Exploring Books Through Articles, Reviews, Announcements, & Lists 2024-3 July-Sept.
This is a continuation of the topic Exploring Books Through Articles, Reviews, Announcements, & Lists 2024-2 Apr.-June.
This topic was continued by Exploring Books Through Articles, Reviews, Announcements, & Lists 2024-4 Oct-Dec.
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1featherbear
NYRB Online July 18, 2024
Literature
Tim Parks. Reading Against the Novel. Review of: Selected Writings of James Fitzjames Stephen: On the Novel and Journalism / edited by Christopher Ricks.
Yuri Slezkine. A Sacred Scripture of Doubt. Review of: Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter / Gary Saul Morson.
Michael Gorra. A Story of His Own. Review of: James / Percival Everett.
Francine Prose. More Than Just Acknowledgments. Review of: Wandering Stars / Tommy Orange -- There There / Tommy Orange.
Natasha Wimmer. The Watercolorist. Review of: The Novices of Lerna / Ángel Bonomini, translated from the Spanish by Jordan Landsman.
Anne Enright. The High Irish Style. (Article: "John McGahern sought formality and distance in his prose, but his masterful novels were always underpinned by the difficult realities of his own life.")
With stories by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr & Helen DeWitt and poems by Elizabeth Willis & Edward Salem.
Arts
Jed Perl. Reimagining the Ordinary. Review of: Jean Hélion: La Prose du monde, an exhibition at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, March 22–August 18, 2024; catalog of the exhibition edited by Sophie Krebs and Henry-Claude Cousseau.
Kevin Powers. The Kitsch Abyss. Review of Jonathan Glazer's film The Zone of Interest.
Politics & Society
Kenneth Roth. Crimes of War in Gaza. (Article)
Marilynne Robinson. Agreeing to Our Harm. (Essay: "We ignore at our peril the rage that animates Trump voters and threatens Biden’s chances this fall.")
Fintan O'Toole. Like ‘Being Friends with a Hurricane’. (Article: "For the fixers, enablers, and vassals who surround Donald Trump, the rewards of his friendship are not worth the risks.")
Literature
Tim Parks. Reading Against the Novel. Review of: Selected Writings of James Fitzjames Stephen: On the Novel and Journalism / edited by Christopher Ricks.
Yuri Slezkine. A Sacred Scripture of Doubt. Review of: Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter / Gary Saul Morson.
Michael Gorra. A Story of His Own. Review of: James / Percival Everett.
Francine Prose. More Than Just Acknowledgments. Review of: Wandering Stars / Tommy Orange -- There There / Tommy Orange.
Natasha Wimmer. The Watercolorist. Review of: The Novices of Lerna / Ángel Bonomini, translated from the Spanish by Jordan Landsman.
Anne Enright. The High Irish Style. (Article: "John McGahern sought formality and distance in his prose, but his masterful novels were always underpinned by the difficult realities of his own life.")
With stories by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr & Helen DeWitt and poems by Elizabeth Willis & Edward Salem.
Arts
Jed Perl. Reimagining the Ordinary. Review of: Jean Hélion: La Prose du monde, an exhibition at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, March 22–August 18, 2024; catalog of the exhibition edited by Sophie Krebs and Henry-Claude Cousseau.
Kevin Powers. The Kitsch Abyss. Review of Jonathan Glazer's film The Zone of Interest.
Politics & Society
Kenneth Roth. Crimes of War in Gaza. (Article)
Marilynne Robinson. Agreeing to Our Harm. (Essay: "We ignore at our peril the rage that animates Trump voters and threatens Biden’s chances this fall.")
Fintan O'Toole. Like ‘Being Friends with a Hurricane’. (Article: "For the fixers, enablers, and vassals who surround Donald Trump, the rewards of his friendship are not worth the risks.")
2featherbear
Ismaïl Kadaré , 1936-2024
Richard Lea. Guardian, 07/01/2024: Ismail Kadare, giant of Albanian literature, dies aged 88. "His allegorical stories, informed by life under state communism, drew international praise but he insisted that he was not a political writer."
Ismail Kadare. Guardian, 07/01/2024: A life in quotes: Ismail Kadare.
Rusha Haljuci. NYT, 07/01/2024: Ismail Kadare, 88, Dies; His Novels Brought Albania’s Plight to the World. "Often compared to Orwell and Kafka, he walked a political tightrope with works that offered veiled criticism of his totalitarian state."
Amerlia Nierenberg. NYT, 07/01/2024: A Guide to Ismail Kadare’s Books. The NYT article, temporarily unlocked lists the following recommendations for English translations:
The General of the Dead Army -- Broken April -- The Palace of Dreams -- The Three-Arched Bridge -- The Successor -- Twilight of the Eastern Gods -- A Dictator Calls
His LT page: https://www.librarything.com/author/kadareismail
Richard Lea. Guardian, 07/01/2024: Ismail Kadare, giant of Albanian literature, dies aged 88. "His allegorical stories, informed by life under state communism, drew international praise but he insisted that he was not a political writer."
Ismail Kadare. Guardian, 07/01/2024: A life in quotes: Ismail Kadare.
Rusha Haljuci. NYT, 07/01/2024: Ismail Kadare, 88, Dies; His Novels Brought Albania’s Plight to the World. "Often compared to Orwell and Kafka, he walked a political tightrope with works that offered veiled criticism of his totalitarian state."
Amerlia Nierenberg. NYT, 07/01/2024: A Guide to Ismail Kadare’s Books. The NYT article, temporarily unlocked lists the following recommendations for English translations:
The General of the Dead Army -- Broken April -- The Palace of Dreams -- The Three-Arched Bridge -- The Successor -- Twilight of the Eastern Gods -- A Dictator Calls
His LT page: https://www.librarything.com/author/kadareismail
3featherbear
Dwight Garner. NYT, 07/01/2024: The Angel of Death Has Some Reservations About His Job. Review of: CONCERNING THE FUTURE OF SOULS: 99 Stories of Azrael / Joy Williams; sequel of sorts to her NINETY-NINE STORIES OF GOD.
4featherbear
Shay Youngblood, 1959-2024
Penelope Green. NYT, 07/01/2024: Shay Youngblood, Influential Author and Playwright, Dies at 64 (Temporarily unlocked)
"Ms. Youngblood, whose mother died when she was 2 years old and whose father was not in her life, grew up in a housing project in Columbus, Ga., where she raised by her maternal grandmother and great-grandmother, along with a close circle of eccentric and adoring maternal stand-ins.
"The Big Mamas — stoic, arthritic and wise — had much to impart to the young Shay: their dim view of most men; their love of music, dancing and church; their often bawdy humor; their dignified, powerful resistance to the indignities and horrors visited upon them by the racist white employers for whom they worked as maids.
"Ms. Youngblood said that she prayed often for her mother to return, but that as she grew older, she appreciated the richness of her upbringing and turned the experience into her first book, “The Big Mama Stories” (1989), which before being published was adapted into her first play, “Shakin’ the Mess Outta Misery.”
Author of: Black Girl in Paris
Her LT page is: https://www.librarything.com/author/youngbloodshay
Penelope Green. NYT, 07/01/2024: Shay Youngblood, Influential Author and Playwright, Dies at 64 (Temporarily unlocked)
"Ms. Youngblood, whose mother died when she was 2 years old and whose father was not in her life, grew up in a housing project in Columbus, Ga., where she raised by her maternal grandmother and great-grandmother, along with a close circle of eccentric and adoring maternal stand-ins.
"The Big Mamas — stoic, arthritic and wise — had much to impart to the young Shay: their dim view of most men; their love of music, dancing and church; their often bawdy humor; their dignified, powerful resistance to the indignities and horrors visited upon them by the racist white employers for whom they worked as maids.
"Ms. Youngblood said that she prayed often for her mother to return, but that as she grew older, she appreciated the richness of her upbringing and turned the experience into her first book, “The Big Mama Stories” (1989), which before being published was adapted into her first play, “Shakin’ the Mess Outta Misery.”
Author of: Black Girl in Paris
Her LT page is: https://www.librarything.com/author/youngbloodshay
5featherbear
Sam Levin. Guardian, 07/02/2024: ‘The power of fiction’: San Francisco store sends LGBTQ+ books to states that ban them. "Since launching, Fabulosa Books’ Books not Bans program has sent more than 700 books to states across the US."
Tiago Rogero. Guardian, 07/02/2024: Brazil’s unparalleled spate of book bans is page out of US culture wars. "A series of bans on volumes with race, gender and LGBTQ+ themes have proliferated in recent years."
David Smith. Guardian, 07/02/2024: ‘They always got away with it’: new book reveals Kennedys’ shocking treatment of women. Review of: Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed / Maureen Callahan.
Tiago Rogero. Guardian, 07/02/2024: Brazil’s unparalleled spate of book bans is page out of US culture wars. "A series of bans on volumes with race, gender and LGBTQ+ themes have proliferated in recent years."
David Smith. Guardian, 07/02/2024: ‘They always got away with it’: new book reveals Kennedys’ shocking treatment of women. Review of: Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed / Maureen Callahan.
6featherbear
TLS July 5, 2024|No. 6327
Featured
Michelle Pridmore-Brown. Raising fathers: How babies can bring out the best in their male carers. Review of: FATHER TIME: A natural history of men and babies / Sarah Blaffer Hrdy.
Julian Jackson. Fighting on: French participation in the war did not end with the signing of the armistice. Review of: RESISTANCE AND LIBERATION: France at war, 1942–1945 / Douglas Porch.
Muriel Zagha. Hold the popcorn: The austere film-making of Marguerite Duras. Review of: MY CINEMA / Marguerite Duras; translated by Daniella Shreir.
Toby Lichtig. A nation in a state: Joe Penhall’s new play about politics, power and powerlessness. Review of Joe Penhall's THE CONSTITUENT, Old Vic, London, until August 10.
Literature
Heather O'Donoghue. Helping with enquiries: An ultimate guide to the history of crime fiction. Review of: THE LIFE OF CRIME: Detecting the history of mysteries and their creators / Martin Edwards.
Catherine Taylor. Ghost writer: Spooky stories from the author of The Railway Children. Review of: THE HOUSE OF SILENCE: Ghost stories, 1887–1920 / E. Nesbit.
Phil Baker. The horror, the horror: Did H. P. Lovecraft’s bigotry elevate his writing? Review of: MIDNIGHT RAMBLES: H. P. Lovecraft in Gotham / David J. Goodwin -- HORROR AS RACISM IN H. P. LOVECRAFT: White fragility in the Weird Tales / John L. Steadman.
Norma Clarke. Down the rabbit hole: A fictive retelling of a bizarre case in eighteenth-century England. Review of: MARY AND THE RABBIT DREAM / Noémi Kiss-Deáki.
Pablo Scheffer. To die with honour: An account of Thomas Malory’s fall from grace. Review of: A GOOD DELIVERANCE / Toby Clements.
Tom Seymour Evans. What’s your excuse?: A blazing novel of America’s addicted middle. Review of: THE SECOND COMING / Garth Risk Hallberg.
Matt Rowland Hill. Facing the swarm of asterisks: A recovering alcoholic approaches his first year sober. Review of: EARLY SOBRIETIES / Michael Deagler.
Heather Cass White. Comedy in long-shot: Humour, tragedy, objectivity and the writing life. Review of: THE MATERIAL / Camille Bordas.
In Brief Review of: THE GREAT DIVIDE / Cristina Henríquez.
In Brief Review of: SHAKESPEARE’S VISIONARY WOMEN / Laura Jayne White (86pp)
In Brief Review of: ANTICOLONIAL FORM: Literary journals at the end of empire / Alexandra Reza.
In Brief Review of: BRÛLER L’EMPREINTE / Marina de Van.
Arts
Lillian Crawford. Cut!: The films the stars saw before they died. Review of: LAST MOVIES / Stanley Schtinter.
Josh Raymond. In the heart or in the head?: New and difficult emotions arise in the sequel to the much-loved Inside Out. Review of the film INSIDE OUT 2.
Colin Grant. Still running out of road: Alan Bleasdale’s politically engaged drama of working-class lives, forty years on. Review of Bleasdale's BOYS FROM THE BLACKSTUFF, Adapted by James Graham, Garrick Theatre, London, until August 3.
In Brief Review of: THE ART OF THE ACTRESS: Fashioning identities / Laura Engel. ("How eighteenth-century artists portrayed actresses"; 84pp)
Science & Technology
Rebecca Heisman. Everyone gets their own warbler: The complex legacy of America’s most famous ornithologist. Review of: THE BIRDS THAT AUDUBON MISSED: Discovery and desire in the American wilderness / KENN KAUFMAN.
History, Politics, & Society
Chis Gosden. Collapse and rise: Can the end of the Bronze Age teach us how to survive? Review of: AFTER 1177 B.C.: The survival of civilizations / Eric H. Cline -- 1177 B.C.: A graphic history of the year civilization collapsed / Eric H. Cline and Glynnis Fawkes.
Luke Warde. Revisiting a crime scene: The enduring significance of the Babyn Yar massacre. Review of: UN ENDROIT INCONVÉNIENT / Jonathan Littell and Antoine d’Agata.
Jeremy Brown. Tug of war: The uneasy history and contested status of Taiwan. Review of: THE STRUGGLE FOR TAIWAN: A history / Sulmaan Wasif Khan.
Wendy Law-Yone. Death on the tracks: The horrors of Myanmar’s Great Railway Disaster. Review of: On the Shadow Tracks: A journey through occupied Myanmar / Clare Hammond.
Ros Taylor. Give them enough hope: The challenges for democracy when people despair of it. Review of: IN THE LONG RUN: The future as a political idea / Jonathan White.
Regina Rini. Lest we forget: Why it’s important to celebrate the living past. (Essay)
In Brief Review of: ON THE MOVE: The overheating Earth and the uprooting of America / Abraham Lustgarten.
In Brief Review of: THE DRUMMOND AFFAIR: Murder and mystery in Provence / Stephanie Matthews and Daniel Smith.
Featured
Michelle Pridmore-Brown. Raising fathers: How babies can bring out the best in their male carers. Review of: FATHER TIME: A natural history of men and babies / Sarah Blaffer Hrdy.
Julian Jackson. Fighting on: French participation in the war did not end with the signing of the armistice. Review of: RESISTANCE AND LIBERATION: France at war, 1942–1945 / Douglas Porch.
Muriel Zagha. Hold the popcorn: The austere film-making of Marguerite Duras. Review of: MY CINEMA / Marguerite Duras; translated by Daniella Shreir.
Toby Lichtig. A nation in a state: Joe Penhall’s new play about politics, power and powerlessness. Review of Joe Penhall's THE CONSTITUENT, Old Vic, London, until August 10.
Literature
Heather O'Donoghue. Helping with enquiries: An ultimate guide to the history of crime fiction. Review of: THE LIFE OF CRIME: Detecting the history of mysteries and their creators / Martin Edwards.
Catherine Taylor. Ghost writer: Spooky stories from the author of The Railway Children. Review of: THE HOUSE OF SILENCE: Ghost stories, 1887–1920 / E. Nesbit.
Phil Baker. The horror, the horror: Did H. P. Lovecraft’s bigotry elevate his writing? Review of: MIDNIGHT RAMBLES: H. P. Lovecraft in Gotham / David J. Goodwin -- HORROR AS RACISM IN H. P. LOVECRAFT: White fragility in the Weird Tales / John L. Steadman.
Norma Clarke. Down the rabbit hole: A fictive retelling of a bizarre case in eighteenth-century England. Review of: MARY AND THE RABBIT DREAM / Noémi Kiss-Deáki.
Pablo Scheffer. To die with honour: An account of Thomas Malory’s fall from grace. Review of: A GOOD DELIVERANCE / Toby Clements.
Tom Seymour Evans. What’s your excuse?: A blazing novel of America’s addicted middle. Review of: THE SECOND COMING / Garth Risk Hallberg.
Matt Rowland Hill. Facing the swarm of asterisks: A recovering alcoholic approaches his first year sober. Review of: EARLY SOBRIETIES / Michael Deagler.
Heather Cass White. Comedy in long-shot: Humour, tragedy, objectivity and the writing life. Review of: THE MATERIAL / Camille Bordas.
In Brief Review of: THE GREAT DIVIDE / Cristina Henríquez.
In Brief Review of: SHAKESPEARE’S VISIONARY WOMEN / Laura Jayne White (86pp)
In Brief Review of: ANTICOLONIAL FORM: Literary journals at the end of empire / Alexandra Reza.
In Brief Review of: BRÛLER L’EMPREINTE / Marina de Van.
Arts
Lillian Crawford. Cut!: The films the stars saw before they died. Review of: LAST MOVIES / Stanley Schtinter.
Josh Raymond. In the heart or in the head?: New and difficult emotions arise in the sequel to the much-loved Inside Out. Review of the film INSIDE OUT 2.
Colin Grant. Still running out of road: Alan Bleasdale’s politically engaged drama of working-class lives, forty years on. Review of Bleasdale's BOYS FROM THE BLACKSTUFF, Adapted by James Graham, Garrick Theatre, London, until August 3.
In Brief Review of: THE ART OF THE ACTRESS: Fashioning identities / Laura Engel. ("How eighteenth-century artists portrayed actresses"; 84pp)
Science & Technology
Rebecca Heisman. Everyone gets their own warbler: The complex legacy of America’s most famous ornithologist. Review of: THE BIRDS THAT AUDUBON MISSED: Discovery and desire in the American wilderness / KENN KAUFMAN.
History, Politics, & Society
Chis Gosden. Collapse and rise: Can the end of the Bronze Age teach us how to survive? Review of: AFTER 1177 B.C.: The survival of civilizations / Eric H. Cline -- 1177 B.C.: A graphic history of the year civilization collapsed / Eric H. Cline and Glynnis Fawkes.
