Influencer Hannah Neeleman, better known by the handle Ballerina Farm, has responded to the idea that she was the inspiration behind the hit novel “Yesteryear.” 
The 35-year-old mom of nine shared her thoughts on the topic during a recently published <a href="https://www.vulture.com/article/ballerina-farm-interview-yesteryear-tradwife.html">interview</a> with Vulture. “I know what’s going on,” Neeleman told the outlet. “I’ve had an online presence for enough time to know that people like to be entertained. I’ve been the butt of jokes and Reels that I’ve seen. It didn’t really surprise me.”
She went on, “I think it just comes with the eyes. There’s so much discourse, like, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s such a big family, and there’s no way she can be doing this.’ So it was like all these ideas are bubbling up into this fictional, entertaining book about tradwives. I’m surprised it didn’t come sooner, honestly.”
“Yesteryear” by Caro Claire Burke is pitched as being about, “A traditional American woman, a beautiful wife and mother who sells her pioneer lifestyle of raw milk and farm-fresh eggs to her millions of social media followers, suddenly awakens cold, filthy, and terrified in the brutal reality of 1805 — where she must unravel whether this living nightmare is an elaborate hoax, a twisted reality show, or something far more sinister in this sensational debut novel.”
It was an instant hit and has already been picked up to be developed into a movie with Academy Award-winning actress Anne Hathaway attached to it. The book’s unhinged protagonist was understood to be a thinly veiled parody of Neeleman and the thousands of copycats she’s inspired.
“Before tradwives, it was the mommy-blogger phase, right?” she told Vulture. “People have always been fascinated with mothers making money being at home with their children. With online discourse, women feed off that negative energy sometimes and that’s why things blow up. I honestly stay away from it as much as I can. So when the term tradwife comes up, or I’m seeing things about ‘Yesteryear,’ I don’t lean into them.”
The influencer went on, “I don’t think women who want to work are winning. I don’t think mothers are winning. In fact, I think it’s a step backward. If someone wants to be a mother, great. If someone wants to be a mother and sell sourdough-bread kits, great. We have to support and cheer each other on even if it doesn’t look like what our home life looks like.”
Neeleman added that “it wasn’t that long ago that women’s only role was the home.” 
“That was their extent. So for women who want to be more, seeing other women glamorize that aspect of womanhood is hard,” she said, insisting that “women love to compare.” 
“I think it is something about women, like, thinking that if we tear them down, we’ll feel better about ourselves. I think it is something that women do that’s kind of their nature, unfortunately,” she added.
“There’s no one saying that a man can’t do laundry and cook and have an amazing job on Wall Street and be a father. Why can’t women do that as well?” Neeleman said. “I understand where the debate is coming from, but I think women have the capability to lean into whatever talents or interests they have. Women are talented in the kitchen, they are talented mothers and nurturers, so they can lean into that, because they have the opportunity to do other things as well.”
“Yesteryear” is pitched as satire, but it’s also <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-new-book-that-treats-traditional-wives-like-the-enemy">received criticism</a> for portraying conservative women as performative liars. One Goodreads reviewer called it “a mean-spirited revenge fantasy against a strawman the author made up.”
“In my experience, satire is supposed to say something, not just be an overt open mocking. I understand why this book will be popular, especially considering modern trends in literature, but all the positive reviews make me feel like someone’s trying to prank me a little bit,” the reviewer wrote.
Even mainstream media outlets admitted “Yesteryear” wasn’t that great. Harper’s Bazaar called it a “vaguely feminist fairy tale” that only works “when you don’t think too much about it.” Vox said it “offers a sadistic influencer comeuppance fantasy.”

Hannah Neeleman

Ballerina Farm Reacts To Being The Inspiration For Viral Novel ‘Yesteryear’

