillie Olsen, “Tell Me a Riddle” and “Oh, Yes,” Kate Chopin, “Desiree’s Baby,” Charles Chesnutt, “The Passing of Grandison.” The Wright story is hard to teach, as is “Tell Me a Riddle”–many students can’t imagine sympathizing with communists (oh, my!). Nut the other Olsen story and the Kate Chopin make for wonderful teaching, as does the Chesnutt. .
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Richard Wright, “The Man Who Saw the Flood.”
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For a YA audience: “Geraldine Moore the Poet,” by Toni Cade Bambara
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Charles Chestnutt, “The Bouquet”
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“The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” by Ursula K. Le Guin.
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Thank you, heathcl2bb, for this list!
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And Leaving Olson’s “Tell Me a Riddle” off this list–THAT was unforgiveable. A masterpiece. Thank you.
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cx: Olsen’s
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Well done! Thank you.
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Good list, unsurprisingly.
It may not be suitable for such a list, but my favorite, shortest short story is “Sticks” by George Saunders. Here it is in full:
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This is awesome. And this phrase: “Dad’s one concession to glee”–what a fine piece of writing that is!!!
I ❤ this genre of flash fiction.
On that note, I once encountered a contest to write a short story in six words or fewer. My stab at that:
“No meds, thanks.” –Jeanne D’Arc
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I think Julius Caesar gets the No bull prize for his story of conquest:
“Veni, vidi, vici” (I came. I saw. I conquered.)
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From a joke and puzzle book, c.1960 when I was in 5th grade:
“Hired, Tired? Fired!” and “Adam Had’em.”
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“Eve took leave” 🌿
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“Satan bait ’em”
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It is interesting how many of these Jocey (my daughter) had actually read, especially since so many great YA authors still command her attention by treating some pretty heavy stuff.
Without sounding like a Common Coreist, I would like to add some nonfiction to the list. Crane Brinton’s Anatomy of a Revolution belongs on many a list, and Life on The Mississippi is a clever marriage of the story told within the framework of natural history.
Travel books are often ignored. William Beebe wrote a beautiful description of his travels in the Amazon, and John McFee was a magnificent natural history writer.
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The Metropolitan Center at NYU has developed a filter, a scorecard, to rate Culturally Relevant Sustaining Education matrials, it is widely used by educational institutions to selecttexts and other classroom materials.
https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/metrocenter/ejroc/culturally-responsive-curriculum-scorecards
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Bill Gates’ short list of Best fiction:
MS Windows manual
MS word Manual
Common Core State Standards Initiative
The Road Ahead
How to avoid a climate disaster
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Oops, forgot one
💕Love Letters to a Robot
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It’s astonishing, isn’t it, how one person’s pathology can end up writ so large upon the world.
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Too bad it doesn’t include:
Isaac Asimov: “The Fun They Had” (all about computerized school. Spoiler alert – the kids wish they they were in classrooms with real teachers and students).
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I would suggest some nonfiction, notwithstanding the nature of recent problems on CC with this.
Life on the Mississippi comes to mind. Natural history by John McFee is wonderful. Numerous biographies have been added to that genre.
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And we should recall the great novels: crime and Punishment, Anna Karennea, les Miserables,
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Yes,
The essays of Terry Tempest Williams, Lewis Thomas, Aldo Leopold and Edward Abbey are also excellent (although the latter is likely to be controversial for some of his politically incorrect views)
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And Barbara Kingsolver’s essays are also excellent
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“In Dreams Begin Responsibilities,” by Delmore Schwartz.
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One to bookmark for sure. Great!
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Deborah Eisenberg, “The Robbery”
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I was very excited, a couple years back, when Kristen Roupenian’s short story “Cat People” went viral. I was hoping that this would lead to a great resurgence in interest among young adults in reading short stories. Back in the mid twentieth century, every magazine, just about, carried short fiction, and most creative writers supported themselves, between major projects like novels, by churning these out for decent pay. Alas, no more. Very few popular magazines, online or in print, carry short fiction, and even fewer pay decently. I love this genre. It’s the one that I practice most. But sometimes I feel, as a writer of short fiction, like a typewriter repairman. This is a great pity, for it’s a marvelous art form.
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Oops. “Cat Person”
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Cat People is good too.
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And then there was Leonard Cohen’s paean to great bathrooms, “Hella loo, ja?”
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writing on the internet seems to have devolved into twittering sweet nothings.
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Some day , aliens are going to visit earth, analyze what we left behind and wonder why humans peaked intellectually in the 20th century and then went downhill, with Twitter and Facebook marking the beginning of the slide.
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Off topic, but these people are today’s Jonas Salk.
Texas researchers Maria Elena Bottazzi and Peter Hotez led development of the Cobervax patent-free Covid-19 vaccine.”
“This vaccine can be made locally all over the world, and we’ve now technology-transferred our Texas Children’s vaccine to producers in India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, [and] Botswana,” Hotez tweeted Tuesday. “Our Texas Children’s Center does not plan to make money on this, it’s a gift to the world.”
While Big Pharma corporations took billions of dollars in public funding to help develop vaccines from which they then reaped enormous profits while often charging exorbitant prices, Hotez and Battazzi created Cobervax with $7 million, mostly from private investors. One of these, Austin vodka distiller Tito’s, contributed $1 million to the effort.”
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/12/30/texas-team-applauded-giving-what-big-pharma-refuses-patent-free-vaccine-world
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❤
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John Cheever, “The Swimmer”
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Great story!
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