Luke Warde. Revisiting a crime scene: The enduring significance of the Babyn Yar massacre. Review of: UN ENDROIT INCONVÉNIENT / Jonathan Littell and Antoine d’Agata.
Jeremy Brown. Tug of war: The uneasy history and contested status of Taiwan. Review of: THE STRUGGLE FOR TAIWAN: A history / Sulmaan Wasif Khan.
Wendy Law-Yone. Death on the tracks: The horrors of Myanmar’s Great Railway Disaster. Review of: On the Shadow Tracks: A journey through occupied Myanmar / Clare Hammond.
Ros Taylor. Give them enough hope: The challenges for democracy when people despair of it. Review of: IN THE LONG RUN: The future as a political idea / Jonathan White.
Regina Rini. Lest we forget: Why it’s important to celebrate the living past. (Essay)
In Brief Review of: ON THE MOVE: The overheating Earth and the uprooting of America / Abraham Lustgarten.
In Brief Review of: THE DRUMMOND AFFAIR: Murder and mystery in Provence / Stephanie Matthews and Daniel Smith.
7featherbear
Henry Clements. Public Books, 07/04/2024: ARABIC ≠ LATIN: SACRED LANGUAGE IN A SECULAR AGE. Review of: Sacred Language, Vernacular Difference: Global Arabic & Counter-Imperial Literatures / Annette Damayanti Lienau.
8featherbear
Stanley Moss, 1925-2024
Robert D. McFadden. NYT, 07/06/2024: Stanley Moss, Poet Who Evoked a Troubled World, Dies at 99.
"Mr. Moss was not nationally known. But he won thousands of devoted fans with what critics called exquisite, moving and often painful free-verse observations on the natural world, friends’ deaths, the Holocaust and other topics. Many of his books were translated into German, Spanish, Italian or Chinese, and readers were drawn to his confrontations with a God he deemed oblivious of mankind."
He made his living as an art dealer:
"“When I started selling art, I had no money or training,” he told Dylan Foley in 2005 for a blog called The Last Bohemians. “I have a gift for finding old masters. I have discovered pictures that now hang in the Louvre that I bought for nothing. It takes taste and brains."
His LT page is: https://www.librarything.com/author/mossstanley
Author of: A history of color : new and collected poems
Robert D. McFadden. NYT, 07/06/2024: Stanley Moss, Poet Who Evoked a Troubled World, Dies at 99.
"Mr. Moss was not nationally known. But he won thousands of devoted fans with what critics called exquisite, moving and often painful free-verse observations on the natural world, friends’ deaths, the Holocaust and other topics. Many of his books were translated into German, Spanish, Italian or Chinese, and readers were drawn to his confrontations with a God he deemed oblivious of mankind."
He made his living as an art dealer:
"“When I started selling art, I had no money or training,” he told Dylan Foley in 2005 for a blog called The Last Bohemians. “I have a gift for finding old masters. I have discovered pictures that now hang in the Louvre that I bought for nothing. It takes taste and brains."
His LT page is: https://www.librarything.com/author/mossstanley
Author of: A history of color : new and collected poems
9featherbear
Alexandra Alter. NYT, 07/07/2024: Romance Bookstores Are Booming, Dishing ‘All the Hot Stuff You Can Imagine.’ "Bookstores once shunted romance novels to a shelf in the back. But with romance writers dominating the best-seller lists, a network of dedicated bookstores has sprung up around the country."
10featherbear
Rebecca Mead. New Yorker, 07/01/2024: Fitzcarraldo Editions Makes Challenging Literature Chic. "In ten years, the London publishing house has amassed devoted readers—and four writers with Nobel Prizes."
11featherbear
Recent LARB:
Laurie L. Levenson. 07/07/2024: An Unforgettable Miscarriage of Justice. Review of: Tragedy on Trial: The Story of the Infamous Emmett Till Murder Trial / Ronald Collins.
Cristóbal Riego. 07/07/2024: Lyrical Silicone: On Pedro Lemebel. Review of: A Last Supper of Queer Apostles: Selected Essays / Pedro Lemebel.
Thomas Chen. 07/06/2024: The Lie of the Land: June Fourth, Censorship, and “On the Edge.” Review of: On the Edge: Feeling Precarious in China / Margaret Hillenbrand.
Rachel Dec. 07/06/2024: Economics for the Age of TikTok. Review of: In This Economy? How Money and Markets Really Work / Kyla Scanlon.
Laurie L. Levenson. 07/07/2024: An Unforgettable Miscarriage of Justice. Review of: Tragedy on Trial: The Story of the Infamous Emmett Till Murder Trial / Ronald Collins.
Cristóbal Riego. 07/07/2024: Lyrical Silicone: On Pedro Lemebel. Review of: A Last Supper of Queer Apostles: Selected Essays / Pedro Lemebel.
Thomas Chen. 07/06/2024: The Lie of the Land: June Fourth, Censorship, and “On the Edge.” Review of: On the Edge: Feeling Precarious in China / Margaret Hillenbrand.
Rachel Dec. 07/06/2024: Economics for the Age of TikTok. Review of: In This Economy? How Money and Markets Really Work / Kyla Scanlon.
12featherbear
Recent reviews from The Critic (UK):
Sebastian Milbank. 07/07/2024: In the beginning: neither fish nor fowl. Review of: Reading Genesis / Marilynne Robinson.
Andrea Valentino. 07/04/2024: The blunders that restored the Crown. Review of: The Fall: Last Days of the English Republic / Henry Reece.
Sebastian Milbank. 07/07/2024: In the beginning: neither fish nor fowl. Review of: Reading Genesis / Marilynne Robinson.
Andrea Valentino. 07/04/2024: The blunders that restored the Crown. Review of: The Fall: Last Days of the English Republic / Henry Reece.
13featherbear
Asha Thanki. LitHub, 07/07/2024: Write More “Indianly,” or Else: Asha Thanki on the Trap of “Authentic” Writing. "Considering the Publishing Industry's Problematic Ideas About Non-American Writers."
14featherbear
Isabelle Hunt. Public Books, 07/09/2024: THE WRITING “I” AND THE READING “I”: SHEILA HETI AND THE NEW FRONTIERS OF THE PERSONAL. Review of: Alphabetical Diaries / Sheila Heti.
15featherbear
Alexandra Alter, Elizabeth A. Harris and Vjosa Isai. NYT, 07/09/2024: A Silence Is Shattered, and So Are Many Fans of Alice Munro. "Admirers said they were “blindsided” by revelations that Munro’s youngest daughter had been abused by her stepfather — and that Munro stayed with him even after she learned of it years later."
Xochitl Gonzalez. Atlantic, 07/10/2024: Alice Munro Was a Terrible Mother: But we shouldn’t stop reading her stories.
Xochitl Gonzalez. Atlantic, 07/10/2024: Alice Munro Was a Terrible Mother: But we shouldn’t stop reading her stories.
16featherbear
TLS July 12, 2024|No. 6328
Featured
Max Alexander. Putting the burger down: A provocative study of the weight-loss drug Ozempic. Review of: MAGIC PILL: The extraordinary benefits and disturbing risks of the new weight loss drugs / Johann Hari.
James Cahill. Her name in lights: The cosmopolitan world of a high-society art collector. Review of: CHASING BEAUTY: The life of Isabella Stewart Gardner / Natalie Dykstra.
Diane Mehta. Electrical insight: A poetic genius warped by childhood trauma. Review of: THE COLLECTED POEMS OF DELMORE SCHWARTZ / Ben Mazer, editor.
Lindsey Hilsum. Born from violence: A feminist revolt erupts on an unnamed Caribbean island. Review of: PASSIONTIDE / Monique Roffey.
Literature
Ben Cartlidge. The classicist’s toolkit: Greek literary history embedded in lived experience. Review of: ESSAYS ON ANCIENT GREEK LITERATURE AND CULTURE: Volume 1: Greek poetry before 400BC / Ewen Bowie -- ESSAYS ON ANCIENT GREEK LITERATURE AND CULTURE: Volume 2: Comedy, Herodotus, Hellenistic and imperial Greek poetry, the novels / Ewen Bowie.
Benjamin Morgan. An unquiet generation: Ten years after the Armistice, a novelist inspects the damage. Review of: GINSTER / Siegfried Kracauer; translated by Carl Skoggard, with an afterword by Johannes von Moltke.
Georgina Wilson. Best left unsaid: Filling in the blanks of early modern literature. Review of: BLANKS, PRINT, SPACE, AND VOID IN ENGLISH RENAISSANCE LITERATURE: An archaeology of absence / Jonathan Sawday.
Guy Stevenson. Self-parody of the artist: Flannery O’Connor’s last novel, reconstructed from her archive. Review of: FLANNERY O’CONNOR’S ‘WHY DO THE HEATHEN RAGE?’: A behind-the-scenes look at a work in progress / Jessica Hooten Wilson.
Estelle Shirbon. Barracoon to cloth: The story of the former slave who became an Anglican bishop. Review of: YORÙBÁ BOY RUNNING / Biyi Bándélé.
Michael Hughes. Brits Out my arse: The corrosive stalemate of the Troubles in the 1990s. Review of: CROSS / Austin Duffy.
George Cochrane. Glasgow is the dream: Growing up in a ‘manky wee hellhole’ in 1990s Scotland. Review of: ONLY HERE, ONLY NOW / Tom Newlands.
Craig Raine. The ear decides: Finding your feet in scansion. (Essay)
In Brief Review of: BARCELONA / Mary Costello.
In Brief Review of: ARIADNE / Isadore Lhevinne.
Arts
Roderick Conway Morris. Peak practice: The meticulous technique of a nineteenth-century great. Review of the exhibition & its catalog: CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH: Infinite landscapes / Birgit Verwiebe and Ralph Gleis, editors; exhibition Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin, until August 4.
Walker Mimms. Harlem reshuffled: Exploring the visual influence of the interwar Renaissance. Review of the exhibition THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE AND TRANSATLANTIC MODERNISM, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, until July 28.
Lily Herd. Horslips and fish pie: An account of growing up around rock stars. Review of: MY FAMILY AND OTHER ROCK STARS / Tiffany Murray.
John Phipps. The man who rides two horses: A memoir of dual identity. Review of: DO I BARK LIKE A DOG?: How an Italian family history shaped a boy in London / Michael Volpe.
In Brief Review of: GAY ALIENS AND QUEER FOLK: How Russell T. Davies changed TV / Emily Garside.
In Brief Review of: PARIAH GENIUS: John Deakin and the Soho court around Francis Bacon / Iain Sinclair.
Philosophy
Ben Hutchinson. Half Marx: The Frankfurt School’s place in intellectual history. Review of: CAFÉ MARX: Das Institut für Sozialforschung von den Anfängen bis zur Frankfurter Schule / Philipp Lenhard -- A PRECARIOUS HAPPINESS: Adorno and the sources of normativity / Peter E. Gordon.
Religion
In Brief Review of: BREATHERS OF AN AMPLER DAY: Victorian views of heaven / Ian Bradley.
History, Politics, Society, & Culture
Myles Lavan. House of cards: Rome and the world’s first pandemic. Review of: POX ROMANA: The plague that shook the Roman world / Colin Elliott.
Laura Swift. Fitting ends: How funeral orations for the war dead shaped Athenian society. Review of: THE ATHENIAN FUNERAL ORATION: After Nicole Loraux / David M. Pritchard, editor.
Larry Wolff. ‘The eldest child of Liberty’: The rise and reinvention of a maritime superpower. Review of: VENICE: The remarkable history of the lagoon city / Dennis Romano -- A VIEW OF VENICE: Portrait of a Renaissance city / Kristin Love Huffman, editor -- SHYLOCK’S VENICE: The remarkable history of Venice’s Jews and the Ghetto / Harry Freedman.
Michael Reid. Uncle Sam’s backyard: Latin America’s long battle between democrats and dictators. Review of: LATIN AMERICA'S DEMOCRATIC CRUSADE: The transnational struggle against dictatorship, 1920s–1960s / Allen Wells.
T.H. Breen. Revolutionary road: The pitfalls of political upheaval. Review of: THE AGE OF REVOLUTIONS: And the generations who made it / Nathan Perl-Rosenthal -- AGE OF REVOLUTIONS: Progress and backlash from 1600 to the present / Fareed Zakaria.
Anne Nelson. Diet of despair: The food industry’s deadly impact on public health. Review of: BARONS: Money, power, and the corruption of America’s food industry / Austin Frerick -- ULTRA-PROCESSED PEOPLE: Why do we all eat stuff that isn’t food … and why can’t we stop? / Chris van Tulleken.
Richard Norton-Taylor. Puzzle palace: Does the culture of official secrecy harm the intelligence services? Review of: COUNTER-INTELLIGENCE: What the secret world can teach us about problem-solving and creativity / Robert Hannigan -- THINK LIKE A SPY: Master the art of influence and build life-changing alliances / Julian Fisher.
In Brief Review of: YALE AND SLAVERY: A history / David W. Blight, with Yale and Slavery Research Project.
In Brief Review of: MONIQUE S’ÉVADE / Édouard Louis.
Featured
Max Alexander. Putting the burger down: A provocative study of the weight-loss drug Ozempic. Review of: MAGIC PILL: The extraordinary benefits and disturbing risks of the new weight loss drugs / Johann Hari.
James Cahill. Her name in lights: The cosmopolitan world of a high-society art collector. Review of: CHASING BEAUTY: The life of Isabella Stewart Gardner / Natalie Dykstra.
Diane Mehta. Electrical insight: A poetic genius warped by childhood trauma. Review of: THE COLLECTED POEMS OF DELMORE SCHWARTZ / Ben Mazer, editor.
Lindsey Hilsum. Born from violence: A feminist revolt erupts on an unnamed Caribbean island. Review of: PASSIONTIDE / Monique Roffey.
Literature
Ben Cartlidge. The classicist’s toolkit: Greek literary history embedded in lived experience. Review of: ESSAYS ON ANCIENT GREEK LITERATURE AND CULTURE: Volume 1: Greek poetry before 400BC / Ewen Bowie -- ESSAYS ON ANCIENT GREEK LITERATURE AND CULTURE: Volume 2: Comedy, Herodotus, Hellenistic and imperial Greek poetry, the novels / Ewen Bowie.
Benjamin Morgan. An unquiet generation: Ten years after the Armistice, a novelist inspects the damage. Review of: GINSTER / Siegfried Kracauer; translated by Carl Skoggard, with an afterword by Johannes von Moltke.
Georgina Wilson. Best left unsaid: Filling in the blanks of early modern literature. Review of: BLANKS, PRINT, SPACE, AND VOID IN ENGLISH RENAISSANCE LITERATURE: An archaeology of absence / Jonathan Sawday.
Guy Stevenson. Self-parody of the artist: Flannery O’Connor’s last novel, reconstructed from her archive. Review of: FLANNERY O’CONNOR’S ‘WHY DO THE HEATHEN RAGE?’: A behind-the-scenes look at a work in progress / Jessica Hooten Wilson.
Estelle Shirbon. Barracoon to cloth: The story of the former slave who became an Anglican bishop. Review of: YORÙBÁ BOY RUNNING / Biyi Bándélé.
Michael Hughes. Brits Out my arse: The corrosive stalemate of the Troubles in the 1990s. Review of: CROSS / Austin Duffy.
George Cochrane. Glasgow is the dream: Growing up in a ‘manky wee hellhole’ in 1990s Scotland. Review of: ONLY HERE, ONLY NOW / Tom Newlands.
Craig Raine. The ear decides: Finding your feet in scansion. (Essay)
In Brief Review of: BARCELONA / Mary Costello.
In Brief Review of: ARIADNE / Isadore Lhevinne.
Arts
Roderick Conway Morris. Peak practice: The meticulous technique of a nineteenth-century great. Review of the exhibition & its catalog: CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH: Infinite landscapes / Birgit Verwiebe and Ralph Gleis, editors; exhibition Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin, until August 4.
Walker Mimms. Harlem reshuffled: Exploring the visual influence of the interwar Renaissance. Review of the exhibition THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE AND TRANSATLANTIC MODERNISM, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, until July 28.
Lily Herd. Horslips and fish pie: An account of growing up around rock stars. Review of: MY FAMILY AND OTHER ROCK STARS / Tiffany Murray.
John Phipps. The man who rides two horses: A memoir of dual identity. Review of: DO I BARK LIKE A DOG?: How an Italian family history shaped a boy in London / Michael Volpe.
In Brief Review of: GAY ALIENS AND QUEER FOLK: How Russell T. Davies changed TV / Emily Garside.
In Brief Review of: PARIAH GENIUS: John Deakin and the Soho court around Francis Bacon / Iain Sinclair.
Philosophy
Ben Hutchinson. Half Marx: The Frankfurt School’s place in intellectual history. Review of: CAFÉ MARX: Das Institut für Sozialforschung von den Anfängen bis zur Frankfurter Schule / Philipp Lenhard -- A PRECARIOUS HAPPINESS: Adorno and the sources of normativity / Peter E. Gordon.
Religion
In Brief Review of: BREATHERS OF AN AMPLER DAY: Victorian views of heaven / Ian Bradley.
History, Politics, Society, & Culture
Myles Lavan. House of cards: Rome and the world’s first pandemic. Review of: POX ROMANA: The plague that shook the Roman world / Colin Elliott.
Laura Swift. Fitting ends: How funeral orations for the war dead shaped Athenian society. Review of: THE ATHENIAN FUNERAL ORATION: After Nicole Loraux / David M. Pritchard, editor.
Larry Wolff. ‘The eldest child of Liberty’: The rise and reinvention of a maritime superpower. Review of: VENICE: The remarkable history of the lagoon city / Dennis Romano -- A VIEW OF VENICE: Portrait of a Renaissance city / Kristin Love Huffman, editor -- SHYLOCK’S VENICE: The remarkable history of Venice’s Jews and the Ghetto / Harry Freedman.