Books

influencer

Tradwives

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From elementary school into adulthood, boys and men read less, and less well, than girls and women. Fourth- and eighth-grade boys are roughly a year (<a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/girls-boys-and-reading/">10 points</a> on the NAEP reading test) <a href="https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reports/reading/2024/g4_8/performance-by-student-group/?grade=4">behind their female classmates</a> in reading.
Maybe the books being published and taught in schools simply aren’t appealing to men and boys. Editors who review manuscripts are naturally biased toward books that suit their own tastes, and <a href="https://issuu.com/leeandlowbooks/docs/diversity_baseline_survey_3.0">only 29%</a> of people working in publishing are men.
The same applies to the teachers who pick reading materials for the classroom. Elementary- and secondary-school faculties have long been overwhelmingly female, and the proportion of male teachers just keeps dropping; it has <a href="https://aibm.org/research/missing-misters/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://aibm.org/research/missing-misters/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0i5qAbpYZhbDH33rB_IpXe">shrunk from 30 to 23% since 1988</a>. And while <a href="https://www.amacad.org/humanities-indicators/humanities-higher-education-surveys/trends-demographics-humanities-faculty#31797" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amacad.org/humanities-indicators/humanities-higher-education-surveys/trends-demographics-humanities-faculty%2331797&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw39mtgAHOhtq35Wc2dpCdW5">English professors are 45% men</a>, they’re likely within a rounding error of 100% feminist. In fact, university departments of literature are a major source of the man-bashing narrative.
College teachers of literature seem more eager to paint the “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Boiled-Masculinities-Christopher-Breu/dp/0816644349" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Boiled-Masculinities-Christopher-Breu/dp/0816644349&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2QQ3Xn14HFPgZAaHIeq918">hardboiled masculinities</a>” of Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner as unhealthy coping mechanisms than to value those authors for their natural appeal to male readers and their subtle treatment of “gendered” issues. Consider just three examples from these great American writers.
<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/69683/pg69683-images.html#ch3" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/69683/pg69683-images.html%23ch3&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3Ph-45AfJjSa-BFQGVIT4j">“Hills Like White Elephants”</a> by the reputedly misogynist Hemingway is, among other things, an intricate and damning exposure of men’s responsibility for abortion. And in Faulkner’s &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Go-Down-Moses-William-Faulkner/dp/0679732179" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/Go-Down-Moses-William-Faulkner/dp/0679732179&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0Skh-8optb_HlfbKjBawLv">Go Down Moses</a>,&#8221; the life trajectory of Isaac McCaslin is, again among other things, an extended meditation on the complicated relationship between a man’s ambition, his moral choices, and his chances of sexual satisfaction. In other words, it’s a story that would be very relatable for incels. And Faulkner’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Collected-Stories-William-Faulkner/dp/0679764038" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/Collected-Stories-William-Faulkner/dp/0679764038&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw082zHqZZPZjnDraGzXMmPG">“Barn Burning,”</a> is a master class in the limitations of a life of resentment.
But instead of classics that would have any appeal to men, the works taught in our colleges have been selected according to the principles of “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Feminist-Pedagogy-Higher-Education-Critical/dp/1771121149" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/Feminist-Pedagogy-Higher-Education-Critical/dp/1771121149&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3od-FEK3dEScJwQT0wS9xg">feminist pedagogy in higher education</a>.” Women’s wellbeing has been the focus, while men, their interests, their needs, and their potential have been treated with aggressive neglect, or even active enmity.
Ironically, the man-bashers seem to have conjured up the very thing they were afraid of. The instances of male hostility toward women that we now, unfortunately, do see in podcasts and on social media are pretty clearly in reaction against 50 years of hating on men as selfish, oppressive, and violent; portraying them as bumbling idiots in entertainment and advertising; making them the big losers in divorce; catering to girls’ interests and lavishing disproportionate attention on them in the education system, to the detriment of boys; and “fighting the patriarchy” and “breaking the glass ceiling” with affirmative action that locked many men out of jobs and, as Helen Andrews points out, has sentenced others to work in HR-ified offices <a href="https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-great-feminization/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-great-feminization/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1kmYuIpGIAVwEMwFknZYEe">reminiscent of Montessori kindergartens</a>.
The affirmative-action regime, together with the decades-long taboo against mentioning any unflattering facts about racial and ethnic minorities, is ginning up some other ugly things in tandem with misogyny. A not insignificant number of young white males are flirting not only with hostility to women but also with racism and antisemitism.
Which is why my heart sank when I first saw <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Krugers-Korps-H-Crocker-III/dp/B0FWZXPQ17" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/Krugers-Korps-H-Crocker-III/dp/B0FWZXPQ17&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2JQrw_3gBmaNFiTktmmEJq">Kruger’s Korps: A World War II Thriller</a>, the newest work of fiction by my old boss and long-time friend Harry Crocker (H. W. Crocker III to the reading public). Harry and I see eye to eye on most things, but I think he’s soft on the Confederacy. (In my humble opinion that’s a blind spot attributable to his having grown up in California, while I was born into the Jim Crow South, where it was pretty much impossible to miss the long shadow of my ancestors’ sins).
Oh boy, I thought, looking at the title and author’s name in Nazi blackletter font on the cover of Kruger’s Korps. An adventure story with Nazi heroes. That’s exactly what we don’t need, just when young men on the right are falling prey to conspiracy theories about the Jews.
But I was wronging Harry. I don’t want to spoil any part of the intricate plot of Kruger Korps. Suffice it to say, it’s clear to the reader by page seven that the Nazis of Afrika Korps are not going to be the heroes of the story. Quite the contrary. This is a quintessentially American adventure that transports the reader back to the can-do optimism of the World War II era — a time that feels like a different age of the world, though it’s actually within living memory. Here’s to hoping that lots of demoralized Nazi-curious young men who don’t remember America before we were losing an endless succession of “forever wars” get pulled in by the cover and find themselves swept up in this healthy American story.
Young white men today have plenty of excuse for resentment, but living on resentment and excuses is the road to misery. The eponymous hero of Kruger’s Korps models the opposite path: pursuing his patriotic ideals by tackling every impossible challenge with infinite resource and sagacity.
But the book doesn’t just teach; it also delights. The absurd obstacle course our hero dives and jumps his way through is a thrill a minute. The historical references are a hoot: What missionary priest do we meet in the interior of Africa? Rad trads will guess the answer. And the prose is also a lot of fun. Harry Crocker is always a clever writer, but he outdoes himself here:
<blockquote>
“So,” I said to Steiner, “that’s the cause of all this. At least Dr. Faustus traded his soul for his every ambition, but to trade your soul for what — that woman, opium?”
“People make bad choices all the time, lieutenant — trading paradise for a rotten apple, becoming a pillar of salt to satisfy curiosity, betraying the Son of Man for 30 pieces of silver. Have you not read that book?”
</blockquote>
Kruger’s Korps is exactly what we need more of — and apparently are going to get. Because Harry Crocker isn’t the only Regnery alumnus working to fill the gap left by the feminized publishing houses and the feminist professors. In fact all three of us who were senior editors at Regnery when I was there are now doing our bit for fiction that appeals to men and boys. That’s a switch from the kind of books we edited at the venerable conservative publisher, which since its foundation in 1947 has published almost exclusively conservative non-fiction. But we’re all working from the premise that “the social imaginary,” as Daily Wire host Andrew Klavan frequently points out, is shaped by the <a href="https://store.dailywire.com/collections/andrew-klavan/products/after-that-the-dark-cameron-winter-mysteries-book-5" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://store.dailywire.com/collections/andrew-klavan/products/after-that-the-dark-cameron-winter-mysteries-book-5&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3aOMxVURdSy-QFkkzzrCGr">stories we read</a> and watch.
The third senior editor from my time at Regnery, who before that was a veteran science-fiction editor, is Tony Daniel, who is now the founding publisher of the brand-new <a href="https://passage.press/collections/ark-press" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://passage.press/collections/ark-press&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw247BzOEHPICYHlns-7JMou">Ark Press</a>, an imprint of Passage Publishing devoted to putting out the kind of genre literature that appeals to male readers — but not to the <a href="https://issuu.com/leeandlowbooks/docs/diversity_baseline_survey_3.0" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://issuu.com/leeandlowbooks/docs/diversity_baseline_survey_3.0&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0KP9CUPB5KbCK8V7RCCZvo">East Coast women who dominate American publishing</a>. The <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-books-mainstream-publishing-wont-push-are-finding-an-audience-anyway">graphic-novel version of &#8220;American Paladin&#8221;</a> by bestselling urban fantasy author Larry Correia launched the imprint in December of last year; Ark will publish the hardcover on June 23. Other recent and upcoming titles from the new imprint include &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Red-State-Mars-Travis-Corcoran/dp/B0FXFMFVVC" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/Red-State-Mars-Travis-Corcoran/dp/B0FXFMFVVC&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1Ui7UWCcAaAGTvGufATz21">Red State Mars&#8221;</a> by Travis Corcoran; &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Timerman-Yukon-Confederacy-Theodore-Judson/dp/B0FYX2F68X" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/Timerman-Yukon-Confederacy-Theodore-Judson/dp/B0FYX2F68X&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2ReOi4BJ_GNP-qaAFIpUHo">The Timerman</a>,&#8221; set in a 25th century Yukon Confederacy with no electricity or computers; and the comic spy novel &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Pickle-Factory-Tall-Tale-CIA/dp/B0FXFK4FKS" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/Pickle-Factory-Tall-Tale-CIA/dp/B0FXFK4FKS&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0msB0oFv111wj0WvKKKVKv">The Pickle Factory: A Tall Tale of the CIA&#8221;</a> by first-time author Sam Oyken, about which I keep hearing raves from every editor who worked on it. Ark is committed to discovering and fostering new authors with <a href="https://ark.press/blogs/news/ark-prize" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://ark.press/blogs/news/ark-prize&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3lNS5TpqWj1N3HvLMJ-1pY">significant prize money</a>.
And I’m doing my part, working to get out the word about the classics of the old literary canon that have been despised and neglected precisely because they appeal to men — in <a href="https://libertyclassroom.com/course-grid/introduction-to-american-literature-our-best-short-stories/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://libertyclassroom.com/course-grid/introduction-to-american-literature-our-best-short-stories/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0h5pVKM9bInn_Tzbrw3F9Y">lectures</a> featuring Stephen Crane’s <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/45524/45524-h/45524-h.htm" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/45524/45524-h/45524-h.htm&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw32tjcFc5Fdc0WTpIysCxiZ">“The Open Boat,”</a> Hemingway’s <a href="https://www.libraryofshortstories.com/storiespdf/big-two-hearted-river.pdf" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.libraryofshortstories.com/storiespdf/big-two-hearted-river.pdf&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1WrQ9Seu_1ul7E-IpFERbU">“Big Two-Hearted River,”</a> Faulkner’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Go-Down-Moses-William-Faulkner/dp/0679732179" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/Go-Down-Moses-William-Faulkner/dp/0679732179&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0Skh-8optb_HlfbKjBawLv">“The Bear,”</a> and J. D. Salinger’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Nine-Stories-J-D-Salinger/dp/0316769568/ref=asc_df_0316769568?tag=bngsmtphsnus-20&amp;linkCode=df0&amp;hvadid=79852242640743&amp;hvnetw=s&amp;hvqmt=e&amp;hvbmt=be&amp;hvdev=c&amp;hvlocint=&amp;hvlocphy=91731&amp;hvtargid=pla-4583451720218006&amp;psc=1&amp;msclkid=83f62794aa881a9a28b64da4c6f0ece3" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/Nine-Stories-J-D-Salinger/dp/0316769568/ref%3Dasc_df_0316769568?tag%3Dbngsmtphsnus-20%26linkCode%3Ddf0%26hvadid%3D79852242640743%26hvnetw%3Ds%26hvqmt%3De%26hvbmt%3Dbe%26hvdev%3Dc%26hvlocint%3D%26hvlocphy%3D91731%26hvtargid%3Dpla-4583451720218006%26psc%3D1%26msclkid%3D83f62794aa881a9a28b64da4c6f0ece3&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3oRtnaQz71KOxTk_4HiLaq">“For Esmé, with Love and Squalor.”</a>
This Father’s Day, your gift — whether it’s a classic or a just-published book — can be an enthusiastic vote for the revival of a cultured, healthy, and successful masculinity.
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Elizabeth Kantor is a freelance book editor and the author of &#8220;The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature.&#8221;

Relaxed mature man smoking a pipe while reading a novel in the living room.