Michael Reid. Uncle Sam’s backyard: Latin America’s long battle between democrats and dictators. Review of: LATIN AMERICA'S DEMOCRATIC CRUSADE: The transnational struggle against dictatorship, 1920s–1960s / Allen Wells.
T.H. Breen. Revolutionary road: The pitfalls of political upheaval. Review of: THE AGE OF REVOLUTIONS: And the generations who made it / Nathan Perl-Rosenthal -- AGE OF REVOLUTIONS: Progress and backlash from 1600 to the present / Fareed Zakaria.
Anne Nelson. Diet of despair: The food industry’s deadly impact on public health. Review of: BARONS: Money, power, and the corruption of America’s food industry / Austin Frerick -- ULTRA-PROCESSED PEOPLE: Why do we all eat stuff that isn’t food … and why can’t we stop? / Chris van Tulleken.
Richard Norton-Taylor. Puzzle palace: Does the culture of official secrecy harm the intelligence services? Review of: COUNTER-INTELLIGENCE: What the secret world can teach us about problem-solving and creativity / Robert Hannigan -- THINK LIKE A SPY: Master the art of influence and build life-changing alliances / Julian Fisher.
In Brief Review of: YALE AND SLAVERY: A history / David W. Blight, with Yale and Slavery Research Project.
In Brief Review of: MONIQUE S’ÉVADE / Édouard Louis.
17featherbear
NYT, 07/12/2024 (?): 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. "As voted on by 503 novelists, nonfiction writers, poets, critics and other book lovers — with a little help from the staff of The New York Times Book Review."
With meta-commentary:
NYT reviewers Dwight Garner, Alexandra Jacobs and Jennifer Szalai, interviewed by NYT Book Reviews editor Scott Heller. NYT, 07/15/2024: 3 Critics + 100 Books = Something to Argue About.
NYT, 07/18/2024 (?). Readers Pick Their 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. Temporarily unlocked.
With the inevitable follow-up:
LitHub, 07/16/2024: What the New York Times Missed: 71 More of the Best Books of the 21st Century.
Maris Kreizman. LitHub, 07/18/2024: On the Making of That New York Times Best Books of the Century List. "Maris Kreizman Was One of 500 Participants Asked to Contribute."
With meta-commentary:
NYT reviewers Dwight Garner, Alexandra Jacobs and Jennifer Szalai, interviewed by NYT Book Reviews editor Scott Heller. NYT, 07/15/2024: 3 Critics + 100 Books = Something to Argue About.
NYT, 07/18/2024 (?). Readers Pick Their 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. Temporarily unlocked.
With the inevitable follow-up:
LitHub, 07/16/2024: What the New York Times Missed: 71 More of the Best Books of the 21st Century.
Maris Kreizman. LitHub, 07/18/2024: On the Making of That New York Times Best Books of the Century List. "Maris Kreizman Was One of 500 Participants Asked to Contribute."
18featherbear
Ruth Westheimer, 1928-2024
Daniel Lewis. NYT, 07/13/2024: Ruth Westheimer, the Sex Guru Known as Dr. Ruth, Dies at 96.
Emil Langer. WaPo, 07/13/2024: Ruth Westheimer, sex therapist known to millions as ‘Dr. Ruth,’ dies at 96.
Her LT page: https://www.librarything.com/author/westheimerruthk
Daniel Lewis. NYT, 07/13/2024: Ruth Westheimer, the Sex Guru Known as Dr. Ruth, Dies at 96.
Emil Langer. WaPo, 07/13/2024: Ruth Westheimer, sex therapist known to millions as ‘Dr. Ruth,’ dies at 96.
Her LT page: https://www.librarything.com/author/westheimerruthk
19featherbear
Becca Rothfeld. WaPo, 07/10/2024: ‘Black Pill’ is a disturbing look at how ‘meme magic’ captured the GOP. Review of: Black Pill: How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life, Poison Society, and Capture American Politics / Elle Reeve.
20featherbear
Josie Torres Barth. LARB, 07/13/2024: The Myth America Show. Review of: Gold Dust on the Air: Television Anthology Drama and Midcentury American Culture / Molly A. Schneider.
21featherbear
Ralph Leonard. Quillette, 07/16/2024: Africa and the History of Civilisation. Review of: An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence / Zeinab Badawi.
22featherbear
Evan Wright, 1964-2024
Sian Cain. Guardian, 07/15/2024: Generation Kill author Evan Wright dies aged 59.
Emily Langer. WaPo, 07/16/2024: Evan Wright, unflinching author of ‘Generation Kill,’ dies at 59.
Alexandra E. Petri. 07/16/2024: Evan Wright, Award-Winning Reporter and Author of ‘Generation Kill,’ Dies at 59.
His LT page is: https://www.librarything.com/author/wrightevan
Sian Cain. Guardian, 07/15/2024: Generation Kill author Evan Wright dies aged 59.
Emily Langer. WaPo, 07/16/2024: Evan Wright, unflinching author of ‘Generation Kill,’ dies at 59.
Alexandra E. Petri. 07/16/2024: Evan Wright, Award-Winning Reporter and Author of ‘Generation Kill,’ Dies at 59.
His LT page is: https://www.librarything.com/author/wrightevan
23featherbear
TLS July 19, 2024|No. 6329
Featured
Will Tosh. Urning and larking: How the English dictionary came to terms with same-sex relations. Review of: BEFORE THE WORD WAS QUEER: Sexuality and the English dictionary, 1600–1930 / Stephen Turton.
Edward N. Luttwak. Battle grounds: The reasons we started fighting, and why we won’t stop. Review of: WHY WAR? / Richard Overy.
Anna Katharina Schaffner. Sit up straight, boy!: The fear that poor posture would enfeeble a generation. Review of: SLOUCH: Posture panic in modern America / Beth Linker.
Mia Levitin. After the kidnapping: A wealthy family down on its luck struggles with past trauma. Review of: LONG ISLAND COMPROMISE / Taffy Brodesser-Akner.
Literature & Language
Ian Sansom. Beckett’s getaway: Why writers are never truly on holiday. (Essay)
Jacqueline Bannerjee. Burning decks: Reviving two nineteenth-century women writers. Review of: LIVERPOOL TIGRESS?: The life of Felicia Hemans / Edward Chitham -- GEORGE AND EMILY EDEN: Pride, privilege, empire and the Whigs / Brigid Allen.
Darren Freebury-Jones. Otherworld Wales: Stories of magical bowls, cauldrons, star-crossed lovers, ghosts and fantastic creatures. Review of: ENCHANTED WALES: Myth and magic in Welsh storytelling / Miranda Aldhouse-Green -- THE FOLKLORE OF WALES: Ghosts / Delyth Badder and Mark Norman -- ABANDON ALL HOPE: A personal journey through the history of Welsh literature / Gary Raymond.
Rosinka Chaudhuri. Just Rabindranath: Bengal’s greatest writer – and those who followed him. Review of: THE BEST OF TAGORE / Rabindranath Tagore; edited by Rudrangshu Mukherjee -- THE PENGUIN BOOK OF BENGALI SHORT STORIES / Arunava Sinha, editor.
Hilary Davies. ‘I fold into the light’: Late poems by two modern masters. Review of: SKIN / David Harsent -- RUIN, BLOSSOM / John Burnside.
Clare Saxby. Out of the mouths of fledglings: A precocious magpie takes a bird’s-eye view of patriarchy. Review of: THE AXEMAN’S CARNIVAL / Catherine Chidgey.
Lily Herd. Foreign country: A government department devoted to time travel. Review of: THE MINISTRY OF TIME / Kaliane Bradley.
Lamorne Ash. Why can’t it last forever?: The dynamics and dynamism of unconventional love. Review of: MISRECOGNITION / Madison Newbound.
In Brief Review of: EARLY LATIN: Constructs, diversity, reception /J. N. Adams, Anna Chahoud and Giuseppe Pezzini, editors.
In Brief Review of: ROSARITA / Anita Desai.
In Brief Review of: LIVES AND DEATHS OF WERTHER: Interpretation, translation, and adaptation in Europe and East Asia / Johannes Kaminski.
In Brief Review of: HUNGRY FOR WHAT: Stories / María Bastarós; translated by Kevin Gerry Dunn.
Arts
Colin Grant. The toxic waste of the past: A provocative new play engages with race, sex and history. Review of Jeremy O. Harris's SLAVE PLAY, Noël Coward Theatre, London, until September 21.
Michael Caines. Mayhem and merry meetings: A Shakespearean star vehicle in the spirit of Alfred Jarry. Review of Shakespeare's RICHARD III, Globe Theatre, London, until August 3.
Science & Technology
Pippa Goldschmidt. Brave new worlds: Why the humanities should help guide scientific policy. Review of: LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND PUBLIC POLICY: From Darwin to genomics / Jay Clayton.
Religion
Clare Carlisle. Core values: Finding a moral centre between fanaticism and relativism. Review of: PHILOSOPHY OF DEVOTION: The longing for invulnerable ideals / Paul Katsafanas.
Paul Allen. He is who He is: God as a proper noun and a proper name. Review of: NAMING GOD: Addressing the divine in philosophy, theology and scripture / Janet Soskice.
Politics, Society, Culture
Brian Holden Reid. Know your limits: Military strategy through the ages. Review of: THE NEW MAKERS OF MODERN STRATEGY: From the ancient world to the digital age / Hal Brands, editor.
Michael Braddick. Print and power: The impact of written records on the workings of government. Review of: THE SPECTER OF THE ARCHIVE: Political practice and the information state in early modern Britain / Nicholas Popper.
Miranda France. The awkward squad: When life throws up a situation for which there is no script. Review of: AWKWARDNESS: A theory / Alexandra Plakias.
Lucy McDonald. Go forth and multiply?: Bringing babies into a world of pain. Review of: BEGETTING: What does it mean to create a child? / Mara van der Lugt -- WHAT ARE CHILDREN FOR?: On ambivalence and choice / Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman.
Michael Bentley. National service: How an Oxford college educated a ruling class. Review of: HISTORY IN THE HOUSE: Some remarkable dons and the teaching of politics, character and statecraft / Richard Davenport-Hines.
Oliver Balch. Lament for a lost country: The search for a sense of belonging in modern Wales. Review of: THE LONG UNWINDING ROAD: A journey through the heart of Wales / Marc P. Jones -- TIR: The story of the Welsh landscape / Carwyn Graves.
In Brief Review of: THE SONG OF THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD: On grief, motherhood and poetry / Tamarin Norwood.
In Brief Review of: WARSAW TESTAMENT / Rokhl Auerbach; translated by Samuel Kassow. ("Rokhl Auerbach’s unadorned account of the Warsaw Ghetto")
In Brief Review of: 44 DAYS IN PRAGUE: The Runciman Mission and the race to save Europe / Ann Shukman.
Featured
Will Tosh. Urning and larking: How the English dictionary came to terms with same-sex relations. Review of: BEFORE THE WORD WAS QUEER: Sexuality and the English dictionary, 1600–1930 / Stephen Turton.
Edward N. Luttwak. Battle grounds: The reasons we started fighting, and why we won’t stop. Review of: WHY WAR? / Richard Overy.
Anna Katharina Schaffner. Sit up straight, boy!: The fear that poor posture would enfeeble a generation. Review of: SLOUCH: Posture panic in modern America / Beth Linker.
Mia Levitin. After the kidnapping: A wealthy family down on its luck struggles with past trauma. Review of: LONG ISLAND COMPROMISE / Taffy Brodesser-Akner.
Literature & Language
Ian Sansom. Beckett’s getaway: Why writers are never truly on holiday. (Essay)
Jacqueline Bannerjee. Burning decks: Reviving two nineteenth-century women writers. Review of: LIVERPOOL TIGRESS?: The life of Felicia Hemans / Edward Chitham -- GEORGE AND EMILY EDEN: Pride, privilege, empire and the Whigs / Brigid Allen.
Darren Freebury-Jones. Otherworld Wales: Stories of magical bowls, cauldrons, star-crossed lovers, ghosts and fantastic creatures. Review of: ENCHANTED WALES: Myth and magic in Welsh storytelling / Miranda Aldhouse-Green -- THE FOLKLORE OF WALES: Ghosts / Delyth Badder and Mark Norman -- ABANDON ALL HOPE: A personal journey through the history of Welsh literature / Gary Raymond.
Rosinka Chaudhuri. Just Rabindranath: Bengal’s greatest writer – and those who followed him. Review of: THE BEST OF TAGORE / Rabindranath Tagore; edited by Rudrangshu Mukherjee -- THE PENGUIN BOOK OF BENGALI SHORT STORIES / Arunava Sinha, editor.
Hilary Davies. ‘I fold into the light’: Late poems by two modern masters. Review of: SKIN / David Harsent -- RUIN, BLOSSOM / John Burnside.
Clare Saxby. Out of the mouths of fledglings: A precocious magpie takes a bird’s-eye view of patriarchy. Review of: THE AXEMAN’S CARNIVAL / Catherine Chidgey.
Lily Herd. Foreign country: A government department devoted to time travel. Review of: THE MINISTRY OF TIME / Kaliane Bradley.
Lamorne Ash. Why can’t it last forever?: The dynamics and dynamism of unconventional love. Review of: MISRECOGNITION / Madison Newbound.
In Brief Review of: EARLY LATIN: Constructs, diversity, reception /J. N. Adams, Anna Chahoud and Giuseppe Pezzini, editors.
In Brief Review of: ROSARITA / Anita Desai.
In Brief Review of: LIVES AND DEATHS OF WERTHER: Interpretation, translation, and adaptation in Europe and East Asia / Johannes Kaminski.
In Brief Review of: HUNGRY FOR WHAT: Stories / María Bastarós; translated by Kevin Gerry Dunn.
Arts
Colin Grant. The toxic waste of the past: A provocative new play engages with race, sex and history. Review of Jeremy O. Harris's SLAVE PLAY, Noël Coward Theatre, London, until September 21.
Michael Caines. Mayhem and merry meetings: A Shakespearean star vehicle in the spirit of Alfred Jarry. Review of Shakespeare's RICHARD III, Globe Theatre, London, until August 3.
Science & Technology
Pippa Goldschmidt. Brave new worlds: Why the humanities should help guide scientific policy. Review of: LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND PUBLIC POLICY: From Darwin to genomics / Jay Clayton.
Religion
Clare Carlisle. Core values: Finding a moral centre between fanaticism and relativism. Review of: PHILOSOPHY OF DEVOTION: The longing for invulnerable ideals / Paul Katsafanas.
Paul Allen. He is who He is: God as a proper noun and a proper name. Review of: NAMING GOD: Addressing the divine in philosophy, theology and scripture / Janet Soskice.
Politics, Society, Culture
Brian Holden Reid. Know your limits: Military strategy through the ages. Review of: THE NEW MAKERS OF MODERN STRATEGY: From the ancient world to the digital age / Hal Brands, editor.
Michael Braddick. Print and power: The impact of written records on the workings of government. Review of: THE SPECTER OF THE ARCHIVE: Political practice and the information state in early modern Britain / Nicholas Popper.
Miranda France. The awkward squad: When life throws up a situation for which there is no script. Review of: AWKWARDNESS: A theory / Alexandra Plakias.
Lucy McDonald. Go forth and multiply?: Bringing babies into a world of pain. Review of: BEGETTING: What does it mean to create a child? / Mara van der Lugt -- WHAT ARE CHILDREN FOR?: On ambivalence and choice / Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman.
Michael Bentley. National service: How an Oxford college educated a ruling class. Review of: HISTORY IN THE HOUSE: Some remarkable dons and the teaching of politics, character and statecraft / Richard Davenport-Hines.
Oliver Balch. Lament for a lost country: The search for a sense of belonging in modern Wales. Review of: THE LONG UNWINDING ROAD: A journey through the heart of Wales / Marc P. Jones -- TIR: The story of the Welsh landscape / Carwyn Graves.
In Brief Review of: THE SONG OF THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD: On grief, motherhood and poetry / Tamarin Norwood.
In Brief Review of: WARSAW TESTAMENT / Rokhl Auerbach; translated by Samuel Kassow. ("Rokhl Auerbach’s unadorned account of the Warsaw Ghetto")
In Brief Review of: 44 DAYS IN PRAGUE: The Runciman Mission and the race to save Europe / Ann Shukman.
24featherbear
Christian Lorentzen. Granta, 07/18/2024: Literature Without Literature.
"Among publishers, editors, scholars, critics, and even writers themselves, the stories we tell about literature are more and more stories of the economy of prestige, of one generation’s preferences righteously overturning those of its predecessors. Inside the academy, professors attribute great power to the publishing industry and to creative-writing programs. The syllabi of university courses in literature are yielded to student preferences, redefining the objects of literary study as matters of consumer choice rather than recognizable aesthetic criteria. Outside the academy, critics begin to stake their worth on the size and devotion of their audiences. And in the journalistic sphere, two opposing modes have emerged: that of therapeutic literary careerism, on the one hand, as writers make public confessions about their struggles to survive in comfort as authors; and that of accusatory literary consumerism, on the other, as critics express dissatisfaction not with books themselves but with the ways books are marketed, usually to somebody else, somebody they don’t like very much, such as a stepparent or a person they kissed a few too many times and would rather forget."
"Among publishers, editors, scholars, critics, and even writers themselves, the stories we tell about literature are more and more stories of the economy of prestige, of one generation’s preferences righteously overturning those of its predecessors. Inside the academy, professors attribute great power to the publishing industry and to creative-writing programs. The syllabi of university courses in literature are yielded to student preferences, redefining the objects of literary study as matters of consumer choice rather than recognizable aesthetic criteria. Outside the academy, critics begin to stake their worth on the size and devotion of their audiences. And in the journalistic sphere, two opposing modes have emerged: that of therapeutic literary careerism, on the one hand, as writers make public confessions about their struggles to survive in comfort as authors; and that of accusatory literary consumerism, on the other, as critics express dissatisfaction not with books themselves but with the ways books are marketed, usually to somebody else, somebody they don’t like very much, such as a stepparent or a person they kissed a few too many times and would rather forget."
25featherbear
Katha Pollitt. WaPo, 07/18/2024: Why are today’s young people ambivalent about having kids? Review of: What Are Children For?: On Ambivalence and Choice / Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman -- Begetting: What Does It Mean to Create a Child? / Mara van der Lugt.
And on a related note:
Tristan Marshall. LARB, 07/17/2024: Chronicles of Liminality. Review of: Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class / Rob Henderson.
And on a related note:
Tristan Marshall. LARB, 07/17/2024: Chronicles of Liminality. Review of: Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class / Rob Henderson.
26featherbear
Merve Emre. Yale Review, 07/10/2024: The Critic as Friend: The challenge of reading generously.
27featherbear
From 6 yrs ago, but topical as Vance is now a VP candidate:
Dan Sinykin, Florence Dore, & J.D. Connor. LARB, 07/10/2018: Rebel Yale: Reading and Feeling “Hillbilly Elegy.”
Also from LARB:
Daniel Blank. 07/22/2024: America’s War on Theater. Review of: The Playbook: A Story of Theater, Democracy, and the Making of a Culture / James Shapiro.
Dan Sinykin, Florence Dore, & J.D. Connor. LARB, 07/10/2018: Rebel Yale: Reading and Feeling “Hillbilly Elegy.”
Also from LARB:
Daniel Blank. 07/22/2024: America’s War on Theater. Review of: The Playbook: A Story of Theater, Democracy, and the Making of a Culture / James Shapiro.
28featherbear
Derek King. Hedgehog Review, 07/18/2024: Reading as Moral Formation: C.S. Lewis and Iris Murdoch on Attentional Humility.
29featherbear
Roz Dineen. LitHub, 07/18/2024: On the Simple Prophecy of Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. "the Book Everyone Should Read Now."
30featherbear
TLS July 26, 2024|No. 6330
Featured
Adam Mars-Jones. Wind chimes: A new blockbuster tornado movie, nearly thirty years later. Review of the film Twisters.
Andrew Solomon. Teenage wasteland: Are social media and a safety-first culture harmful to children? Review of: THE ANXIOUS GENERATION: How the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness / Jonathan Haidt.
M.C. Poll to poll: Books of the century, Edward Ardizzone’s pub life, Thomas Carlyle’s desk. (the NB weekly column)
Madeleine Feeny. See the shadows swell: A haunted house and a howl of fury against the patriarchy. Review of: WOODWORM / Layla Martínez; translated by Sophie Hughes and Annie McDermott.
Literature
Emily A. Bernhard Jackson. At close quarters: A defence of the study of literature. Review of: CRITICISM AND TRUTH: On method in literary studies / Jonathan Kramnick -- CRITICAL FORMS: Forms of literary criticism, 1750–2020 / Ross Wilson.
Daniel Johnson. Rage against dying: Elias Canetti’s one-man war on mortality. Review of: THE BOOK AGAINST DEATH / Elias Canetti; translated by Peter Filkins, with a preface by Joshua Cohen.
James Rann. ‘Be ready to come back’: A new avant-garde of Russian poetry. Review of: AVANT-GARDE POST–: Radical poetics after the Soviet Union / Marijeta Bozovic.
Michael LaPointe. Beamed into the mothership: A grim vision of an America with enhanced powers of deportation. Review of: AMERICAN ABDUCTIONS / Mauro Javier Cárdenas.
Matthew J. Mason. No escaping the magic: An author is haunted by a vanishing. Review of: PAGES OF MOURNING / Diego Gerard Morrison.
Kevin Brazil. Loved and lost: A history of heartbreak across three generations. Review of: GLÓRIA / Victor Heringer; translated by Sophie Lewis and James Young.
Norma Clarke. Stalking the world: The lovelorn quest of Victor Hugo’s daughter. Review of: IN PURSUIT OF LOVE: The search for Victor Hugo’s daughter / Mark Bostridge.
In Brief Review of: LETTERS AROUND A GARDEN / Rainer Maria Rilke; translated by Will Stone.
In Brief Review of the novel: YOUR ABSENCE IS DARKNESS / Jón Kalman Stefánsson; translated by Philip Roughton.
In Brief Review of: LITERARY AUTHORITY: An eighteenth-century genealogy / Claude Willan.
In Brief Review of: THE JOYFUL SONG OF THE PARTRIDGE / Paulina Chiziane; translated by David Brookshaw.
Arts
Justin Warshaw. Morris Zapp rides again: The real-life academic superstar and gadfly turns Hollywood critic. Review of: LAW AT THE MOVIES / Stanley Fish.
Lucy Davies. Remembered landscapes: A Chinese-Canadian artist’s special relationship with Vincent van Gogh. Review of the exhibition MATTHEW WONG | VINCENT VAN GOGH: Painting as a last resort, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, until September 1, 2024.
Lesley Chamberlain. Emotion into seeing: The Blue Rider group at Tate Modern. Review of the exhibition EXPRESSIONISTS: Kandinsky, Münter and The Blue Rider, Tate Modern, London, until October 20.
Zoe Guttenplan. Le pain and pleasure: A reworked version of a musical set in a French village. Review of a revival of the Stephen Schwartz and Joseph Stein musical THE BAKER’S WIFE, Menier Chocolate Factory, London, until September 14, 2024.
Science & Technology
Isaac Nowell. In his element: An ode to the intermittency of British weather – while it lasts.’ Review of: IN ALL WEATHERS: A journey through rain, fog, wind, ice and everything in between Matt Gaw.
Harriet Rix. Are plants intelligent?: Memory and consciousness outside the animal kingdom. Review of: THE LIGHT EATERS: The new science of plants / Zoë Schlanger.
Nessa Carey. It’s in our RNA: The molecular messenger now deemed as intrinsic to life as DNA. Review of: THE CATALYST: RNA and the quest to unlock life’s deepest secrets / Thomas R. Cech.
Alexandra Popoff. Better not red: The memoir of a Soviet scientist who defected to the West. Review of: ONE MAN IN HIS TIME: A memoir / N. M. Borodin.
History, Politics, Society, & Culture
Miriam Dobson. The Gulag economy: More than 25 million people experienced Soviet labour camps. Review of: THE GULAG DOCTORS: Life, death, and medicine in Stalin’s labour camps / Dan Healey -- THE GULAG: A very short introduction / Alan Barenberg.
Will Hutton. Crisis of British capitalism: Two writers argue the case for change. Review of: GREAT BRITAIN?: How we get our future back / Torsten Bell -- LEFT BEHIND: A new economics for neglected places / Paul Collier.
Irina Dumitrescu. Sanctity and sanctimony: How hermits avoided making a vice out of virtue. (Essay)
In Brief Review of: THE LANGUAGE OF WAR / Oleksandr Mykhed. (On the war in Ukraine)
In Brief Review of: THE LIBERATION LINE: The last untold story of the Normandy landings / Christian Wolmar.
In Brief Review of: WARMING UP: How climate change is changing sport / Madeleine Orr.
Featured
Adam Mars-Jones. Wind chimes: A new blockbuster tornado movie, nearly thirty years later. Review of the film Twisters.
Andrew Solomon. Teenage wasteland: Are social media and a safety-first culture harmful to children? Review of: THE ANXIOUS GENERATION: How the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness / Jonathan Haidt.
M.C. Poll to poll: Books of the century, Edward Ardizzone’s pub life, Thomas Carlyle’s desk. (the NB weekly column)
Madeleine Feeny. See the shadows swell: A haunted house and a howl of fury against the patriarchy. Review of: WOODWORM / Layla Martínez; translated by Sophie Hughes and Annie McDermott.
Literature
Emily A. Bernhard Jackson. At close quarters: A defence of the study of literature. Review of: CRITICISM AND TRUTH: On method in literary studies / Jonathan Kramnick -- CRITICAL FORMS: Forms of literary criticism, 1750–2020 / Ross Wilson.
Daniel Johnson. Rage against dying: Elias Canetti’s one-man war on mortality. Review of: THE BOOK AGAINST DEATH / Elias Canetti; translated by Peter Filkins, with a preface by Joshua Cohen.
James Rann. ‘Be ready to come back’: A new avant-garde of Russian poetry. Review of: AVANT-GARDE POST–: Radical poetics after the Soviet Union / Marijeta Bozovic.
Michael LaPointe. Beamed into the mothership: A grim vision of an America with enhanced powers of deportation. Review of: AMERICAN ABDUCTIONS / Mauro Javier Cárdenas.
Matthew J. Mason. No escaping the magic: An author is haunted by a vanishing. Review of: PAGES OF MOURNING / Diego Gerard Morrison.
Kevin Brazil. Loved and lost: A history of heartbreak across three generations. Review of: GLÓRIA / Victor Heringer; translated by Sophie Lewis and James Young.
Norma Clarke. Stalking the world: The lovelorn quest of Victor Hugo’s daughter. Review of: IN PURSUIT OF LOVE: The search for Victor Hugo’s daughter / Mark Bostridge.
In Brief Review of: LETTERS AROUND A GARDEN / Rainer Maria Rilke; translated by Will Stone.
In Brief Review of the novel: YOUR ABSENCE IS DARKNESS / Jón Kalman Stefánsson; translated by Philip Roughton.
In Brief Review of: LITERARY AUTHORITY: An eighteenth-century genealogy / Claude Willan.
In Brief Review of: THE JOYFUL SONG OF THE PARTRIDGE / Paulina Chiziane; translated by David Brookshaw.
Arts
Justin Warshaw. Morris Zapp rides again: The real-life academic superstar and gadfly turns Hollywood critic. Review of: LAW AT THE MOVIES / Stanley Fish.
Lucy Davies. Remembered landscapes: A Chinese-Canadian artist’s special relationship with Vincent van Gogh. Review of the exhibition MATTHEW WONG | VINCENT VAN GOGH: Painting as a last resort, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, until September 1, 2024.
Lesley Chamberlain. Emotion into seeing: The Blue Rider group at Tate Modern. Review of the exhibition EXPRESSIONISTS: Kandinsky, Münter and The Blue Rider, Tate Modern, London, until October 20.
Zoe Guttenplan. Le pain and pleasure: A reworked version of a musical set in a French village. Review of a revival of the Stephen Schwartz and Joseph Stein musical THE BAKER’S WIFE, Menier Chocolate Factory, London, until September 14, 2024.
Science & Technology
Isaac Nowell. In his element: An ode to the intermittency of British weather – while it lasts.’ Review of: IN ALL WEATHERS: A journey through rain, fog, wind, ice and everything in between Matt Gaw.
Harriet Rix. Are plants intelligent?: Memory and consciousness outside the animal kingdom. Review of: THE LIGHT EATERS: The new science of plants / Zoë Schlanger.
Nessa Carey. It’s in our RNA: The molecular messenger now deemed as intrinsic to life as DNA. Review of: THE CATALYST: RNA and the quest to unlock life’s deepest secrets / Thomas R. Cech.
Alexandra Popoff. Better not red: The memoir of a Soviet scientist who defected to the West. Review of: ONE MAN IN HIS TIME: A memoir / N. M. Borodin.
History, Politics, Society, & Culture
Miriam Dobson. The Gulag economy: More than 25 million people experienced Soviet labour camps. Review of: THE GULAG DOCTORS: Life, death, and medicine in Stalin’s labour camps / Dan Healey -- THE GULAG: A very short introduction / Alan Barenberg.
Will Hutton. Crisis of British capitalism: Two writers argue the case for change. Review of: GREAT BRITAIN?: How we get our future back / Torsten Bell -- LEFT BEHIND: A new economics for neglected places / Paul Collier.
Irina Dumitrescu. Sanctity and sanctimony: How hermits avoided making a vice out of virtue. (Essay)
In Brief Review of: THE LANGUAGE OF WAR / Oleksandr Mykhed. (On the war in Ukraine)
In Brief Review of: THE LIBERATION LINE: The last untold story of the Normandy landings / Christian Wolmar.
In Brief Review of: WARMING UP: How climate change is changing sport / Madeleine Orr.
31featherbear
Recent LARB reviews:
Sarah Moorhouse. 07/24/2024: To Write as They Played. Review of: Women and the Piano: A History in 50 Lives / Susan Tomes.
Marissa Grunes. 07/21/2024: Meeting as Wonderstruck Kin. Review of: Natural Magic: Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and the Dawn of Modern Science / Reneé Bergland.
Rob Latham. 07/23/2024: A Treasure Trove of Suppressed Feeling. Review of: The Lily in the Valley / Honoré de Balzac (a new translation for NYRB Classics by Peter Bush).
Jenessa Abrams. 07/23/2024: When a Woman Turns into a Wife. Review of: Liars / Sarah Manguso.
Gisela Salim-Peyer. A Dog-Eat-Dog World. Review of the novel Simpatía / Rodgrigo Blanco Calderón.
Hamilton Cain. 07/22/2024: The Season of Lost Souls. Review of: The Heart in Winter / Kevin Barry.
Gaby Del Valle. 07/20/2024: Punishing the People We Claim to Protect. Review of: Accidental Sisters: Refugee Women Struggling Together for a New American Dream / Kimberly Meyer -- Forced Out: Migrant Mothers in Search of Refuge and Hope / Susan J. Terrio.
Sarah Moorhouse. 07/24/2024: To Write as They Played. Review of: Women and the Piano: A History in 50 Lives / Susan Tomes.
Marissa Grunes. 07/21/2024: Meeting as Wonderstruck Kin. Review of: Natural Magic: Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and the Dawn of Modern Science / Reneé Bergland.
Rob Latham. 07/23/2024: A Treasure Trove of Suppressed Feeling. Review of: The Lily in the Valley / Honoré de Balzac (a new translation for NYRB Classics by Peter Bush).
Jenessa Abrams. 07/23/2024: When a Woman Turns into a Wife. Review of: Liars / Sarah Manguso.
Gisela Salim-Peyer. A Dog-Eat-Dog World. Review of the novel Simpatía / Rodgrigo Blanco Calderón.
Hamilton Cain. 07/22/2024: The Season of Lost Souls. Review of: The Heart in Winter / Kevin Barry.
Gaby Del Valle. 07/20/2024: Punishing the People We Claim to Protect. Review of: Accidental Sisters: Refugee Women Struggling Together for a New American Dream / Kimberly Meyer -- Forced Out: Migrant Mothers in Search of Refuge and Hope / Susan J. Terrio.
32featherbear
Book themes from WaPo:
Ashley Stimpson. 07/24/2024: Old books can be loaded with poison. Some collectors love the thrill. "The Poison Book Project examines antique books for heavy metal pigments — including mercury, lead and arsenic — commonly used in Victorian bookbinding."
Annalee Newitz. 07/24/2024: Libraries can help end the culture wars. That’s why they’re under fire.
Ashley Stimpson. 07/24/2024: Old books can be loaded with poison. Some collectors love the thrill. "The Poison Book Project examines antique books for heavy metal pigments — including mercury, lead and arsenic — commonly used in Victorian bookbinding."
Annalee Newitz. 07/24/2024: Libraries can help end the culture wars. That’s why they’re under fire.
33featherbear
Michael Taube. The Critic (UK), 07/24/2024: Confessions of a left-wing Pope. Review of: Life: My Story Through History / Pope Francis with Fabio Marchese Ragona (translated by Aubrey Botsford).
34featherbear
Lewis Lapham, 1935-2024
Robert D. McFadden. NYT, 07/24/2024: Lewis H. Lapham, Longtime Editor of Harper’s, Dies at 89. "Born into a patrician family, he used Harper’s and later his own Lapham’s Quarterly to denounce what he saw as the hypocrisies and injustices of a spoiled United States."
"Mr. Lapham’s last book, “Age of Folly: America Abandons Its Democracy” (2016), a collection of columns, argued that the election of Donald J. Trump was the culmination of decades of degradation of United States democracy under a number of Republican administrations, ending in what he called a dysfunctional plutocracy of the superrich, by the superrich and for the superrich."
John Otis. WaPo, 07/24/2024: Lewis Lapham, editor who revived Harper’s magazine, dies at 89. "He turned Harper’s into what he called a “theater of ideas,” promoting emerging voices including David Foster Wallace, Christopher Hitchens and Fareed Zakaria."
Lapham's LT page at https://www.librarything.com/author/laphamlewish
Robert D. McFadden. NYT, 07/24/2024: Lewis H. Lapham, Longtime Editor of Harper’s, Dies at 89. "Born into a patrician family, he used Harper’s and later his own Lapham’s Quarterly to denounce what he saw as the hypocrisies and injustices of a spoiled United States."
"Mr. Lapham’s last book, “Age of Folly: America Abandons Its Democracy” (2016), a collection of columns, argued that the election of Donald J. Trump was the culmination of decades of degradation of United States democracy under a number of Republican administrations, ending in what he called a dysfunctional plutocracy of the superrich, by the superrich and for the superrich."
John Otis. WaPo, 07/24/2024: Lewis Lapham, editor who revived Harper’s magazine, dies at 89. "He turned Harper’s into what he called a “theater of ideas,” promoting emerging voices including David Foster Wallace, Christopher Hitchens and Fareed Zakaria."
Lapham's LT page at https://www.librarything.com/author/laphamlewish
35featherbear
NYRB Online Aug 15 2024
Literature
Christopher Benfy. Siding with Ahab. Review of: Dayswork / Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel -- Up from the Depths: Herman Melville, Lewis Mumford, and Rediscovery in Dark Times / Aaron Sachs -- Melville, Beauty, and American Literary Studies: An Aesthetics in All Things / Cody Marrs -- Maladies of the Will: The American Novel and the Modernity Problem / Jennifer L. Fleissner -- Moby-Dick or, The Whale / Herman Melville, edited by Jeffrey Insko.