These Books Are Challenging The War On Masculinity

Upstream

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25 Books On The Founding Fathers To Read For America 250

Abraham Lincoln

Alexander Hamilton

America 250

American History

American Revolution

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream</a>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
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The past decade or so’s changes in publishing have hit young adult books and two conservative favorites, science fiction and fantasy, hardest. This is why right-leaning indie authors lean heavy on genre stuff. This is great, except for the fact that indie genre authors also love to write long. Do you want to stand out from the pack as a right-aligned indie novelist? Write mysteries or crime thrillers that are reasonably short. There are not a lot of such books. (If you’ve got one, drop a comment and I might review it.) For lovers of fantasy, though, let’s look at the long and the short of it.
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Travel-Star-Paul-Scott-Grill/dp/B0F7Z4VWNP">&#8220;Travel by Star&#8221; by Paul Scott Grill</a>
&#8220;Travel by Star&#8221; offers some of the best and the less appealing of the indie genre scene. A road-tripping fantasy novel grounded in the author’s Christian faith and an atypical Western setting, it’s not like the kind of stuff you’ll see major publishers putting out. The fall of a legendary city has doomed a frontier land to grinding struggle; now a young woman of angelic lineage named Nichole Littlestar has to convince reluctant horse whisperer Travel to brave dangers manmade and mystical, and guide her to the city’s site, in an effort to rekindle the lost hope of man. Along the way, they brave the dangers of a poisoned land, not least Drannach of Shrian, known as the Wathe, who will stop at nothing to purge the city of Archewood’s memory from the world of men. 
Also, there are superintelligent horses that act functionally sort of like Roy Rogers’ Trigger. If nothing else will pique your interest, that should do it.
There’s a genuine charm to &#8220;Travel by Star.&#8221; Its action and scares are balanced by an underlying gentleness. Its faith-based sensibilities are neither cloying nor overpowering, and Christians with a fondness for fictional worlds may particularly enjoy its handling of the influence of Jesus on a fantasy world and how Christ reaches the people there. The characters aren’t particularly compelling, but they are human and likable. 
The only downside is the page count. This book would have been a terrific read at 250-300 pages. It would have been fine at 350. But &#8220;Travel by Star&#8221; is six hundred and thirty-six pages. As a result, the charms get a little lost and the parts that drag have too much time to settle in. But it’s a book with real heart and with some things to say, particularly about the temptation to repay wrong with wrong, and living with choices that haunt you. And while it may not be as polished as mainstream offerings, at its best it portrays a fallen world that truly feels eerie and out of joint, and that’s harder to pull off than you’d think.
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Turquoise-Serpent-Ashes-Urn-Book-ebook/dp/B088F4KMTZ">&#8220;The Turquoise Serpent&#8221; by Alexander Palacio</a>
This one’s lean and mean, folks. If you want more, there’s a sequel (&#8220;The Flowers of the Moon&#8221;), but the original is plenty fun on its own: It’s a straightforward sword and sorcery story with enjoyably contrasting characters, a hectic pace, and action aplenty. 
Having captured the brutish exile Cayucali, a band of soldiers and the spiteful young wizard-in-training Tezca are forced by a storm to detour their march home, only to find themselves in an unholy land where the fallen nation Kalak Mool is in thrall to the deadly cult of a dark god. Do our protagonists fall into the hands of utter villainy? Indeed they do. Is the muscled hero forced to fight in an arena? Yes he is. Is the cerebral co-protagonist flattered and tempted by the enticements of an evil sorcerer? But of course. Is there a pretty girl who must be saved? Absolutely. 
You can call a lot of the beats in this story going in. But that’s half the fun: &#8220;The Turquoise Serpent&#8221; does what it says on the tin, and isn’t it nice to know what you’re getting occasionally? The real spice comes not from the plot, but from the setting, a Mesoamerican-inspired fantasy world that isn’t afraid to get weird and have different attitudes from our modern day-to-day. It’s short, zippy, and doesn’t make the mistake of being overly ambitious. A good companion for a summer afternoon in the hammock.
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Mighty-Sons-Hercules-1/dp/B0CK3MMBPP">&#8220;The Mighty Sons of Hercules: Volume 1&#8221; published by Cirsova Publishing</a>
The mighty sons of Hercules once thundered through the years. 
These men of steel could never feel the curse of a coward’s fears
The mighty sons of Hercules were men as men should be
They burned with dreams and turned their dreams into history!
Er, sorry, that’s the catchy old <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ex1109FzrOo">TV show theme</a>. Cirsova is hat-tipping here. In the late 1960s, some enterprising producers snagged the U.S. TV rights to a bunch of sword and sandal strongman pics. They renamed most of the heroes in dubbing, broke the movies into two hour-long episodes, slapped a title sequence on it, and dumped it into syndication. Tim Lucas’s Video WatchBlog <a href="https://videowatchdogblog.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-sons-of-hercules-thunder-through.html">notes</a> that it aired around the U.S. for 11 straight years and had a revival in the 1990s thanks to the cable channel TNT. 
What does this have to do with the anthology (and, one presumes, its sequel, &#8220;The Mighty Sons of Hercules: Volume 2&#8221;)? Absolutely nothing, except that the publisher is telling you the old sword and sandals are just what you’re in for here, in eight stories of inhumanly strong men, adventurers who help the troubled and free the oppressed. 
The best tale by far is Misha Burnett’s “Summer of the Stranger,” wherein a boy from a bandit-plagued village tries to assemble a defensive force based on the example of a traveling son of Hercules, but there’s great fun in several. Hero-vs-evil-king tale “Mighty Umaeo and the Tyrant’s Test” features the most delightful herculean strength feat of the book, wherein the hero saves a sinking ship by towing it to harbor, and “Maciste in the Land of the Snakes” and “Melkart the Unchained” both get the feel of the old sword and sandals pictures to come across very well.
Cirsova’s bringing back the rollicking, cheerful strongman hero, who tackles problems head-on with a smile and bulging biceps in the antithesis of grimdark fantasy. Villains are formidable but never seem unconquerable; the hero may be captured, but he never doubts or questions himself and always has good cheer and plenty of hope. Never for a moment do you doubt the good guy will win. And don’t we all need a little dose of that every now and then?
***
David Hines has a background in forensic science and international human rights, has written for the Federalist and the American Conservative, and loves books. Possibly even yours.

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What Happens When Fantasy Escapes The Gatekeepers?