Isabella Hammad. ‘Hamlet’ in the West Bank. Review of: Enter Ghost / Isabella Hammad.
Brenda Wineapple. In Search of the Real Hannah Crafts. Review of: The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of The Bondwoman’s Narrative / Gregg Hecimovich, with a foreword by Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Arts
Susan Tallman. The Sneaky Sublime. Review of Christina Ramberg: A Retrospective,
an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, April 20–August 11, 2024; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, October 12, 2024–January 5, 2025; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, February 8–June 1, 2025; catalog of the exhibition edited by Thea Liberty Nichols and Mark Pascale.
Adam Thirlwell. A Sternly Witty Sensualist. Review of: Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty, an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, May 5–July 16, 2023; catalog of the exhibition edited by Andrew Bolton.
Colin Grant. Yearning for Redemption. Review of: Bob Marley: One Love, a film directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green.
Athletics
Leanne Shapton. Crossing to Safety. Review of: Nyad, a film directed by Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi -- Find a Way: The Inspiring Story of One Woman’s Pursuit of a Lifelong Dream / Diana Nyad.
Politics & Society
Ben Rhodes. American Descent. Review of: The Wannabe Fascists: A Guide to Understanding the Greatest Threat to Democracy / Federico Finchelstein -- America Last: The Right’s Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators /Jacob Heilbrunn.
Sean Wilentz. The ‘Dred Scott’ of Our Time. (Article: "In ruling in favor of Donald Trump’s claims of immunity from prosecution for his official acts, the Supreme Court has invested the presidency with quasi-monarchial powers, paving the way for MAGA authoritarianism.")
David Cole. The Supreme Court’s Power Grab. (Article: "In a series of disturbing decisions this term, the Supreme Court drastically weakened the power of the executive agencies that govern financial markets, agriculture, health care, energy, the airwaves, the environment, the workplace, and so much else.")
Fintan O'Toole. Savior Complexes. (Article: "The final weeks of Joe Biden’s campaign were most dismaying for the ways he mirrored Trump.")
Susan Faludi. All the News That’s Fit to Feel. Review of: The Girls on the Bus, a television series created by Amy Chozick and Julie Plec -- Chasing Hillary: On the Trail of the First Woman President Who Wasn’t / Amy Chozick.
Gordon F. Sander. Ready for War in Sweden. (Article: "The Russian invasion of Ukraine has so alarmed the Swedes that they have turned their backs on two centuries of neutrality and joined NATO, causing a profound shift in the country’s identity.")
Geoffrey Wheatcroft. A Tenuous Mandate. (Article: "Labour’s landslide victory in the British elections was achieved with only a third of the popular vote. Will the new government be able to steer Britain out of crisis after fourteen years of failed Tory policies?")
Literature
Christopher Benfy. Siding with Ahab. Review of: Dayswork / Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel -- Up from the Depths: Herman Melville, Lewis Mumford, and Rediscovery in Dark Times / Aaron Sachs -- Melville, Beauty, and American Literary Studies: An Aesthetics in All Things / Cody Marrs -- Maladies of the Will: The American Novel and the Modernity Problem / Jennifer L. Fleissner -- Moby-Dick or, The Whale / Herman Melville, edited by Jeffrey Insko.
Isabella Hammad. ‘Hamlet’ in the West Bank. Review of: Enter Ghost / Isabella Hammad.
Brenda Wineapple. In Search of the Real Hannah Crafts. Review of: The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of The Bondwoman’s Narrative / Gregg Hecimovich, with a foreword by Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Arts
Susan Tallman. The Sneaky Sublime. Review of Christina Ramberg: A Retrospective,
an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, April 20–August 11, 2024; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, October 12, 2024–January 5, 2025; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, February 8–June 1, 2025; catalog of the exhibition edited by Thea Liberty Nichols and Mark Pascale.
Adam Thirlwell. A Sternly Witty Sensualist. Review of: Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty, an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, May 5–July 16, 2023; catalog of the exhibition edited by Andrew Bolton.
Colin Grant. Yearning for Redemption. Review of: Bob Marley: One Love, a film directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green.
Athletics
Leanne Shapton. Crossing to Safety. Review of: Nyad, a film directed by Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi -- Find a Way: The Inspiring Story of One Woman’s Pursuit of a Lifelong Dream / Diana Nyad.
Politics & Society
Ben Rhodes. American Descent. Review of: The Wannabe Fascists: A Guide to Understanding the Greatest Threat to Democracy / Federico Finchelstein -- America Last: The Right’s Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators /Jacob Heilbrunn.
Sean Wilentz. The ‘Dred Scott’ of Our Time. (Article: "In ruling in favor of Donald Trump’s claims of immunity from prosecution for his official acts, the Supreme Court has invested the presidency with quasi-monarchial powers, paving the way for MAGA authoritarianism.")
David Cole. The Supreme Court’s Power Grab. (Article: "In a series of disturbing decisions this term, the Supreme Court drastically weakened the power of the executive agencies that govern financial markets, agriculture, health care, energy, the airwaves, the environment, the workplace, and so much else.")
Fintan O'Toole. Savior Complexes. (Article: "The final weeks of Joe Biden’s campaign were most dismaying for the ways he mirrored Trump.")
Susan Faludi. All the News That’s Fit to Feel. Review of: The Girls on the Bus, a television series created by Amy Chozick and Julie Plec -- Chasing Hillary: On the Trail of the First Woman President Who Wasn’t / Amy Chozick.
Gordon F. Sander. Ready for War in Sweden. (Article: "The Russian invasion of Ukraine has so alarmed the Swedes that they have turned their backs on two centuries of neutrality and joined NATO, causing a profound shift in the country’s identity.")
Geoffrey Wheatcroft. A Tenuous Mandate. (Article: "Labour’s landslide victory in the British elections was achieved with only a third of the popular vote. Will the new government be able to steer Britain out of crisis after fourteen years of failed Tory policies?")
36featherbear
Jessica Winter. New Yorker, 07/25/2024: J. D. Vance’s Sad, Strange Politics of Family. Another look at Hillbilly Elegy: a memoir of family and culture in crisis.
37featherbear
Daniel Immerwahr. New Yorker, 07/15/2024: Were Pirates Foes of the Modern Order—or Its Secret Sharers? Essentially a review of the current literature on pirates & piracy of the 17th-18th centuries.
And on modern day pirates:
Louis Menand. New Yorker, 07/22/2024: When Yuppies Ruled. Review of: Triumph of the Yuppies: America, the Eighties, and the Creation of an Unequal Nation / Tom McGrath.
And on modern day pirates:
Louis Menand. New Yorker, 07/22/2024: When Yuppies Ruled. Review of: Triumph of the Yuppies: America, the Eighties, and the Creation of an Unequal Nation / Tom McGrath.
38featherbear
Summer reading from the Integrity Project: https://www.tipaz.org/books-1
39featherbear
Gail Lumet Buckley, 1937-2024
Richard Sandomir. NYT, 07/26/2024: Gail Lumet Buckley, Chronicler of Black Family History, Dies at 86. The daughter of Lena Horne, who chronicled her family's history, & much more.
She was the author of: The Hornes: An American Family (1986) & The Black Calhouns: From Civil War to Civil Rights With One African American Family (2016), & American Patriots: The Story of Blacks in the Military From the Revolution to Desert Storm (2001), & Radical Sanctity: Race and Radical Women in the American Catholic Church (2023)
Her LT page: https://www.librarything.com/author/buckleygaillumet
Richard Sandomir. NYT, 07/26/2024: Gail Lumet Buckley, Chronicler of Black Family History, Dies at 86. The daughter of Lena Horne, who chronicled her family's history, & much more.
She was the author of: The Hornes: An American Family (1986) & The Black Calhouns: From Civil War to Civil Rights With One African American Family (2016), & American Patriots: The Story of Blacks in the Military From the Revolution to Desert Storm (2001), & Radical Sanctity: Race and Radical Women in the American Catholic Church (2023)
Her LT page: https://www.librarything.com/author/buckleygaillumet
40featherbear
Michael Dirda. WaPo, 07/26/2024: A rich history of deals with the Devil. Review of: Devil’s Contract: The History of the Faustian Bargain / Ed Simon.
41featherbear
Edna O'Brien, 1930-2024
Anthony DePalma. NYT, 07/28/2024: Edna O’Brien, Writer Who Gave Voice to Women’s Passions, Dies at 93. "Her novels and short stories often explored the lives of willful women who loved men who were crass, unfaithful or already married."
Adrien Higgins. WaPo, 07/28/2024: Edna O’Brien, groundbreaking Irish novelist, dies at 93.
"Published in 1960, “The Country Girls” marked Ms. O’Brien’s literary debut and set the pattern for her six-decade artistic journey. The coming-of-age novel told of two young women escaping their stifling parochial upbringing to find liberation and sexual freedom in Dublin.
"The book poured out of her in three weeks, and Ms. O’Brien seemed to have emerged from nowhere fully formed as a writer, producing lyrical prose whose tone and detail perfectly captured her characters’ inner lives and desires and presaged the sexual revolution.
"The novel, released before Ms. O’Brien turned 30, received critical accolades in Britain and the United States but was banned in Ireland. Her mother, who claimed that a local priest had publicly burned the book, kept a copy but redacted the passages she found devilish, the author recalled, “with good, deep, black ink.”
"After “The Country Girls” she wrote two sequels, “The Lonely Girl” (1962) and “Girls in Their Married Bliss” (1964), tracing the marriages and divorces of her protagonists, Baba and Caithleen. These titles were also banned in Ireland, along with her next four novels.
O'Brien's LT page at https://www.librarything.com/author/obrienedna
Anthony DePalma. NYT, 07/28/2024: Edna O’Brien, Writer Who Gave Voice to Women’s Passions, Dies at 93. "Her novels and short stories often explored the lives of willful women who loved men who were crass, unfaithful or already married."
Adrien Higgins. WaPo, 07/28/2024: Edna O’Brien, groundbreaking Irish novelist, dies at 93.
"Published in 1960, “The Country Girls” marked Ms. O’Brien’s literary debut and set the pattern for her six-decade artistic journey. The coming-of-age novel told of two young women escaping their stifling parochial upbringing to find liberation and sexual freedom in Dublin.
"The book poured out of her in three weeks, and Ms. O’Brien seemed to have emerged from nowhere fully formed as a writer, producing lyrical prose whose tone and detail perfectly captured her characters’ inner lives and desires and presaged the sexual revolution.
"The novel, released before Ms. O’Brien turned 30, received critical accolades in Britain and the United States but was banned in Ireland. Her mother, who claimed that a local priest had publicly burned the book, kept a copy but redacted the passages she found devilish, the author recalled, “with good, deep, black ink.”
"After “The Country Girls” she wrote two sequels, “The Lonely Girl” (1962) and “Girls in Their Married Bliss” (1964), tracing the marriages and divorces of her protagonists, Baba and Caithleen. These titles were also banned in Ireland, along with her next four novels.
O'Brien's LT page at https://www.librarything.com/author/obrienedna
42featherbear
Aidan Ryan. Public Books, 07/30/2024: The Author and the Eulogist: On Love and Death in Nonfiction. On Molly / Blake Butler -- Biography of X / Catherine Lacey
43featherbear
Francine Pascal, 1932-2024
Clay Risen. NYT, 07/29/2024: Francine Pascal, Creator of ‘Sweet Valley High’ Book Series, Dies at 92. "The series and its many spinoffs have sold more than 200 million copies and revolutionized the world of young adult publishing."
"With covers instantly recognizable by their varsity-style lettering and soft-focus illustrations, “Sweet Valley High” books enraptured a generation of teenage readers with the lives of Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield, identical twins attending high school in the fictional Los Angeles suburb of Sweet Valley.
"Within a few years of its debut in 1983, “Sweet Valley High” had taken over the young-adult book market. In January 1986, 18 out of the top 20 books in B. Dalton’s young adult best-seller list were “Sweet Valley High” titles. Taken together, the Sweet Valley universe has sold well over 200 million copies.
"Ms. Pascal wrote the first 12 books in the series, then worked with a team of writers to keep a steady, rapid publication pace, often a book a month. She would draft a detailed outline, then hand it to a writer to flesh out while relying on what Ms. Pascal called her “bible” — a compendium of descriptions of the personalities, settings and dense web of relationships that defined life in Sweet Valley.
"More broadly, those first books acquainted readers from outside Southern California with the Valley Girl aesthetic that would echo through pop culture for decades, shaping speech patterns (uptalking, using “like” as a filler word), clothing and a long list of TV shows, movies and books that are impossible to imagine without Ms. Pascal’s influence."
Her LT page: https://www.librarything.com/author/pascalfrancine
Clay Risen. NYT, 07/29/2024: Francine Pascal, Creator of ‘Sweet Valley High’ Book Series, Dies at 92. "The series and its many spinoffs have sold more than 200 million copies and revolutionized the world of young adult publishing."
"With covers instantly recognizable by their varsity-style lettering and soft-focus illustrations, “Sweet Valley High” books enraptured a generation of teenage readers with the lives of Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield, identical twins attending high school in the fictional Los Angeles suburb of Sweet Valley.
"Within a few years of its debut in 1983, “Sweet Valley High” had taken over the young-adult book market. In January 1986, 18 out of the top 20 books in B. Dalton’s young adult best-seller list were “Sweet Valley High” titles. Taken together, the Sweet Valley universe has sold well over 200 million copies.
"Ms. Pascal wrote the first 12 books in the series, then worked with a team of writers to keep a steady, rapid publication pace, often a book a month. She would draft a detailed outline, then hand it to a writer to flesh out while relying on what Ms. Pascal called her “bible” — a compendium of descriptions of the personalities, settings and dense web of relationships that defined life in Sweet Valley.
"More broadly, those first books acquainted readers from outside Southern California with the Valley Girl aesthetic that would echo through pop culture for decades, shaping speech patterns (uptalking, using “like” as a filler word), clothing and a long list of TV shows, movies and books that are impossible to imagine without Ms. Pascal’s influence."
Her LT page: https://www.librarything.com/author/pascalfrancine
44featherbear
Sophia Nguyen. WaPo, 07/30/2024: 2024 Booker longlist includes ‘James’ and ‘Wandering Stars.’ "The finalists will be winnowed down to a shortlist of six in September, with a winner announced in November."
Nominees:
Wandering Stars / Tommy Orange -- Headshot / Rita Bullwinkel -- James / Percival Everett -- This Strange Eventful History / Claire Messud -- Wild Houses / Colin Barrett -- Enlightenment / Sarah Perry -- My Friends / Hisham Matar -- Playground / Richard Powers -- The Safekeep / Yael van der Wouden -- Stone Yard Devotional / Charlotte Wood -- Creation Lake / Rachel Kushner -- Orbital / Samantha Harvey.
Nominees:
Wandering Stars / Tommy Orange -- Headshot / Rita Bullwinkel -- James / Percival Everett -- This Strange Eventful History / Claire Messud -- Wild Houses / Colin Barrett -- Enlightenment / Sarah Perry -- My Friends / Hisham Matar -- Playground / Richard Powers -- The Safekeep / Yael van der Wouden -- Stone Yard Devotional / Charlotte Wood -- Creation Lake / Rachel Kushner -- Orbital / Samantha Harvey.
45featherbear
James C. Scott, 1936-2024
Trip Gabriel. NYT, 07/28/2024: James C. Scott, Iconoclastic Social Scientist, Dies at 87.
"His death was announced by Yale University, where Dr. Scott was Sterling professor emeritus of political science. He also taught in Yale’s department of anthropology and the school of forestry and environmental studies before retiring in 2022.
"His study of rural ethnic groups in Southeast Asia, and the theories about resistance to power that he extrapolated, led to a new view of supposedly primitive peoples and to a new academic field, resistance studies.
"Dr. Scott’s most influential book, “Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed” (1998), is a wide-ranging examination of government programs to better society — collectivized farms in the Soviet Union, the building of Brazil’s futuristic capital, the standardization of weights and measures — and seeks to explain why they so often produced human misery.
"... his field work in a rural Malay village led to “Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance” (1985), one of his best-known books.
"In the resistance of disparate communities to state power over centuries of modern history, Dr. Scott saw anarchism at work, a tendency that he celebrated. It was not the stereotypical anarchism of bomb throwers or a state of chaos; rather, as he wrote in a late work, “Two Cheers for Anarchism” (2012), it was a spirit of cooperation among people without a hierarchy.
"On his refrigerator door, he taped a saying in German that meant “all kinds of little people doing little acts in little ways in little places have changed the world.”
"His final book, “In Praise of Floods: The Untamed River and the Life It Brings,” was completed in March and is to be published by Yale University Press in February 2025."
Prof. Scott's LT page is at: https://www.librarything.com/author/scottjamesc
Better late than never:
Brian Murphy. WaPo, 08/04/2024: James C. Scott, scholar of anarchism and resistance to authority, dies at 87.
Trip Gabriel. NYT, 07/28/2024: James C. Scott, Iconoclastic Social Scientist, Dies at 87.
"His death was announced by Yale University, where Dr. Scott was Sterling professor emeritus of political science. He also taught in Yale’s department of anthropology and the school of forestry and environmental studies before retiring in 2022.
"His study of rural ethnic groups in Southeast Asia, and the theories about resistance to power that he extrapolated, led to a new view of supposedly primitive peoples and to a new academic field, resistance studies.
"Dr. Scott’s most influential book, “Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed” (1998), is a wide-ranging examination of government programs to better society — collectivized farms in the Soviet Union, the building of Brazil’s futuristic capital, the standardization of weights and measures — and seeks to explain why they so often produced human misery.
"... his field work in a rural Malay village led to “Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance” (1985), one of his best-known books.
"In the resistance of disparate communities to state power over centuries of modern history, Dr. Scott saw anarchism at work, a tendency that he celebrated. It was not the stereotypical anarchism of bomb throwers or a state of chaos; rather, as he wrote in a late work, “Two Cheers for Anarchism” (2012), it was a spirit of cooperation among people without a hierarchy.
"On his refrigerator door, he taped a saying in German that meant “all kinds of little people doing little acts in little ways in little places have changed the world.”
"His final book, “In Praise of Floods: The Untamed River and the Life It Brings,” was completed in March and is to be published by Yale University Press in February 2025."
Prof. Scott's LT page is at: https://www.librarything.com/author/scottjamesc
Better late than never:
Brian Murphy. WaPo, 08/04/2024: James C. Scott, scholar of anarchism and resistance to authority, dies at 87.
46featherbear
TLS August 2, 2024|No. 6331
Featured
Michael Gorra. Frank critical: How Henry James viewed his own fiction. Review of: THE PREFACES / Henry James; edited by Oliver Herford.
Emma Cohen. Solidarity, not sameness: A seminal Chinese novel about cancer. Review of: MOURNING A BREAST / Xi Xi; translated by Jennifer Feeley (NYRB Classics).
Philip Ball. A Faustian fable: Is AI a Frankenstein’s monster or an unintelligent parrot? Review of: MORAL AI: And how we get there / Jana Schaich Borg, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Vincent Conitzer -- THE AI MIRROR: How to reclaim our humanity in an age of machine thinking / Shannon Vallor -- ROBOTS AND THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE THEM: Holding on to our humanity in an age of social robots / Eve Herold -- THE ATOMIC HUMAN: Understanding ourselves in the age of AI / Neil D. Lawrence.
Sophie Oliver. Reimagining the world: Judy Chicago’s first retrospective in a major London institution. Review of the exhibition JUDY CHICAGO: Revelations, Serpentine North, London, until September 1.
Literature
Jonathan Drummond. Cat style, cat society, cat world: Felines and felinophiles in modern life and literature. Review of: CATLAND: Feline enchantment and the making of the modern world / Kathryn Hughes.
Douglas Field. Why Jimmy is everywhere: Essays by writers and artists 100 years after James Baldwin’s birth. Review of: GOD MADE MY FACE: A collective portrait of James Baldwin / Hilton Als, editor.
Declan Ryan. In a dying republic: Robert Lowell’s places, politics, influences, life and reputation. Review of: ROBERT LOWELL IN CONTEXT / Thomas Austenfeld and Grzegorz Kość, editors.
Lucy Scholes. Cooking up a storm: An intimate portrait of an influential New York editor. Review of: THE EDITOR: How publishing legend Judith Jones shaped culture in America / Sara B. Franklin.
Lara Pawson. Ebb, flow and clash: Two lives, between Africa and France, over two centuries. Review of: COMRADE PAPA / GauZ’; translated by Frank Wynne.
Nick Holdstock. Only kill advisedly!: Fabulism and absurdity in the face of Russia’s gruesome past – and future. Review of: A PRESENT PAST: Titan and other chronicles / Sergei Lebedev; translated by Antonina W. Bouis -- MEVLIDO’S DREAMS: A post-exotic novel / Antoine Volodine; translated by Gina M. Stamm.
Miranda France. A gentle wave: Short stories by ‘a writer of the outskirts.’ Review of: A QUESTION OF BELONGING: Crónicas / Hebe Uhart; translated by Anna Vilner.
Ben Bollig. Tales of everyday terror: Horror and an obsession with the rock band Suede. Review of: UN LUGAR SOLEADO PARA GENTE SOMBRíA / Mariana Enriquez -- PORQUE DEMASIADO NO ES SUFICIENTE: Mi historia de amor con Suede / Mariana Enriquez.
Etan Nechin. Journalism meets literature: Novels aimed at the heart of Spanish political debate. Review of: THE OP-ED NOVEL: A literary history of post-Franco Spain / Bécquer Seguín.
In Brief Review of: A DANGEROUS JOB AND OTHER ESSAYS / Diana Hendry.
In Brief Review of: TRUE NORTH: Selected stories / Sara Maitland.
In Brief Review of: SMILE / Lauren Child.
In Brief Review of: LIVING THINGS / Munir Hachemi; translated by Julia Sanches.
Arts
Paul Griffiths. Lost and found: Voltaire, Maxwell Davies and Kurtág reimagined at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence. (Essay)
In Brief Review of: MY AFFAIR WITH ART HOUSE CINEMA: Essays and reviews / Phillip Lopate.
Philosophy, Science, & Technology
Regina Rini. The gadfly school of politics: Philosophy and J. D. Vance. (Essay)
Simone Gubler. Asking Jeeves: Robots and AI only seem human because we treat them that way. Review of: ANIMALS, ROBOTS, GODS: Adventures in the moral imagination / Webb Keane.
In Brief Review of: NIGHT VISION / Pippa Goldschmidt. ("How outer space holds up a mirror to the world")
History, Politics, Society, & Culture
Clare Pettit. Imperial myth in the making: A disastrous journey up the Niger. Review of: MUNGO PARK’S GHOST: The haunted hubris of British explorers in nineteenth-century Africa / Dane Kennedy.
Anne McElvoy. Hitler’s brood: Why did the German authorities turn a blind eye to far-right extremism? Review of: WHITE TERROR: A true story of murder, bombings and Germany’s far right / Jacob Kushner.
Charles Foster. Road with no name: Life among the last nomadic shepherds of Europe. Review of: ANIMA: A wild pastoral / Kapka Kassabova.
James Cook. Host a podcast or break things?: A writer receives a diagnosis of inoperable cancer. Review of: THE BODY IN THE LIBRARY: Memoir of a diagnosis / Graham Caveney.
Jane Robinson. Mistress of Girton: A formidable champion of equal opportunities for women. Review of: EMILY DAVIES AND THE MID-VICTORIAN WOMEN’S MOVEMENT / John Hendry.
Elleke Boehmer. South African herstory: An ancestral record of nine Afrikaner women. Review of: MOEDERLAND: Nine daughters of South Africa / Cato Pedder.
Georgina Paul. Conspiracy of silence: An East German family’s secrets and lies. Review of: BEHIND THE WALL: My brother, my family and hatred in East Germany / Ines Geipel; translated by Nick Somers.
Nat Segnit. Back to the sewer: Shalom Auslander battles self-loathing in his latest bleakly funny memoir. Review of: FEH: A memoir / Shalom Auslander.
In Brief Review of: CLIMBING DAYS/ Dorothy Pilley.
Featured
Michael Gorra. Frank critical: How Henry James viewed his own fiction. Review of: THE PREFACES / Henry James; edited by Oliver Herford.
Emma Cohen. Solidarity, not sameness: A seminal Chinese novel about cancer. Review of: MOURNING A BREAST / Xi Xi; translated by Jennifer Feeley (NYRB Classics).
Philip Ball. A Faustian fable: Is AI a Frankenstein’s monster or an unintelligent parrot? Review of: MORAL AI: And how we get there / Jana Schaich Borg, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Vincent Conitzer -- THE AI MIRROR: How to reclaim our humanity in an age of machine thinking / Shannon Vallor -- ROBOTS AND THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE THEM: Holding on to our humanity in an age of social robots / Eve Herold -- THE ATOMIC HUMAN: Understanding ourselves in the age of AI / Neil D. Lawrence.
Sophie Oliver. Reimagining the world: Judy Chicago’s first retrospective in a major London institution. Review of the exhibition JUDY CHICAGO: Revelations, Serpentine North, London, until September 1.
Literature
Jonathan Drummond. Cat style, cat society, cat world: Felines and felinophiles in modern life and literature. Review of: CATLAND: Feline enchantment and the making of the modern world / Kathryn Hughes.
Douglas Field. Why Jimmy is everywhere: Essays by writers and artists 100 years after James Baldwin’s birth. Review of: GOD MADE MY FACE: A collective portrait of James Baldwin / Hilton Als, editor.
Declan Ryan. In a dying republic: Robert Lowell’s places, politics, influences, life and reputation. Review of: ROBERT LOWELL IN CONTEXT / Thomas Austenfeld and Grzegorz Kość, editors.
Lucy Scholes. Cooking up a storm: An intimate portrait of an influential New York editor. Review of: THE EDITOR: How publishing legend Judith Jones shaped culture in America / Sara B. Franklin.
Lara Pawson. Ebb, flow and clash: Two lives, between Africa and France, over two centuries. Review of: COMRADE PAPA / GauZ’; translated by Frank Wynne.
Nick Holdstock. Only kill advisedly!: Fabulism and absurdity in the face of Russia’s gruesome past – and future. Review of: A PRESENT PAST: Titan and other chronicles / Sergei Lebedev; translated by Antonina W. Bouis -- MEVLIDO’S DREAMS: A post-exotic novel / Antoine Volodine; translated by Gina M. Stamm.
Miranda France. A gentle wave: Short stories by ‘a writer of the outskirts.’ Review of: A QUESTION OF BELONGING: Crónicas / Hebe Uhart; translated by Anna Vilner.
Ben Bollig. Tales of everyday terror: Horror and an obsession with the rock band Suede. Review of: UN LUGAR SOLEADO PARA GENTE SOMBRíA / Mariana Enriquez -- PORQUE DEMASIADO NO ES SUFICIENTE: Mi historia de amor con Suede / Mariana Enriquez.
Etan Nechin. Journalism meets literature: Novels aimed at the heart of Spanish political debate. Review of: THE OP-ED NOVEL: A literary history of post-Franco Spain / Bécquer Seguín.
In Brief Review of: A DANGEROUS JOB AND OTHER ESSAYS / Diana Hendry.
In Brief Review of: TRUE NORTH: Selected stories / Sara Maitland.
In Brief Review of: SMILE / Lauren Child.
In Brief Review of: LIVING THINGS / Munir Hachemi; translated by Julia Sanches.
Arts
Paul Griffiths. Lost and found: Voltaire, Maxwell Davies and Kurtág reimagined at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence. (Essay)
In Brief Review of: MY AFFAIR WITH ART HOUSE CINEMA: Essays and reviews / Phillip Lopate.
Philosophy, Science, & Technology
Regina Rini. The gadfly school of politics: Philosophy and J. D. Vance. (Essay)
Simone Gubler. Asking Jeeves: Robots and AI only seem human because we treat them that way. Review of: ANIMALS, ROBOTS, GODS: Adventures in the moral imagination / Webb Keane.
In Brief Review of: NIGHT VISION / Pippa Goldschmidt. ("How outer space holds up a mirror to the world")
History, Politics, Society, & Culture
Clare Pettit. Imperial myth in the making: A disastrous journey up the Niger. Review of: MUNGO PARK’S GHOST: The haunted hubris of British explorers in nineteenth-century Africa / Dane Kennedy.
Anne McElvoy. Hitler’s brood: Why did the German authorities turn a blind eye to far-right extremism? Review of: WHITE TERROR: A true story of murder, bombings and Germany’s far right / Jacob Kushner.
Charles Foster. Road with no name: Life among the last nomadic shepherds of Europe. Review of: ANIMA: A wild pastoral / Kapka Kassabova.
James Cook. Host a podcast or break things?: A writer receives a diagnosis of inoperable cancer. Review of: THE BODY IN THE LIBRARY: Memoir of a diagnosis / Graham Caveney.
Jane Robinson. Mistress of Girton: A formidable champion of equal opportunities for women. Review of: EMILY DAVIES AND THE MID-VICTORIAN WOMEN’S MOVEMENT / John Hendry.
Elleke Boehmer. South African herstory: An ancestral record of nine Afrikaner women. Review of: MOEDERLAND: Nine daughters of South Africa / Cato Pedder.
Georgina Paul. Conspiracy of silence: An East German family’s secrets and lies. Review of: BEHIND THE WALL: My brother, my family and hatred in East Germany / Ines Geipel; translated by Nick Somers.
Nat Segnit. Back to the sewer: Shalom Auslander battles self-loathing in his latest bleakly funny memoir. Review of: FEH: A memoir / Shalom Auslander.
In Brief Review of: CLIMBING DAYS/ Dorothy Pilley.
47featherbear
John Self. The Critic (UK), 08/01/2024: Still-sparkling gems of an annus mirabilis. Regarding: Hotel du Lac / Anita Brookner -- Empire of the Sun / J.G. Ballard -- Flaubert's Parrot / Julian Barnes.
48featherbear
Editorial Staff. Public Books, 07/31/2024: On Our Nightstands: July 2024. They're reading: What Is Cultural Criticism? / Francis Mulhern and Stefan Collini -- Atlas of AI Power: Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence / Kate Crawford -- The Anthropologists / Ayşegül Savaş --The Reef / Edith Wharton -- Reading Audio Readers: Book Consumption in the Streaming Age / Karl Berglund -- American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer / Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin.
49featherbear
Two recent reviews from LARB:
Adam Sobsey. 07/28/2024: A Strange Career. Review of: James Salter: Pilot, Screenwriter, Novelist / Jeffrey Meyers.
Kate Merkel-Hess. 07/28/2024: Chinese Production, American Consumption. Review of: Made in China: When US-China Interests Converged to Transform Global Trade / Elizabeth O’Brien Ingleson -- The Southern Tour: Deng Xiaoping and the Fight for China's Future / Jonathan Chatwin.
Gordon Marino. 08/01/2024: Commendable Snitches. Review of: The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No / Carl Elliott.
Adam Minter. 07/31/2024: Egyptian Factories, Sichuan Schools, and the Unfilled Promises of Globalization. Review of: Other Rivers: A Chinese Education / Peter Hessler -- Egyptian Made: Women, Work, and the Promise of Liberation / Leslie T. Chang.
Erik Gleibermann. 08/01/2024: A Road Atlas for Self-Reckoning. Review of: Someone Like Us / Dinaw Mengestu.
Chris Featherman. 07/30/2024: Words Versus Words, Fire with Fire. Review of: The Language of Climate Politics: Fossil-Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight It / Genevieve Guenther.
Tara Chessman. 07/30/2024: An Honorable Man in an Elaborate Maze. Review of: The Final Curtain / Keigo Higashino; trans. Giles Murray ("the final book in his Kyoichiro Kaga series" -- but LARB should have included the translator in the citation)
Regan Mies. 07/31/2024: Peering Through the Darkness. Review of: Under the Neomoon / Wolfgang Hilbig; trans. Isabel Fargo Cole -- Territories of the Soul/On Intonation / Wolfgang Hilbig; trans. Matthew Spencer -- but LARB should have included the translator in the citation.
Adam Sobsey. 07/28/2024: A Strange Career. Review of: James Salter: Pilot, Screenwriter, Novelist / Jeffrey Meyers.
Kate Merkel-Hess. 07/28/2024: Chinese Production, American Consumption. Review of: Made in China: When US-China Interests Converged to Transform Global Trade / Elizabeth O’Brien Ingleson -- The Southern Tour: Deng Xiaoping and the Fight for China's Future / Jonathan Chatwin.
Gordon Marino. 08/01/2024: Commendable Snitches. Review of: The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No / Carl Elliott.
Adam Minter. 07/31/2024: Egyptian Factories, Sichuan Schools, and the Unfilled Promises of Globalization. Review of: Other Rivers: A Chinese Education / Peter Hessler -- Egyptian Made: Women, Work, and the Promise of Liberation / Leslie T. Chang.
Erik Gleibermann. 08/01/2024: A Road Atlas for Self-Reckoning. Review of: Someone Like Us / Dinaw Mengestu.
Chris Featherman. 07/30/2024: Words Versus Words, Fire with Fire. Review of: The Language of Climate Politics: Fossil-Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight It / Genevieve Guenther.
Tara Chessman. 07/30/2024: An Honorable Man in an Elaborate Maze. Review of: The Final Curtain / Keigo Higashino; trans. Giles Murray ("the final book in his Kyoichiro Kaga series" -- but LARB should have included the translator in the citation)
Regan Mies. 07/31/2024: Peering Through the Darkness. Review of: Under the Neomoon / Wolfgang Hilbig; trans. Isabel Fargo Cole -- Territories of the Soul/On Intonation / Wolfgang Hilbig; trans. Matthew Spencer -- but LARB should have included the translator in the citation.
50featherbear
Michael Luo. New Yorker, 07/29/2024: How Christian Fundamentalism Was Born Again. Review of: Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation / Brenda Wineapple.
51featherbear
Christine Emba. The Atlantic, 08/01/2024: The Real Reason People Aren’t Having Kids. "It’s a need that government subsidies and better family policy can’t necessarily address." Review of: Hannah's Children: The Stories Of Women Quietly Defying The Birth Dearth / Catherine Pakaluk -- What Are Children For? On Ambivalence And Choice / Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman.
52featherbear
Benno Weiner. LARB, 08/03/2024: Straining Nation or Expansionist Empire? Review of: At the Edge of Empire: A Family’s Reckoning with China / Edward Wong.
53featherbear
Becca Rothfeld. WaPo, 08/02/2024: A Nobel Prize winner’s brilliant tirade against mortality. Review of: The Book Against Death / Elias Canetti; translated by Peter Filkins (available Oct. 8 2024 per Amazon; not sure why it's being reviewed in August)
Michael Dirda. WaPo, 08/01/2024: Serious browsers will love this history of American bookstores. Review of: The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore / Evam Friss.
Michael Dirda. WaPo, 08/01/2024: Serious browsers will love this history of American bookstores. Review of: The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore / Evam Friss.
54featherbear
fivebooks.com recommends:
Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson, interviewer Sylvia Bishop. 07/27/2024: The Best Victorian Fantasy Novels. (Johnson is "a George MacDonald scholar who lives on a farm in the Ottawa Valley, Canada")
She recommends: Phantastes / George MacDonald -- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland / Lewis Carroll -- The King of the Golden River / John Ruskin, illustrated by Quentin Blake -- A Christmas Carol / Charles Dickens -- She: a history of adventure / H. Rider Haggard.