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream</a>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
When I clicked open an email from the Free Library of Philadelphia earlier this week, I figured one of two things had happened. Either I’d suddenly time-traveled back seven years, or I was hallucinating. Because isn’t <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-year-the-dei-tide-turned">DEI falling out of fashion</a> lately?
There’s proof that it is. But clearly not at libraries. This was the image the Free Library chose to advertise its summer reading program:
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The Free Library of Philadelphia is having a normal one. <a href="https://t.co/J0PXrABHUB">pic.twitter.com/J0PXrABHUB</a>
— Amanda Harding (@iamdeeda) <a href="https://x.com/iamdeeda/status/2062528997775351941?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 4, 2026</a></blockquote>
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It honestly gets funnier the longer you look at it. Every progressive group is subtly represented in a program that, ultimately, is aimed at children. 
The accompanying <a href="https://libwww.freelibrary.org/assets/pdf/programs/summerreading/activity-tracker/SUM26-activity-tracker.pdf">activity tracker</a> is full of ultra-woke suggested titles, including “Homebody” by Theo Parish, described as “a hopeful story of coming home to your nonbinary identity,” and “Into the Streets: A Young Person’s Visual History of Protest in the United States” by Marke Bieschke. 
Ubiquitous drag queen story hours nationwide, among other affronts to common decency, have already shown that public libraries were successfully hijacked by the radical Left years ago. But it’s still jarring to encounter something as benign as summer reading programs gone totally off the rails. 
The launch of these über-progressive summer reading initiatives comes at the same time Usha Vance, the second lady of the United States, is rolling out her summer reading challenge. The contrast is striking.
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Calling all readers: My Summer Reading Challenge is back! Visit <a href="https://t.co/KqGhZTJjUu">https://t.co/KqGhZTJjUu</a> TODAY to download your reading log and get started. Your next summer adventure is just one page away! <a href="https://t.co/isrw3QZ9FS">pic.twitter.com/isrw3QZ9FS</a>
— Second Lady Usha Vance (@SLOTUS) <a href="https://x.com/SLOTUS/status/2061422344229286168?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 1, 2026</a></blockquote>
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Predictably, this launch has been mostly ignored by mainstream media. But ABC did <a href="https://abcnews.com/US/usha-vance-unveils-2nd-annual-summer-reading-challenge/story?id=133469716">interview</a> the second lady to discuss the program.
“Last year it was an idea that we had really at the last minute as we were thinking about ways to enhance childhood literacy and get kids reading over the summer and sort of stave off some of the summer learning loss that traditionally happens every year,&#8221; Vance told the outlet. &#8220;So we did a little pilot program and it was a success beyond what we had hoped.”
“This year we&#8217;re having a big rollout all over the country,” she continued, mentioning partnerships with schools, libraries, and other institutions nationwide. (One of those is probably not the Free Library of Philadelphia, based on the type of content it&#8217;s promoting.)
Instead of recommending books about protests, gender fluidity, and whether rivers have feelings, Vance said the premise of the White House’s summer reading program is easy for parents to follow.
“Our summer reading challenge is really simple. All kids have to do is pick up 12 books, anything that they like,&#8221; the second lady told ABC. &#8220;If a kid likes reading about squirrels, as one did last year, read 12 books about squirrels. If a kid loves history, read books about history.&#8221;
&#8220;So you read those books, write them down on a log and send them to whitehouse.gov/read and we&#8217;ll receive them, send a certificate,” Vance added.
This basic and effective summer reading program doesn’t push an agenda. Instead, kids are encouraged to explore topics they care about and read books that correspond with their interests. Meanwhile, libraries nationwide are pushing progressive garbage to kids via summer reading programs. 
On the San Francisco Public Library’s list of <a href="https://sfpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/list/display/378227437/3014497577">22 recommended books</a> for grades 3 to 5, the only white character featured in the cover art is a girl learning the art of witchcraft. The Chicago Public Library <a href="https://chipublib.bibliocommons.com/v2/list/display/200049033/3014416370">suggests</a> a children&#8217;s version of Michelle Obama’s memoir, “Becoming.” 
And then there’s the Phoenix Public Library, whose <a href="https://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/browse/staff-picks/kids/summer-reading-lists/6th-to-8th-grade">list</a> of books for children in grades 6 through 8 includes “We’re in This Together” by activist Linda Sarsour, who is best known for co-organizing the Women’s March. 
“Sarsour shares the memories that shaped her into the activist she is today, and how these pivotal moments in her life led her to being an organizer in one of the largest single-day protests in US history,&#8221; the <a href="https://discover.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/search/card?recordId=6929133">description</a> reads. &#8220;From the Brooklyn bodega her father owned to the streets of Washington, DC, Linda&#8217;s story as a daughter of Palestinian immigrants is a moving portrayal of what it means to find your voice in your youth and use it for the good of others as an adult.”
Encouraging children to read in the summer is great. Subtly interspersing ultra-woke titles into their &#8220;to be read&#8221; piles is diabolical. This summer, it would be wise for parents to take a good, long look at their local library before signing up for any summer reading challenges. 
As for the Free Library of Philadelphia: 2019 called, and they want their performative activism back.

Boy in elementary school library

Parents Send Kids To Read. Libraries Have Other Plans.

Library

reading program

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream</a>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
“The American Book of Fables” is unlike anything else in print — or at least, that has been published in the last 200 years. At nearly 400 pages, it’s a tome modeled after much leaner texts, one being “<a href="https://www.nypl.org/events/exhibitions/galleries/childhood/item/4109">The New England Primer</a>,” an 18th-century textbook with lessons, prayers, and hymns. The book also reflects “<a href="https://www.neh.gov/article/columbian-orator-taught-nineteenth-century-americans-how-speak">The Columbian Orator</a>,” a 19th-century textbook for older readers that influenced both Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln.
It’s an audacious attempt, and author Matthew Mehan isn’t shy about it. “I really am keen to make sure people understand that this is not a children&#8217;s book,” he tells The Daily Wire. “This is a family heirloom.”
The book draws on the Western and American literary traditions with nursery rhymes, fables, and primary texts from the Declaration of Independence to the Bible. These sections are divided up for “littles,” “middles,” and “bigs.” When I read excerpts to my four-year-old, he was entranced by the illustrations. Painter John Folley’s detailed, vibrant artwork is scattered throughout, with gorgeous, two-page spreads showing off buffalo, armadillos, and the fruited plains.
Mehan says he’s always been interested in poetry with a civic and humanistic dimension, art that helps people live well. “That attracted me to the fable tradition, which is a very important tradition for self-governing peoples,” he says. 
Fables, of course, offer the reader memorable stories with simple takeaways. They are usually vague and fairly universal, meaning they could take place anytime, anywhere. “The American Book of Fables” changes that. 
The boy who cried wolf could take place anywhere boys and wolves are found, but Mehan places the story “on Roanoke Island, near the Outer Banks, west of Nag’s Head and South of Kittyhawk, North Carolina.” The boy is hired by the Bodie family (a real family), and there’s a real red wolf preserve nearby.
“The fable tradition is very general and universalistic, and Americans like generalities and universal principles,” Mehan says. “But we also like science and detail, and we have a federal system where we really love our local people and places.”
He credits Homer for the inspiration to add such detail, “carefully and humanely and lovingly naming all of the places and people.” The epic poet took the effort to name dying soldiers on the battlefield. 
“I think that is a part of teaching people how to be human and love well the things that are in their care and are part of their community,” Mehan says. 
In Mehan’s version of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” which he calls “greatly adapted from Aesop,” the boy’s “cries” come from shooting off rockets, which Mehan says is an homage to more American staples: Cape Canaveral, the space race, and Kitty Hawk.
<div id="attachment_1105027" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1105027" class="size-medium wp-image-1105027" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/6912-FABLES-1-300x300.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="300" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/6912-FABLES-1-300x300.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/6912-FABLES-1-576x576.jpg 576w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/6912-FABLES-1-150x150.jpg 150w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/6912-FABLES-1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/6912-FABLES-1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/6912-FABLES-1-2048x2048.jpg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Sophia Institute Press</div>
Fables make for easy, entertaining lessons because they’re full of archetypes. There’s “the irascible badger,” “the languid panda,” “the tyrannical lion,” and “the busy beaver.” Mehan’s beaver is named Nikola, and, yes, that is a Tesla reference. Mehan says he’s meant to represent a passion for technology that wonders whether something can be done and doesn’t stop to determine whether it should. Returning to the theme of self-government, Mehan suggests that such a passion, which is good in moderation, must be governed properly. 
The book is rich with allusions to great authors and classic works, as well as its own analogies. One recurring story is that of Humanatee, a “gentle, fat creature” who learns lessons as he traverses the country. One purpose is to challenge the reader to think about the meaning of human nature; if the principles and rights laid out in the Declaration are real, then “you better have a really strong and robust handle on what human nature is,” Mehan says. The Ciceronian conception that Mehan has in mind “has everything to do with self-government and liberty, and treating people right in a way that is just, and fair, and preserves the social bonds.”
This idea is important. “One of the themes of the book is to reintroduce a lot of the really wonderful moral teachings of Cicero, which were profoundly ingrained in our society until the 20th century slowly leached them out mostly by omission,” Mehan adds.
But another theme centers on what it means to be distinctly American, living amid the amber waves of grain and purple mountain majesties.
“The country isn&#8217;t just our principles, the country is human nature engaged in a particular history, a particular experience, a particular landscape,” he says. “So an engagement of humanity with all the various animals and regions of the country, was, I thought, a nice expression of the American experience.”