Ivanka Hahnenberger, interviewer Sophie Roell. 07/29/2024: Five Graphic Novels People Need to Read. Better: Notable Graphic Novels, many of which were translated by Ivanka Hahnenberger -- info. on translators winkled out from the Amazon pages.
The Bomb: The Weapon That Changed the World / Alcante and Laurent-Frédéric Bollée, and illustrator Denis Rodier, Ivanka Hahnenberger (translator) -- An Olympic Dream: The Story of Samia Yusuf Omar / Reinhard Kleist -- Iranian Love Stories / Deloupy (Illustrator), Ivanka Hahnenberger (Translator), Jane Deuxard (Contributor) -- Chaos in Kinshasa / Barly Baruti (Creator), Thierry Bellefroid (Creator), Ivanka Hahnenberger (Translator) -- GoSt 111 / Henri Scala (Author), Mark Eacersall (Author), Marion Mousse (Artist).
Louise Gray, interviewer Cal Flynn. 07/31/2024: The best books on Regenerative Agriculture. Gray is the author of Avocado Anxiety: and Other Stories About Where Your Food Comes From.
For the Love of Soil: Strategies to Regenerate Our Food Production Systems / Nicole Masters -- Dirt to Soil: One Family’s Journey into Regenerative Agriculture / Gabe Brown -- Rooted: Stories of Life, Land and a Farming Revolution / Sarah Langford -- Land Healer: How Farming Can Save Britain’s Countryside / Jake Fiennes -- The Farm Table / Julius Roberts.
Jim Carter, interviewer Cal Flynn. 07/25/2024: The best books on Warships. Carter is the author of Hearts of Steel.
Jack Tar / Roy Adkins -- Operation Pedestal: The Fleet That Battled to Malta, 1942 / Max Hastings -- Destroyer Captain / Roger Hill -- How to Build an Aircraft Carrier: the incredible story of the men and women who brought Britain's biggest warship to life / Chris Terrill -- The Cruel Sea / Nicholas Monserrat.
Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson, interviewer Sylvia Bishop. 07/27/2024: The Best Victorian Fantasy Novels. (Johnson is "a George MacDonald scholar who lives on a farm in the Ottawa Valley, Canada")
She recommends: Phantastes / George MacDonald -- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland / Lewis Carroll -- The King of the Golden River / John Ruskin, illustrated by Quentin Blake -- A Christmas Carol / Charles Dickens -- She: a history of adventure / H. Rider Haggard.
Ivanka Hahnenberger, interviewer Sophie Roell. 07/29/2024: Five Graphic Novels People Need to Read. Better: Notable Graphic Novels, many of which were translated by Ivanka Hahnenberger -- info. on translators winkled out from the Amazon pages.
The Bomb: The Weapon That Changed the World / Alcante and Laurent-Frédéric Bollée, and illustrator Denis Rodier, Ivanka Hahnenberger (translator) -- An Olympic Dream: The Story of Samia Yusuf Omar / Reinhard Kleist -- Iranian Love Stories / Deloupy (Illustrator), Ivanka Hahnenberger (Translator), Jane Deuxard (Contributor) -- Chaos in Kinshasa / Barly Baruti (Creator), Thierry Bellefroid (Creator), Ivanka Hahnenberger (Translator) -- GoSt 111 / Henri Scala (Author), Mark Eacersall (Author), Marion Mousse (Artist).
Louise Gray, interviewer Cal Flynn. 07/31/2024: The best books on Regenerative Agriculture. Gray is the author of Avocado Anxiety: and Other Stories About Where Your Food Comes From.
For the Love of Soil: Strategies to Regenerate Our Food Production Systems / Nicole Masters -- Dirt to Soil: One Family’s Journey into Regenerative Agriculture / Gabe Brown -- Rooted: Stories of Life, Land and a Farming Revolution / Sarah Langford -- Land Healer: How Farming Can Save Britain’s Countryside / Jake Fiennes -- The Farm Table / Julius Roberts.
Jim Carter, interviewer Cal Flynn. 07/25/2024: The best books on Warships. Carter is the author of Hearts of Steel.
Jack Tar / Roy Adkins -- Operation Pedestal: The Fleet That Battled to Malta, 1942 / Max Hastings -- Destroyer Captain / Roger Hill -- How to Build an Aircraft Carrier: the incredible story of the men and women who brought Britain's biggest warship to life / Chris Terrill -- The Cruel Sea / Nicholas Monserrat.
55featherbear
Alexander Waugh, 1963-2024
Clay Risen. NYT, 08/03/2024: Alexander Waugh, Literary Scion of a Literary Dynasty, Dies at 60. "The brother, son and grandson of famous English writers, he carved out his own space as a composer, critic, columnist and historian."
Alexander Waugh's LT page: https://www.librarything.com/author/waughalexander
Clay Risen. NYT, 08/03/2024: Alexander Waugh, Literary Scion of a Literary Dynasty, Dies at 60. "The brother, son and grandson of famous English writers, he carved out his own space as a composer, critic, columnist and historian."
Alexander Waugh's LT page: https://www.librarything.com/author/waughalexander
56featherbear
TLS August 9, 2024|No. 6332
Featured
Susan Owens. Bloomsbury in bloom: Finding equivalences between art and gardening. Review of the catalog & exhibition: GARDENING BOHEMIA: Bloomsbury women outdoors / Claudia Tobin, Garden Museum, London, until September 29.
Rosemary Waugh. The five ages of woman: A staging of Annie Ernaux’s complex novel. Review of the adaptation of Annie Ernaux's THE YEARS, Almeida Theatre, London, until August 31.
Dinah Birch. Making earthly paradise: The art and crafts of William Morris. Review of: WILLIAM MORRIS: Selected writings / Ingrid Hanson, editor -- THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO WILLIAM MORRIS / Marcus Waithe, editor.
Claire Lowden. Powered by secrets: The ‘numbing effects’ of trauma in novels. Review of: THE ECHOES / Evie Wyld.
Literature & Bibliography
Oonagh Devitt Tremblay. Lines crossed: A car crash that uncovers memories of abuse. Review of: I WILL CRASH / Rebecca Watson.
Mary Wellesley. Knowing Chaucer?: The author teasingly concealed his real persona. Review of: GEOFFREY CHAUCER: Unveiling the merry bard / Mary Flannery.
Daniel Donoghue. This flower of manhood: A heroic Old English poem of ‘Shakespearean richness.’ Review of: BEOWULF: Poem, poet and hero / Heather O'Donoghue.
Beejay Silcox. Outback noir: A collection of stories set at the scene of the crime. Review of: HIGHWAY THIRTEEN / Fiona McFarlane.
Miklós Péti. ‘The port where I’m heading’: Dezső Kosztolányi’s long-lost, newly found translation of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. (Essay)
Robert Selby. A land of just-passing-throughs: Explorations of Scotland in verse. Review of: CHILD BALLAD / David Wheatley -- TWO CEREMONIES AT THE BORDER / Peter Armstrong.
Beverly Bie Brahic. Tree-lined avenues and silence: An understated poet and Parisian flâneur. Review of: PARIS 1935 / Jean Follain; translated by Kathleen Shields.
Craig Raine. Speak for England, Morgan: The trouble with Howards End. (Essay)
In Brief Review of: BEFORE TOM BROWN: The origins of the school story / Robert J. Kirkpatrick.
In Brief Review of: BRANDY SOUR / Constantia Soteriou; translated by Lina Protopapa. ("Composed of twenty-two vignettes, this enchanting novella tells the history of the Ledra Palace Hotel in Nicosia.")
In Brief Review of: MUSEUM VISITS / Éric Chevillard; translated by Daniel Levin Becker. ("The plotless tales of Éric Chevillard’s Museum Visits are an acquired taste. Petite and piquant, they are less narratives than linguistic objets d’art.)
In Brief Review of: GRAVITY AND CENTER: Selected sonnets, 1994–2022 / Henri Cole.
In Brief Review of: NEGATIVE SPACE / Gillian Linden. ("Set over six chapters spanning six days during the Covid pandemic, Gillian Linden’s debut novel paints a portrait of a woman under pressure.")
In Brief Review of: THE DESIGN OF BOOKS: An explainer for authors, editors, agents, and other curious readers / Debbie Berne.
Arts & Horticulture
Frances Spalding. Mabel Pryde’s progress: The painter, wife and mother at the head of an artistic dynasty. Review of the exhibition PYRDIE: The life and art of Mabel Pryde Nicholson 1871–1918 and MABEL NICHOLSON / Lucy Davies.
Lois Potter. Culture war victim: The New Deal Federal Theatre Project and the House Un-American Activities Committee. Review of: THE PLAYBOOK: A study of theatre, democracy and the making of a culture war / James Shapiro -- GEOPOLITICAL SHAKESPEARE: Western entanglements from internationalism to Cold War / Erica Sheen.
Alev Adil. Lost and found in Istanbul: Levan Akin’s fourth film, set across many kinds of borders. Review of the film Crossing.
Lucy Lethbridge. Green and pleasant: The spirit of the suburbs. Review of: BEHIND THE PRIVET HEDGE: Richard Sudell, the suburban garden and the beautification of Britain / Michael Gilson.
Natural History
Erica Gies. Hidden depths: Lands around Britain lost to rising waters. Review of: LOST TO THE SEA: A journey / Lisa Woollett -- SUNKEN LANDS: A journey through flooded kingdoms and lost worlds / Gareth E. Rees.
History, Politics, Society, & Maps
Joyce Chaplin. Grid locked: How Thomas Jefferson divided up America. Review of: LIBERTY’S GRID: A Founding Father, a mathematical dreamland, and the shaping of America / Amir Alexander.
Anna Aslanyan. Political geography: Maps betray the prejudices of their makers. Review of: MAPMATICS: How we navigate the world through numbers / Paulina Rowińska -- ALL MAPPED OUT: How maps shape us / Mike Duggan.
Peter Stothard. Couch potato: An ancient authority on travel who was reluctant to travel. Review of: STRABO’S GEOGRAPHY: A translation for the modern world / Sarah Pothecary -- GEOGRAPHERS OF THE ANCIENT GREEK WORLD: Selected texts in translation / D. Graham J. Shipley.
Rana Mitter. New world order: The hegemony of the Global North is coming to an end. Review of: WESTLESSNESS: The great global rebalancing / Samir Puri.
N.J. Enfield. Cancelled: How Alfred Kroeber’s anti-racist credentials have been posthumously challenged. Review of: THE UNNAMING OF KROEBER HALL: Language, memory, and Indigenous California / Andrew Garrett.
Featured
Susan Owens. Bloomsbury in bloom: Finding equivalences between art and gardening. Review of the catalog & exhibition: GARDENING BOHEMIA: Bloomsbury women outdoors / Claudia Tobin, Garden Museum, London, until September 29.
Rosemary Waugh. The five ages of woman: A staging of Annie Ernaux’s complex novel. Review of the adaptation of Annie Ernaux's THE YEARS, Almeida Theatre, London, until August 31.
Dinah Birch. Making earthly paradise: The art and crafts of William Morris. Review of: WILLIAM MORRIS: Selected writings / Ingrid Hanson, editor -- THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO WILLIAM MORRIS / Marcus Waithe, editor.
Claire Lowden. Powered by secrets: The ‘numbing effects’ of trauma in novels. Review of: THE ECHOES / Evie Wyld.
Literature & Bibliography
Oonagh Devitt Tremblay. Lines crossed: A car crash that uncovers memories of abuse. Review of: I WILL CRASH / Rebecca Watson.
Mary Wellesley. Knowing Chaucer?: The author teasingly concealed his real persona. Review of: GEOFFREY CHAUCER: Unveiling the merry bard / Mary Flannery.
Daniel Donoghue. This flower of manhood: A heroic Old English poem of ‘Shakespearean richness.’ Review of: BEOWULF: Poem, poet and hero / Heather O'Donoghue.
Beejay Silcox. Outback noir: A collection of stories set at the scene of the crime. Review of: HIGHWAY THIRTEEN / Fiona McFarlane.
Miklós Péti. ‘The port where I’m heading’: Dezső Kosztolányi’s long-lost, newly found translation of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. (Essay)
Robert Selby. A land of just-passing-throughs: Explorations of Scotland in verse. Review of: CHILD BALLAD / David Wheatley -- TWO CEREMONIES AT THE BORDER / Peter Armstrong.
Beverly Bie Brahic. Tree-lined avenues and silence: An understated poet and Parisian flâneur. Review of: PARIS 1935 / Jean Follain; translated by Kathleen Shields.
Craig Raine. Speak for England, Morgan: The trouble with Howards End. (Essay)
In Brief Review of: BEFORE TOM BROWN: The origins of the school story / Robert J. Kirkpatrick.
In Brief Review of: BRANDY SOUR / Constantia Soteriou; translated by Lina Protopapa. ("Composed of twenty-two vignettes, this enchanting novella tells the history of the Ledra Palace Hotel in Nicosia.")
In Brief Review of: MUSEUM VISITS / Éric Chevillard; translated by Daniel Levin Becker. ("The plotless tales of Éric Chevillard’s Museum Visits are an acquired taste. Petite and piquant, they are less narratives than linguistic objets d’art.)
In Brief Review of: GRAVITY AND CENTER: Selected sonnets, 1994–2022 / Henri Cole.
In Brief Review of: NEGATIVE SPACE / Gillian Linden. ("Set over six chapters spanning six days during the Covid pandemic, Gillian Linden’s debut novel paints a portrait of a woman under pressure.")
In Brief Review of: THE DESIGN OF BOOKS: An explainer for authors, editors, agents, and other curious readers / Debbie Berne.
Arts & Horticulture
Frances Spalding. Mabel Pryde’s progress: The painter, wife and mother at the head of an artistic dynasty. Review of the exhibition PYRDIE: The life and art of Mabel Pryde Nicholson 1871–1918 and MABEL NICHOLSON / Lucy Davies.
Lois Potter. Culture war victim: The New Deal Federal Theatre Project and the House Un-American Activities Committee. Review of: THE PLAYBOOK: A study of theatre, democracy and the making of a culture war / James Shapiro -- GEOPOLITICAL SHAKESPEARE: Western entanglements from internationalism to Cold War / Erica Sheen.
Alev Adil. Lost and found in Istanbul: Levan Akin’s fourth film, set across many kinds of borders. Review of the film Crossing.
Lucy Lethbridge. Green and pleasant: The spirit of the suburbs. Review of: BEHIND THE PRIVET HEDGE: Richard Sudell, the suburban garden and the beautification of Britain / Michael Gilson.
Natural History
Erica Gies. Hidden depths: Lands around Britain lost to rising waters. Review of: LOST TO THE SEA: A journey / Lisa Woollett -- SUNKEN LANDS: A journey through flooded kingdoms and lost worlds / Gareth E. Rees.
History, Politics, Society, & Maps
Joyce Chaplin. Grid locked: How Thomas Jefferson divided up America. Review of: LIBERTY’S GRID: A Founding Father, a mathematical dreamland, and the shaping of America / Amir Alexander.
Anna Aslanyan. Political geography: Maps betray the prejudices of their makers. Review of: MAPMATICS: How we navigate the world through numbers / Paulina Rowińska -- ALL MAPPED OUT: How maps shape us / Mike Duggan.
Peter Stothard. Couch potato: An ancient authority on travel who was reluctant to travel. Review of: STRABO’S GEOGRAPHY: A translation for the modern world / Sarah Pothecary -- GEOGRAPHERS OF THE ANCIENT GREEK WORLD: Selected texts in translation / D. Graham J. Shipley.
Rana Mitter. New world order: The hegemony of the Global North is coming to an end. Review of: WESTLESSNESS: The great global rebalancing / Samir Puri.
N.J. Enfield. Cancelled: How Alfred Kroeber’s anti-racist credentials have been posthumously challenged. Review of: THE UNNAMING OF KROEBER HALL: Language, memory, and Indigenous California / Andrew Garrett.
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Ella Creamer. Guardian, 08/07/2024: Utah outlaws books by Judy Blume and Sarah J Maas in first statewide ban.
"Books by Margaret Atwood, Judy Blume, Rupi Kaur and Sarah J Maas are among 13 titles that the state of Utah has ordered to be removed from all public school classrooms and libraries.
"This marks the first time a state has outlawed a list of books statewide, according to PEN America’s Jonathan Friedman, who oversees the organisation’s free expression programs.
"The list “will likely be updated as more books begin to meet the law’s criteria”, according to PEN America."
Anna Betts. Guardian, 08/09/2024: Advocates react to Utah ban of 13 books in schools and libraries: ‘It’s a tragedy.’
"Books by Margaret Atwood, Judy Blume, Rupi Kaur and Sarah J Maas are among 13 titles that the state of Utah has ordered to be removed from all public school classrooms and libraries.
"This marks the first time a state has outlawed a list of books statewide, according to PEN America’s Jonathan Friedman, who oversees the organisation’s free expression programs.
"The list “will likely be updated as more books begin to meet the law’s criteria”, according to PEN America."
Anna Betts. Guardian, 08/09/2024: Advocates react to Utah ban of 13 books in schools and libraries: ‘It’s a tragedy.’
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Books & bibliography from The Atlantic:
Phyllis Rose. 08/07/2024: A Marriage That Changed Literary History. "Fanny Stevenson forced her husband, Robert Louis Stevenson, to live a bigger life than he had known."
Ariel Sabar. 08/08/2024: An Intoxicating 500-Year-Old Mystery. "The Voynich Manuscript has long baffled scholars—and attracted cranks and conspiracy theorists. Now a prominent medievalist is taking a new approach to unlocking its secrets."
Matteo Wong. 08/08/2024: The Case for Choosing Death, Not Immortality. A review of Atlantic articles on the topic, with many notable authors from the archives.