6912-FABLES

The Book Every American Family Should Own

The CEO of Barnes &amp; Noble just clarified where he stands on AI-written books, and commenters are accusing him of choosing profit over integrity.
Bookstore exec James Daunt <a href="https://www.today.com/popculture/books/barnes-and-noble-ceo-james-daunt-interview-ai-books-rcna345417">told</a> Jenna Bush Hager during a recent “Today” show appearance that as long as the “author” discloses that the book is AI-generated, he has no problem stocking it.
&#8220;I have actually no problem selling any book, as long as it doesn&#8217;t masquerade or pretend to be something that it isn&#8217;t, and that it has an essential quality to it, and that the customer, the reader, wants it,” Daunt said during the interview.
“So as long as an AI-written book says it&#8217;s an AI-written book and doesn&#8217;t pretend to be something else and isn&#8217;t ripping off somebody else, as long as that&#8217;s clearly stated and the customer wants to buy it, then we will stock them,” he added.
The CEO also argued that some books currently being sold probably use AI anyway.
“We have 300,000 titles across all of our stores. Do we think that some of those may be AI? The chances are that they are, but we&#8217;re not really conscious of them,” Daunt added.
Daunt also downplayed the issue, saying it’s not a big deal for now. “At the moment, it seems unlikely to us that these AI-generated books are going to get much commercial traction. So I think it&#8217;s something that one should treat with common sense and acceptance, but not allow anything to masquerade,” he told Bush Hager. 
Commenters on social media did not agree.
“I will stop shopping at Barnes and Noble and I hope everyone else does too. AI is NOT the future,” one X commenter <a href="https://x.com/maddog_mead/status/2056763337523032152">argued</a>.
“Sorry, but ethics has a place in business, and selling works generated off the THEFT of other people&#8217;s work  is UNETHICAL. For shame!” another person <a href="https://x.com/AcCargill/status/2056763335052234802">agreed</a>. 
“The point of a bookstore is discovering human thought. Real stories. Real suffering. Real imagination. Replacing authors with machines because it’s cheaper is how civilizations become hollow,” a third commenter <a href="https://x.com/iLoveJaneAdams/status/2056763156475638079">said</a>.
“The slop knows no bounds,” echoed <a href="https://x.com/OVVOLabs/status/2056762106276368858">another</a>.

Barnes & Noble

Barnes & Noble CEO Slammed For Stance On Selling AI-Generated Books

Artificial Intelligence

Business

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
A funny thing started happening as I trudged through Lena Dunham’s new memoir, “Famesick.” I started hating her a little less. Like so many conservatives, my thoughts on Dunham were surface-level. She was an insufferable liberal, a narcissistic celebrity, and, as she made clear in her last published work, a person with an <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/woman-who-sexually-abused-her-sister-mocks-trump-amanda-prestigiacomo">appalling lack</a> of personal boundaries, even around children.
I watched “Girls” back in the day because I was the right demographic. At that point, I was still figuring out who I was, just like the main characters. The show was sharp, funny, and honest. Much like Dunham, it turns out. It&#8217;s just too bad she spent so much of her life chasing after all the wrong things. 
I never read her first memoir, “Not That Kind of Girl,” which came out in 2014 and inspired so much <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/lena-dunhams-first-memoir-led-to-accusations-of-sexual-abuse-so-she-decided-to-write-another">controversy</a>. That essay collection famously included revelations that Dunham “examined” her younger sister’s genitals, and then when she got called out for it, the actress attacked her detractors for thinking it was gross. 
“The right-wing news story that I molested my little sister isn’t just LOL – it’s really f*cking upsetting and disgusting. And by the way, if you were a little kid and never looked at another little kid’s vagina, well, congrats to you,” she <a href="https://x.com/lenadunham/status/528613546108944384">posted</a> in 2014.
“Famesick” is less about the questionable decisions of minors and more about Dunham’s rise to fame and how it never made her truly happy. 
She comes across as deeply insecure (“I still thought that true love was performed with the one-sided devotion of a kicked dog”), obsessed with her reputation, clinging desperately to failing relationships (especially the toxic partnership with “Girls” co-showrunner Jenni Konner), and keen on informing readers how popular she once was and how much sex she was having. Dunham vacillates between bragging and doom spiraling while keeping the focus always on her inner turmoil.
“People on the internet were cruel to me, but nobody was crueler to me than I was to myself,” she says at one point. The whole thing reeks of wanting to be liked, and to be remembered for once being liked. 
Dunham also takes time to reflect on the fallout from her first book, writing, “I was shocked when a conservative media site analyzed the book carefully, pulling choice passages and coming to the conclusion that I had engaged in sexually inappropriate childhood behavior with my sibling.” This referred specifically to the media watchdog site Truth Revolt, where Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro served as editor in chief.
Dunham wrote that she wasn’t too worried about the backlash at first because she assumed “any logical person” would interpret the negative reaction as being “an attempt to cherrypick sections to create a narrative that spoke to the idea that I — and by extension, the majority of feminists — were not crusaders for justice but, in fact, wanton perverts.”
“I didn’t consider what I’d written to be particularly salacious,” the actress went on. “And anyway, what about the things I hadn’t included? I’d decided against describing the time, age four, I announced to a group of near-strangers that my punishment at home for misbehavior was having ‘a fork stuck up my vagina.’ (It was not.) I don’t know where I came up with that, but I’ve always been confused by anyone who doesn’t recognize that children are inherently innocent, and yet their imaginations are endless and deranged.”
“What I had been guilty of on the page, what the internet should have charged me with and given me a short sentence for, was poor phrasing — maybe a second count for TMI,” Dunham wrote, noting how her sister has since started identifying as a boy and going into some detail about their distant, complicated relationship.
“Famesick” is also full of medical drama and, eventually, a raging pill addiction. Dunham is ill for most of the book, in and out of the hospital for various conditions and surgeries, which eventually culminates in her having a full hysterectomy to counteract the painful reality of endometriosis. 
I was surprised to find out that Dunham did originally want to be a mother. She also spent thousands of dollars attempting to have biological children via IVF, only for it all to end in failure.
“I had never had a single doubt about wanting children,” she wrote, mourning the loss of what would never be. It was surprising only because she’s such a devout pro-abortion feminist who had a significant amount of success in Hollywood. The yearning for children doesn’t match the stereotype. It also made her a more sympathetic character. 
Ultimately, Dunham is selfish and flawed, earnest yet delusional, self-obsessed but trying to change. I’ve always preferred memoirs because fiction writers so often fail to capture that nuance of multi-faceted personalities. Watching someone make bad decisions over and over hits harder when it’s all based on true events.
For the first time maybe ever, I found myself agreeing with Slate for pointing out that this book was so readable in part because Dunham is truly skilled at her craft. The progressive website&#8217;s <a href="https://slate.com/culture/2026/04/lena-dunham-book-famesick-review.html">review</a> called it “an ideal celebrity memoir with the added bonus of being written by someone who can actually write.&#8221;
The Atlantic&#8217;s review <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/books/2026/04/lena-dunham-famesick-memoir-book-review/686799/">praised</a> Dunham’s growth over the last decade, noting that in “Famesick,” she had “actually learned from her garrulous and unfiltered excesses — she&#8217;s got stories to tell in Famesick that blow the roof off, but she&#8217;s wielding them with precision this time around.” 
Dunham is truly lost as a person. She fondly recalls having dinner with Robert De Niro and Bruce Springsteen, mourns President Donald Trump winning the election, and campaigns for Hillary Clinton. She’s about as incorrect on every conceivable topic as a person can be. And yet, my feelings throughout the book weren’t anger. They were closer to pity. 
I began to associate Dunham’s plight with every career-focused feminist who, at around the mid-point of life, is realizing that enduring happiness won’t come from professional success or fickle fans.
Dunham isn’t pure evil, even if she’s not the victim she thinks she is. She’s infuriating and sympathetic in tandem. And ultimately, she’s just another flawed human who, through her warped ideology, made her life a lot harder than it had to be.

The 2026 Met Gala Celebrating “Costume Art” – Arrivals

Lena Dunham Chased Every Progressive Fantasy. Then Everything Fell Apart.

Lena Dunham

Millennials are rejoicing as a staple of their childhood will make a triumphant return this summer.
Pizza Hut just announced that their “Book It!” summer reading program, which encourages kids to read more books in exchange for free pizza, will be making a comeback. The restaurant announced the news on social media last week.
&#8220;SUMMER OF STORIES IS BACK!” the post caption said, adding that enrollment begins today, May 1. &#8220;Get ready to turn reading time into pizza time! This summer, keep your kids&#8217; reading, learning, and loving books… all while earning FREE pizza.&#8221;
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The free program will reward young readers who hit their milestones by providing them with digital Reading Award Certificates, which are redeemable for a free, one-topping Personal Pan Pizza from Pizza Hut. Students can earn up to one free pizza per month.
The promo is available for students in grades preschool through 6th, but commenters insist it should be extended to adults, too.
“Millennials need an adult version! Some of us are still readers because of this program!” one reaction said.
“Can us Gen X and millennials get this back for us!!! Us big kid need pizza too,” a second person echoed.
“Thank you so much for bringing this program back! I have a 1st grader who we&#8217;ve been expressing the importance of reading so having this program as an incentive is helpful,” another person said.
“We are so excited! The nostalgia that our kiddo gets to participate!” another person wrote.
The Book It! program began following a 1984 initiative from President Ronald Reagan calling for more businesses to promote education. It was created by Arthur Gunther, the president of Pizza Hut at the time, and marketing executive Bud Gates, per The New York Times. More than 70 million children have participated in the program, resulting in 1.5 billion free pizzas being given out as rewards.
The summer reading Book It! Promotion will run from June 1 until August 31. Parents can sign kids up through the BOOK IT! App.

Pizza Hut

Millennials Celebrate A Childhood Staple Making A Comeback

Children

Food

Restaurant

U.S.

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
Reading a synopsis for the buzzy new novel “Yesteryear” by Caro Claire Burke put me on high alert. As an avid reader dependent upon an overwhelmingly liberal publishing industry, I’m used to disagreeing with most of the themes and insight of popular fiction. But this one seemed egregious.
The description says, “A traditional American woman, a beautiful wife and mother who sells her pioneer lifestyle of raw milk and farm-fresh eggs to her millions of social media followers, suddenly awakens cold, filthy, and terrified in the brutal reality of 1805 — where she must unravel whether this living nightmare is an elaborate hoax, a twisted reality show, or something far more sinister in this sensational debut novel.”
Despite my misgivings, I had to read it. 
There’s no use sugarcoating it: I hated this book. But it wasn’t because I believe trad wife influencers are above reproach, or even that I think it’s beneficial to watch them peddling impossibly perfect lives on social media. It’s because this could have been a discussion-worthy commentary on the fake-ness of content creators, performative motherhood, or even the realities of homesteading in the modern world. Instead, readers are treated to outlandish caricatures.
It all starts on the first page as the protagonist describes herself: &#8220;And who was I? A flawless Christian woman. A manic pixie American dream girl of this nation&#8217;s deepest, darkest fantasies. The mother every woman wanted to be, and the wife every man wanted to come home to. Like a nun in a porno, it didn&#8217;t make sense, by also, by God: it worked &#8230; I was perfect at being alive.&#8221;
“Yesteryear” is being marketed as satirical just so the author can say no, she’s not being mean; she’s just being funny. It’s really just code for, “I want to say something lazy and insulting, but I also want immunity from criticism.” If you don’t like it, it’s because you’re overly sensitive or you don’t get the joke. If you do like it, congratulations! You got to feel morally superior while consuming liberal fever dream propaganda.
In Burke’s world, conservative women are fake, Christian women are performative, husbands are abusive, followers are stupid, and every conservative person ever is secretly miserable, plus just objectively awful. That’s it. That’s the whole thing. Every character exists to prove that stereotypes are reality.
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The main character, Natalie, is not-so-subtly based on the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/mom-of-8-ballerina-farm-founder-defends-her-life-choices-marriage-after-scathing-expose">most famous trad wife influencer</a> of them all, the Juilliard-trained ballerina turned influencer Hannah Neeleman, aka Ballerina Farm. Her family-run farm, old-fashioned kitchen, and overall aesthetic launched a tidal wave of copycats and haters. It would appear this author falls into the latter camp.
&#8220;Yesteryear&#8221; protagonist Natalie is presented as a trad wife influencer who screams at her kids between photos, snaps at her husband, and treats her family like props for content. She despises her husband (&#8220;an actual, honest-to-God idiot&#8221;), her mother, her sister, her kids, and really everyone in her life, saying that &#8220;most people are morons.&#8221; She joins coaching calls full of Christian women with Idaho cattle farms trying to “make it big” online. The followers who call her out for being fake are collectively known as “angry women.”
It’s not even clear why Natalie is in the game other than to make money. Even after hitting the big time, her sour attitude never changes. 
And Natalie, while pretending to be deeply religious — not just as the narrator, but also to herself — does things like call people she doesn&#8217;t like &#8220;c*nt&#8221; and then semi-apologize in the form of a prayer. &#8220;Sorry, Lord, but really, f*** her,&#8221; she thinks to herself after an unpleasant encounter with a fan at Target.
It appears the author genuinely cannot imagine that any woman might sincerely want marriage, children, homemaking, or a more traditional family structure. In this worldview, if a woman says she likes that life, she must be lying, oppressed, dumb, or running a scam. Or in this case, actually disturbed and dissociating. 
But it’s satire. We’re all supposed to pretend this is comedy when it clearly represents a deep contempt for conservative women. The book is saying what a lot of progressive women already believe: These women are frauds, and we’re smarter than them. How original. 
Of course, once Natalie goes back in time, her husband beats her. He rapes her, too. Because if he’s a man from the late 1800s, naturally, he has to be a violent monster. And then — spoiler alert — it turns out he’s really a modern man acting like he’s from the past. The ending makes less sense than the lead-up, and all of it amounts to nothing more than grievance-driven fiction.
And now for the real spoiler alert. The big twist turns Natalie into a rapist. Yes, Natalie. Her husband&#8217;s father, a staunch conservative, is running for president, but then Natalie&#8217;s producer reveals that her boss raped her. At first the family believes the rapist is Caleb, making them annoyed but not entirely outraged because, as it&#8217;s presented, these things can be swept under the rug. But when they find out it was Natalie sexually assaulting the young woman, all hell breaks loose.
&#8220;If only my husband had raped our producer,&#8221; the book says. &#8220;That was basically what [her father-in-law] said that night, what he roared for hours and hours &#8230; if only his stupid little son had raped our stupid little producer &#8230; it would&#8217;ve been over with and forgotten in two weeks. But a predatory woman? Unthinkable. A good Christian mother and wife who (allegedly!) found other women attractive? &#8230; Kill the witch. Burn her.&#8221;
The solution Natalie comes up with for her misdeed is going off-grid with her family and turning her house into the fantasy she had been projecting online all along. She disconnects from the outside world completely, lives like it&#8217;s the 1800s, and ignores the fallout from the tell-all interview that ruined her life. Her older children, led by her surly daughter, run away from home, and then Natalie mostly disassociates and forgets she ever lived in modern times, aided by crushed up pills served in the form of a &#8220;calming tonic.&#8221;
Natalie&#8217;s husband remains a loser who sneaks off every day pretending to farm but is really watching TV in a nearby cabin and picking up grocery deliveries. They have more children because in their fake 19th-century world, suddenly his impotence is gone and he keeps impregnating his wife. The book ends with Natalie&#8217;s older children coming to rescue the younger kids who don&#8217;t realize there&#8217;s a modern world out there. Natalie goes to prison for aggravated child abuse.
Even mainstream media outlets admitted “Yesteryear” isn’t that great. Harper’s Bazaar <a href="https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/art-books-music/a71141347/yesteryear-review-harpers-bazaar-books-newsletter/">called it</a> a “vaguely feminist fairy tale” that only works “when you don’t think too much about it.” Vox <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/486360/yesteryear-review-caro-claire-burke">said</a> it &#8220;offers a sadistic influencer comeuppance fantasy.&#8221;
Plenty of GoodReads reviewers found the book to be about as deep as a driveway puddle. One reader called it “a mean-spirited revenge fantasy against a strawman the author made up.”
“In my experience, satire is supposed to say something, not just be an overt open mocking. I understand why this book will be popular, especially considering modern trends in literature, but all the positive reviews make me feel like someone’s trying to prank me a little bit,” the reviewer <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/238226942-yesteryear#CommunityReviews">wrote</a>.
Another reader said the story was actually detrimental to the cause of feminism because the characters “don’t seem like real people.”
And that’s what annoyed me most. This book could have been thought-provoking. There is a genuinely interesting story to tell about women turning their homes, marriages, and children into content, and about influencers pretending to live in 19th-century cabins while secretly using a behind-the-scenes microwave. That would be interesting. This, however, was not. 
Instead, the author took the laziest possible route, declaring that all trad wives are fake, all conservative men are monsters, all religious women are grifters, and all enlightened readers should just laugh at them. What you’re left with is not actually satire. It’s just a smug piece of trash that will sell a million copies because liberal women love it.

woman milkmaid milking a cow, farm

The New Book That Treats Traditional Wives Like The Enemy

Book Review

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
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When Buckingham Palace announced that King Charles and Queen Camilla would visit the United States to mark the 250th anniversary of American independence, I knew I had to call Mark Helprin.
The bestselling author’s fifth novel, 2005’s “Freddy and Fredericka,” is a thinly veiled sendup of Charles and Princess Diana — who, in this case, must travel to America and recapture “the colonies” in order to be blessed by an immortal, magical falcon who selects the true kings of England.
If you’ve never read one of Helprin’s novels, that summary is a pretty good glimpse into the experience: discursive and funny with a healthy shake of magical realism.
“Freddy and Fredericka” is a darkly comic romp across the United States that finds our heroes falling in love with the country they were sent to recapture, urging Americans to “let everything in the nation flow through you” and to return to “your original principles … immaterial and bright, ever enduring.”
It’s been more than a decade since I first read “Freddy and Fredericka,” and I’ve returned again and again to this book, essentially “Democracy In America” in novel form. So I was excited to ask Helprin how much Tocqueville was on his mind while he wrote the novel.
“He wasn’t,” Helprin said, for one simple reason: He had never read Tocqueville.
He was, however, in the process of reading “Democracy in America” in French, along with &#8220;The Wealth of Nations,&#8221; another classic he’s never gotten to. Shakespeare and Dante are in heavy rotation, however, as is fiction until the Lost Generation. Nothing after Fitzgerald and Hemingway holds much interest for Helprin, which, he stresses, has everything to do with his personal taste and nothing to do with snobbery.
There’s nothing about Helprin’s oeuvre or demeanor that would suggest he is anything other than well-read. But if yielding at Dos Passos for some reason stirs up doubts about Helprin’s literacy, the thousands of volumes that line the shelves of Helprin&#8217;s Charlottesville home should put them to rest. I once heard that Helprin has every paper he’s ever written, going back to his undergraduate career at Harvard, if not high school.
I didn’t ask him about this because I didn’t want it to not be true. After our conversation, I’m certain it is.
Helprin is everything you want him to be. Smartly dressed in a light check blazer, occasionally self-effacing and always captivating, he’s like a character from one of his novels — the latest of which, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Elegy-Blue-Novel-Mark-Helprin/dp/1419786083">“Elegy In Blue,”</a> hits shelves this week. All told, he’s written nine novels, three collections of short stories, and three children&#8217;s books illustrated by “Jumanji” author Chris Van Allsburg.
In addition, Helprin maintains a steady stream of political commentary, weighing in on everything from copyright law to foreign policy. Helprin’s fans, myself included, say he’s one of the greatest living American novelists. Helprin almost certainly wouldn’t say that about himself, which is likely why, despite a half-century in the public eye, he manages to fly somewhat under the radar.
Helprin’s relative anonymity is especially ironic considering his downright cinematic backstory. His mother was an actress in the Golden Age of Hollywood who left the Silver Screen to join the Group Theatre, a famous Method acting collective. His father, an American commando who worked for Winston Churchill during the Second World War, later became the head of London Films. It was there, in an office in Mayfair, that the first seeds for “Freddy and Fredericka” were planted by the king and queen themselves.
“Part of his job was, when the Queen and Prince Philip wanted to see a film, they would come in one Rolls Royce, no security or anything like that,” Helprin recalls. “He would greet them on the sidewalk and then escort them upstairs and into the screening room, where there was a buffet laid out with caviar and shrimp and everything, champagne, whatever.”
“And they would sit down, and then he would introduce the film, tell them about how it was made, what the subject was, whatever screen the film,” he continues. “And then afterwards, he would take questions from them, if they had any, and then escort them down to the street and see them off and say, thank you very much for coming.”
“They never thanked him, ever,” Helprin notes.
Helprin never forgot that. Not as he did his graduate work, which kept him at Harvard before taking him to Oxford; not during his time in the Israel Defense Forces, a tour of duty he embarked on after he was asked — and declined — to move to Cairo and serve as the Middle East editor for the New York Times.
Somewhere toward the end of his itinerant youth, he began a career as a writer. His first novel, “Refiner’s Fire,” was published in 1977. He achieved mainstream success with 1983’s “Winter’s Tale” and 1991’s “A Soldier Of The Great War.”
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<div id="attachment_1086299" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1086299" class="wp-image-1086299 size-full" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-50466632.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="655" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-50466632.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-50466632-300x192.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-50466632-900x576.jpg 900w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-50466632-768x491.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Photo by Mario Ruiz/Getty Images</div>
It was during a three-month book tour for the latter novel that the seeds planted by his family’s royal connection finally began to sprout. It was the &#8217;90s, and Charles and Di were all over the news. Seeing a man and a woman washing dishes at a restaurant kitchen one night, one of his daughters asked if the scullions were the duke and duchess.
Helprin saw an opportunity for “misapprehension,” which he calls “the funniest part of all humor.”
“If you think about the royals in Britain, they have so much opportunity for that because they live in a completely different world,” Helprin says. “But there&#8217;s even greater opportunity if they&#8217;re here amongst the colonials incognito.”
“Freddy and Fredericka” was a success in the United States. It was not published in Britain, where audiences were less receptive to Helprin’s take on the monarchy. Helprin has no regrets.
“I mocked the royals because they&#8217;re mockable,” he says. “They&#8217;re insanely mockable. They&#8217;re freaks, right? And they live in a freakish world.”
But Helprin appreciates that by separating their head of state and the head of government, the British monarchy “allows a really stable, decent government.” That attitude didn’t fly with “the loony Left” across the pond.
At least one person in Great Britain received a copy, however.
“Just by chance, I was invited to dinner that Prince Charles was supposed to attend in Washington, D.C.,” Helprin recalls. “And I said, &#8216;Well, you know what I better do? I better send Freddy and Fredericka to the palace,’ because, you know, to give them advance warning you don&#8217;t want to sandbag people.”
“So I sent it to the palace,” he explains, “and then without any word whatsoever, I was just disinvited to the dinner.”
Had he met Charles, Helprin says, he would have “approached him as an American.”
“We don&#8217;t believe that people are born with privilege, that, in other words, that privilege is legitimate, that they&#8217;re entitled to it, and we see them eye to eye,” Helprin adds. “That&#8217;s what America is about, and that there&#8217;s a very, very powerful force behind that, our history, our power, our ethos and the founding, which was, I think, divinely inspired.”
“If I&#8217;m sitting across from the King of England,” Helprin says, “I don&#8217;t feel lesser in any way.”
It’s a line that could have been spoken by most of Helprin’s protagonists. The typical Helprin hero is a kind of Aristotelian great-souled man with a Brooklyn accent. Most of Helprin’s novels take place in and around New York City, where Helprin was born and lived the first five years of his life, and a city that still captivates him and feels like home, despite the oppressive scale of “way too tall” buildings and the scourge of bike messengers zipping around with food, &#8220;because everybody has to have instant gratification.”
Of all Helprin’s New York novels, “Winter’s Tale” stands alone. Set simultaneously at the turns of the 20th and 21st centuries, the novel has at least 100 characters, a lengthy subplot about rival 19th-century newspaper barons, a magical realist upstate New York town with its own magic language, and a flying white horse.
That barely scratches the surface of what “Winter’s Tale” is about, and I’m not sure I could accurately describe it if I tried. The book has stuck with me, almost haunted me, for years. Whenever I’ve read another of Helprin’s books, I hope to find within it the key to understanding it. I never have.
Helprin, it seems, is in the same boat.
“I can&#8217;t explain it, but it possessed me day and night,” he says. “I would spend days in the New York Historical Society … and I&#8217;d walk the streets, looking at things and getting very, very obsessed and emotional about it.”
“So in a sense, I&#8217;m not the one to explain it, because it seizes me as much as other people who report that it did the same to them,” Helprin adds. “I felt as if I was just a medium of something that was speaking through me.”
To the extent that the book is about one thing, Helprin says, it’s about justice. Divine justice.
“People say God works in mysterious ways. Well, they&#8217;re not necessarily mysterious,” he says — they just come “from the past.”
“Who said that everything has to be made right in the timeline that we can perceive? Maybe it&#8217;s different, maybe from the divine perspective, the timeline is infinitely long, and the balances are affected and affect justice over a long period of time, so that after an injustice, maybe 20 years later, there&#8217;s some sort of a compromise,” Helprin adds.
“If you look at the whole of humanity and the whole of the universe as being one construct, if you think that from the divine perspective, that&#8217;s what it is, because you see from very far away, and it&#8217;s as one thing actually, without time.”
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<div id="attachment_1086301" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1086301" class="wp-image-1086301 size-full" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-502546985.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="763" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-502546985.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-502546985-300x224.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-502546985-773x576.jpg 773w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-502546985-768x572.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Photo by John Mahler/Toronto Star via Getty Images</div>
We mortals, of course, cannot see as God sees. But this is what Helprin aims to do in his novels. More than that, it’s how he sees the world, day in and day out.
“If you ask my wife, she would tell you, it&#8217;s very difficult to be married to me,” he says. “Very, very difficult.”
To stay grounded while thinking these lofty thoughts, Helprin works. He has been an agricultural worker, a surveyor, a dishwasher, and a stevedore.
“I spend so much time working, doing hard, physical, exhausting labor, that while I&#8217;m doing that often I think of things and think of what I&#8217;m going to do about the book, and when I get the chance to actually write the book, I’m so grateful for it because it&#8217;s different from, you know, spending hours on a tractor in the hot sun or getting rid of trees that fall,” he says. “So you come in from the heat and the dust and the dirt and the blood — if you work on a farm, you&#8217;re gonna have a lot of blood, and you&#8217;ll be lucky if you keep your fingers when you come in — then you have a refuge. And it&#8217;s a great privilege.”
“It&#8217;s almost like — to return to where we started — almost like being a royal,” he adds.
Helprin is on the cusp of turning 80, and while he says nothing to suggest that he wants to give up the punishing labor that’s driven so much of his life (and allowed him never to take a publisher’s advance), mortality is at least a little on his mind.
“Elegy In Blue,” he notes, “is probably not going to be my last book, as I&#8217;m working on another one. But, who knows, I may not be able to finish the other one. I might die before I do.”
Like his novels, Helprin feels neither outdated nor contemporary. He is a man out of time, a bridge between this century and the last who would likely feel equally at home in both. He speaks as he writes, and he lives like the characters he creates, a true American original.
But, unsurprisingly, the anti-monarchist with Tory sensibilities does miss the world he grew up in.
“I have to say, I do miss it, I really do,” he says. “When you&#8217;re going to be 80, then you&#8217;ll probably miss it, too. You know, that&#8217;s the way it is. And it&#8217;s okay.”

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He Turned The Royals Into A Joke. His Take On America Is Anything But.

King Charles III

Literature

Novel

Royal Family

Special Reporting

Lena Dunham is addressing the fallout from years-old claims that she sexually abused her younger sister, who is now identifying as &#8220;transmasculine nonbinary.&#8221;
The “Girls” creator is currently on the interview circuit promoting her new memoir, “Famesick,” which is a follow-up to her first memoir, “Not That Kind of Girl.” 
Dunham delivered a slightly different outlook when she addressed the controversy spawned by the first book in the pages of the second. 
&#8220;I was shocked when a conservative media site analyzed the book carefully, pulling choice passages and coming to the conclusion that I had engaged in sexually inappropriate childhood behavior with my sibling,&#8221; Dunham wrote in the new book, referring specifically to the media watchdog site Truth Revolt, the site where Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro served as Editor-in-Chief.
Dunham wrote that she wasn’t too worried about the backlash at first because she assumed “any logical person&#8221; would interpret the negative reaction as being &#8220;an attempt to cherrypick sections to create a narrative that spoke to the idea that I — and by extension, the majority of feminists — were not crusaders for justice but, in fact, wanton perverts.&#8221;
&#8220;I didn&#8217;t consider what I&#8217;d written to be particularly salacious,&#8221; the actress and writer went on, per <a href="https://ew.com/lena-dunham-cyrus-grace-dunham-book-controversy-11949411">Entertainment Weekly</a>. &#8220;And anyway, what about the things I hadn&#8217;t included? I&#8217;d decided against describing the time, age four, I announced to a group of near-strangers that my punishment at home for misbehavior was having &#8216;a fork stuck up my vagina.&#8217; (It was not.) I don&#8217;t know where I came up with that, but I&#8217;ve always been confused by anyone who doesn&#8217;t recognize that children are inherently innocent, and yet their imaginations are endless and deranged.&#8221;
Now, Dunham is especially sympathetic about putting the experience in print, not because she thinks it was wrong, but because it negatively impacted her sister’s journey to coming out as trans.
She noted how this situation happened just as her little sister was &#8220;sprouting wings, getting out from under the type-A straight-girl drag he&#8217;d [sic] worn for all of high school.&#8221;
&#8220;What I had been guilty of on the page, what the internet should have charged me with and given me a short sentence for, was poor phrasing — maybe a second count for TMI,&#8221; Dunham wrote in “Famesick.”
&#8220;What I was now guilty of seemed to be a laissez-faire attitude about what was mine to confess, which had derailed the life of the person I had felt most tasked with protecting.&#8221;
Dunham defended her actions as being a response to her sister being a “mystery.”
&#8220;It was ironic that as a 6-year-old, I&#8217;d wondered if he had a vagina, when what I didn&#8217;t understand for the entirety of our shared childhood was that he wasn&#8217;t my sister,&#8221; she wrote. &#8220;Eight years ago, around the time Cyrus came out as trans, he and I were still working to mend our relationship. It wasn&#8217;t just the incident around the book — since the moment I&#8217;d begun to have a public life, it had gobbled up the space around his private one, however unintentionally.&#8221;
&#8220;It didn&#8217;t help that the champagne fizz of new fame makes even the most generous people temporarily narcissistic, obsessed with their own image and its success or failure,&#8221; she admitted. &#8220;But the book had been a clear turning point, after which he seemed to feel safer being as far away as possible from the ricocheting bullets of my public persona.&#8221;
In the first book, which was released in 2014, Dunham described masturbating while lying next to her very young sister and inspecting her vagina. “My mother didn’t bother asking why I had opened Grace’s vagina,” Dunham wrote in the original book. “This was within the spectrum of things that I did.”
In another passage, she discussed trying to get her sister to “kiss her on the lips for five seconds” by offering gifts. “Basically, anything a sexual predator might do to woo a small suburban girl, I was trying,” Dunham <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/05/lena-dunham-statement-abuse-claims">wrote</a>.
The backlash to these revelations put her on the defensive, with her going on a self-described “rage spiral.”
“The right-wing news story that I molested my little sister isn’t just LOL – it’s really f***ing upsetting and disgusting. And by the way, if you were a little kid and never looked at another little kid’s vagina, well, congrats to you,” she posted on X in 2014.

Lena Dunham’s First Memoir Led To Accusations Of Sexual Abuse So She Decided To Write Another

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