Phyllis Rose. 08/07/2024: A Marriage That Changed Literary History. "Fanny Stevenson forced her husband, Robert Louis Stevenson, to live a bigger life than he had known."
Ariel Sabar. 08/08/2024: An Intoxicating 500-Year-Old Mystery. "The Voynich Manuscript has long baffled scholars—and attracted cranks and conspiracy theorists. Now a prominent medievalist is taking a new approach to unlocking its secrets."
Matteo Wong. 08/08/2024: The Case for Choosing Death, Not Immortality. A review of Atlantic articles on the topic, with many notable authors from the archives.
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Jonathan Kramnick, interviewed by Colleen Ruth Rosenfeld. Public Books, 08/08/2024: Jonathan Kramnick on the Craft of Criticism amid Institutional Decline. Discussing Kramnick's recent book Criticism and Truth: On Method in Literary Studies.
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Michael Dirda. WaPo, 08/08/2024: In praise of weird fiction, horror tales and stories that unsettle us. Dirda: "On Aug. 15, I’ll be flying from Washington to Providence, R.I., to attend NecronomiCon, which runs from that day until Aug. 18. Originally focused on H.P. Lovecraft and his circle, this biannual literary festival now bills itself as “the international convention of weird fiction, art, and academia.”"
In preparation he offers notes on the following:
The Weird Tales Boys / Stephen Jones -- The Willows and Others: Collected Short Fiction of Algernon Blackwood, Volume 1 & The Nemesis of Fire and Others: Collected Short Fiction of Algernon Blackwood, Volume 2, both ed. S.T. Joshi -- Ghosts of the Chit-Chat & Friends and Spectres, both ed. Robert Lloyd Parry -- Robert Aickman: Selected letters to Kirby McCauley -- Polyphemus / Michael Shea -- The Theory of the Weird Tale / edited by S. T. Joshi -- Northern Nights / ed. Michael Kelly (forthcoming Oct 2024) -- Horror Movie: A Novel / Paul Tremblay.
In preparation he offers notes on the following:
The Weird Tales Boys / Stephen Jones -- The Willows and Others: Collected Short Fiction of Algernon Blackwood, Volume 1 & The Nemesis of Fire and Others: Collected Short Fiction of Algernon Blackwood, Volume 2, both ed. S.T. Joshi -- Ghosts of the Chit-Chat & Friends and Spectres, both ed. Robert Lloyd Parry -- Robert Aickman: Selected letters to Kirby McCauley -- Polyphemus / Michael Shea -- The Theory of the Weird Tale / edited by S. T. Joshi -- Northern Nights / ed. Michael Kelly (forthcoming Oct 2024) -- Horror Movie: A Novel / Paul Tremblay.
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Neil Armstrong. The Critic (UK), 08/11/2024: The soaraway success of scoops and smut. Review of: The Newsmongers: A History of Tabloid Journalism / Terry Kirby.
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James Wood. New Yorker, 08/05/2024: Deals with the Devil Aren’t What They Used to Be. Review of: Devil's Contract: The History of the Faustian Bargain / Ed Simon, with references to, among others, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century England / Keith Thomas -- Tyll: A Novel / Daniel Kehlmann; trans. Ross Benjamin -- Doctor Faustus / Thomas Mann (trans. H.T. Lowe-Porter or John E. Woods).
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Alexandre Lefebvre. Aeon, 08/09/204: Rawls the redeemer: For John Rawls, liberalism was more than a political project: it is the best way to fashion a life that is worthy of happiness.
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Patrick Warner. Literary Review of Canada, 09/2024: Who Do They Think They Are?: When extraordinary writers prove fallible. Can't think of which Canadian writer he might be referring to.
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Drew Broussard. LitHub, 08/12/2024: Here are the winners of the 2024 Hugo Awards.
Drew Broussard. LitHub, 08/12/2024: Iowa and Utah are banning books state-wide.
James Folta. LitHub, 08/07/2024: Here are the 2024 recipients of the $50k Academy of American Poets Fellowship prize.
Susanna Ashton. LitHub, 08/12/2024: Art Imitates Testimony: On the Real-Life Inspiration For Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Excerpt from Ashton's A Plausible Man: The True Story of the Escaped Slave Who Inspired Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Drew Broussard. LitHub, 08/12/2024: Iowa and Utah are banning books state-wide.
James Folta. LitHub, 08/07/2024: Here are the 2024 recipients of the $50k Academy of American Poets Fellowship prize.
Susanna Ashton. LitHub, 08/12/2024: Art Imitates Testimony: On the Real-Life Inspiration For Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Excerpt from Ashton's A Plausible Man: The True Story of the Escaped Slave Who Inspired Uncle Tom's Cabin.
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Amit Chaudhuri and James Wood. LARB, 08/09/2024: Get Transfigured. They "discuss modernism, realism, and Chaudhuri’s three recently reissued novels," namely (all NYRB Classics): Afternoon Raag -- A Strange and Sublime Address -- Freedom Song.
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Adam Gopnick. New Yorker, 07/22/2024: Should We Abolish Prisons? Review survey of books on the topic, including: Are Prisons Obsolete? / Angela Y. Davis (2003) -- Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and a Road to Repair / Danielle Sered (2021) -- Abolition Labor: The Fight to End Prison Slavery / Andrew Ross, Tommasso Bardelli, Aiyuba Thomas (2024).
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From Literary Review August 2024:
Rosa Lyster. Happily Ever After? Review of: Ex-Wife / Ursula Parrott.
Alexander Christie-Miller. Off with His Fez. Review of: The Endless Country: A Personal Journey Through Turkey’s First Hundred Years / Sami Kent.
Peter Davidson. King of the Mountain. Review of: Caspar David Friedrich: Art for a New Age / Markus Bertsch & Johannes Grave (edd) -- Caspar David Friedrich: Infinite Landscapes / Ralph Gleis & Birgit Verwiebe (edd).
John Adamson. Killer with a Cause. Review of: Oliver Cromwell: Commander in Chief / Ronald Hutton.
Tanya Herrod. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman. Review of: Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood / y Hettie Judah.
Andrew McMillan. Lyric & Leather. Review of: Thom Gunn: A Cool Queer Life / Michael Nott.
Lucy Moore. Making a Splash. Review of: Swimming Pretty: The Untold Story of Women in Water / Vicki Valosik.
Rosa Lyster. Happily Ever After? Review of: Ex-Wife / Ursula Parrott.
Alexander Christie-Miller. Off with His Fez. Review of: The Endless Country: A Personal Journey Through Turkey’s First Hundred Years / Sami Kent.
Peter Davidson. King of the Mountain. Review of: Caspar David Friedrich: Art for a New Age / Markus Bertsch & Johannes Grave (edd) -- Caspar David Friedrich: Infinite Landscapes / Ralph Gleis & Birgit Verwiebe (edd).
John Adamson. Killer with a Cause. Review of: Oliver Cromwell: Commander in Chief / Ronald Hutton.
Tanya Herrod. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman. Review of: Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood / y Hettie Judah.
Andrew McMillan. Lyric & Leather. Review of: Thom Gunn: A Cool Queer Life / Michael Nott.
Lucy Moore. Making a Splash. Review of: Swimming Pretty: The Untold Story of Women in Water / Vicki Valosik.
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Tyler Austin Herra. Atlantic, 08/13/2024: A Satire of America’s Obsession With Identity. Review of: Colored Television / Danny Senna.
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Henry Ivry. Public Books, 08/13/2024: What Is the Infrastructure of Critique? Review essay of: Infrastructures of Apocalypse: American Literature and the Nuclear Complex / Jessica Hurley -- Immediacy, or the Style of Too Late Capitalism / Anna Kornbluh -- The Racial Railroad / Julia Lee -- Everything and Less: The Novel in the Age of Amazon / Mark McGurl -- Writing Backwards: Historical Fiction and the Reshaping of the America Canon / Alexander Manshel -- The Aesthetic Life of Infrastructure: Race, Affect, and Environment / Kelly Rich, Nicole Rizzuto, and Susan Zieger, eds. -- Big Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed the Publishing Industry and American Literature / Dan Sinykin -- The Sisterhood: How a Network of Black Women Writers Changed American Culture / Courtney Thorsson.
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From Bookforum summer 2024:
Zain Kahlid. Kierkegaard on the Mississippi. Review of: James / Percival Everett.
Janique Vigier. The Bad Enough Mother. Review of: The Stepdaughter / Caroline Blackwood.
Gene Seymour. Burning Bush. Review of: When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s / John Ganz.
A.S. Hamrah. Time to Face Reality. Review of: Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV / Emily Nussbaum.
Charlotte Shane. Libido Re Mi. Review of: All Fours / Miranda July.
David O'Neill. Flag Day. Review of: Gordon Parks: American Gothic / Gordon Parks & Ella Watson; edited by Philip Brookman & Casey Riley. (Bookforum appears to have scrambled the forenames of the editors; unclear whether the title of the book is American Gothic or, as Amazon has it, Gordon Parks: American Gothic -- I don't have access to the title page)
Grace Byron. The Fame Monsters. Review of: Trophy Lives: On the Celebrity as an Art Object / Philippa Snow.
Adam Wilson. Zoom and Doom. Review of: My First Book / Honor Levy.
Bookforum Contributors. Artful Volumes: Bookforum contributors on the season’s outstanding art books. Noted are: Ray's a laugh / Richard Billingham (a reissue) -- RAY’S A LAUGH: A READER / Liz Jobey -- BARBARA T. SMITH: PROOF / Jenelle Porter -- EVA HESSE: EXHIBITIONS, 1972–2022 / edited by Barry Rosen -- EVERYTHING FOR YOU / Hilary Harkness, with essays by Lynne Tillman and Ashley Jackson -- MONTAUK SURF JOURNALS / Tony Caramanico; Zack Raffin, editor -- OMEN: PHANTASMAGORIA AT THE FARM SECURITY ADMINISTRATION ARCHIVE, 1935–1942 / León Muñoz Santini and Jorge Panchoaga -- GOD MADE MY FACE / Hilton Als, curator.
Zain Kahlid. Kierkegaard on the Mississippi. Review of: James / Percival Everett.
Janique Vigier. The Bad Enough Mother. Review of: The Stepdaughter / Caroline Blackwood.
Gene Seymour. Burning Bush. Review of: When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s / John Ganz.
A.S. Hamrah. Time to Face Reality. Review of: Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV / Emily Nussbaum.
Charlotte Shane. Libido Re Mi. Review of: All Fours / Miranda July.
David O'Neill. Flag Day. Review of: Gordon Parks: American Gothic / Gordon Parks & Ella Watson; edited by Philip Brookman & Casey Riley. (Bookforum appears to have scrambled the forenames of the editors; unclear whether the title of the book is American Gothic or, as Amazon has it, Gordon Parks: American Gothic -- I don't have access to the title page)
Grace Byron. The Fame Monsters. Review of: Trophy Lives: On the Celebrity as an Art Object / Philippa Snow.
Adam Wilson. Zoom and Doom. Review of: My First Book / Honor Levy.
Bookforum Contributors. Artful Volumes: Bookforum contributors on the season’s outstanding art books. Noted are: Ray's a laugh / Richard Billingham (a reissue) -- RAY’S A LAUGH: A READER / Liz Jobey -- BARBARA T. SMITH: PROOF / Jenelle Porter -- EVA HESSE: EXHIBITIONS, 1972–2022 / edited by Barry Rosen -- EVERYTHING FOR YOU / Hilary Harkness, with essays by Lynne Tillman and Ashley Jackson -- MONTAUK SURF JOURNALS / Tony Caramanico; Zack Raffin, editor -- OMEN: PHANTASMAGORIA AT THE FARM SECURITY ADMINISTRATION ARCHIVE, 1935–1942 / León Muñoz Santini and Jorge Panchoaga -- GOD MADE MY FACE / Hilton Als, curator.
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Brittany Allen. LitHub, 08/13/2024: Oh, Barry! President Obama has released his annual summer reading list.
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Ron Charles. WaPo, 08/13/2024: ‘The Rich People Have Gone Away’ is an astonishing accomplishment: Regina Porter has written a truly great covid novel. For anchor purposes: The Rich People Have Gone Away.
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Sylvia Bishop, interviewer not ID. fivebooks.com, 07/11/2024: New Sci-Fi & Fantasy Novels: The 2024 Nebula Awards Shortlist:
The Terraformers / Annalee Newitz -- Translation State / Ann Leckie -- Witch King (The Rising World, 1) / Martha Wells -- The Water Outlaws / S.L. Huang -- Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon / Wole Talabi -- The Saint of Bright Doors* / Vajra Chandrasekera
*(winner winner chicken dinner)
Mark Wolverton, interviewer Sophie Roell. 08/11/2024: Books about J Robert Oppenheimer (to Read After the Movie). (I really need to finish watching that movie)
American Prometheus: the triumph and tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer / Kai Bird & Martin Sherwin -- The Oppenheimer Alternative / Robert J. Sawyer (SF novel) -- The Making of the Atomic Bomb / Richard Rhodes -- Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb / Richard Rhodes -- Genius in the Shadows : A Biography of Leo Szilard : The Man Behind the Bomb / William Lanouette.
The Terraformers / Annalee Newitz -- Translation State / Ann Leckie -- Witch King (The Rising World, 1) / Martha Wells -- The Water Outlaws / S.L. Huang -- Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon / Wole Talabi -- The Saint of Bright Doors* / Vajra Chandrasekera
*(winner winner chicken dinner)
Mark Wolverton, interviewer Sophie Roell. 08/11/2024: Books about J Robert Oppenheimer (to Read After the Movie). (I really need to finish watching that movie)
American Prometheus: the triumph and tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer / Kai Bird & Martin Sherwin -- The Oppenheimer Alternative / Robert J. Sawyer (SF novel) -- The Making of the Atomic Bomb / Richard Rhodes -- Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb / Richard Rhodes -- Genius in the Shadows : A Biography of Leo Szilard : The Man Behind the Bomb / William Lanouette.
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TLS August 16, 2024|No. 6333
Featured
Fiona Green. Scattered effects: The poetic epistles of Emily Dickinson. Review of: THE LETTERS OF EMILY DICKINSON / Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell, editors.
Owen Matthews. Best of enemies: Cold wars past and present. Review of: NEW COLD WARS: China’s rise, Russia’s invasion, and America’s struggle to defend the West / David E. Sanger -- TO RUN THE WORLD: The Kremlin’s Cold War bid for global power / Sergey Radchenko -- THE LOST PEACE: How the West failed to prevent a second Cold War / Richard Sakwa.
Diarmaid MacCulloch. Secret servants: Undercover work for the Tudor and Stuart state. Review of: ALL HIS SPIES: The secret world of Robert Cecil / Stephen Alford -- SPYCRAFT: Tricks and tools of the dangerous trade from Elizabeth I to the Restoration / Nadine Akkerman and Pete Langman.
Andrew Irwin. The world’s kitchen: Recipe book meets memoir meets travelogue. Review of: COLD KITCHEN: A year of culinary journeys / Caroline Eden.
Literature & Bibliography
Jonathan Keates. Slumber Room, then Paradise: Evelyn Waugh’s pitiless vision of a Los Angeles cemetery. Review of: THE LOVED ONE: An Anglo-American tragedy / Evelyn Waugh; edited by Adrian Poole.
Suzi Feay. Just don’t stray too far: A picaresque journey through a segregated society. Review of: THE UNICORN WOMAN / Gayl Jones.
Alex Peake-Tomkinson. On failing to make: Two hard-up women attempt to live a creative life. Review of: THE LAST SANE WOMAN / Hannah Regel.
Anna Aslanyan. Adventures in book-surfing: A metafictional romp through time, space and genre. Review of: THE WATERMARK / Sam Mills.
Susie Mesure. Then and now: Charting a relationship breakdown. Review of: WIFE / Charlotte Mendelson.
Michael Caines. Back to the future: The Napoleon of Notting Hill at 120. Review of: THE NAPOLEON OF NOTTING HILL / G.K. Chesterton.
Declan Ryan. Temporary solutions: A poet’s exploration of faith and the void. Review of: Silver: poems / Rowan Ricardo Phillips.
Ian Sansom. Ink work: On writers and tattoos. (Essay)
In Brief Review of: GROLIER CLUB BOOKPLATES: Past and present / Alexander Lawrence Ames and Mark Samuels Lasner.
In Brief Review of: TEN: Stories / Juan Emar; translated by Megan McDowell.
In Brief Review of: SO MANY PEOPLE, MARIANA / Maria Judite de Carvalho; translated by Margaret Jull Costa.
Arts
Adam Smyth. A play of gathered parts: A new production of a long-neglected work. Review of Shakespeare's Pericles, Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until September 21.
Andrew Hadfield. Acting their parts: What Shakespeare and the monarchy made of each other. Review of: SHAKESPEARE AND THE ROYAL ACTOR: Performing monarchy, 1760–1952 / Sally Barnden.
Tom Cook. Dragged to the playhouse: A reappraisal of Shakespearean sexualities. Review of: STRAIGHT ACTING: The many queer lives of William Shakespeare / Will Tosh (US subtitle: The hidden queer lives of ...)
Rod Mengham. Skin in the game: Francis Alÿs explores how children play – especially in precarious situations. Review of FRANCIS ALŸS: Ricochets, Barbican Art Gallery, London, until September (documentary film loops).
In Brief Review of: REVOLUCIÓN TO ROXY / Phil Manzanera (the Roxy Music guitarist).
In Brief Review of: VAN GOGH AND THE END OF NATURE / Michael Lobel.
In Brief Review of: EVERYTHING/NOTHING/SOMEONE: a memoir / Alice Carrière.
Philosophy
Jane O'Grady. Worry away: Philosophers wrestle with their difficult feelings. Review of: DANCING WITH THE DEVIL: Why bad feelings make life good / Krista K Thomason -- ANXIETY: A philosophical guide / Samir Chopra -- ANXIETY AND WONDER: On being human / Maria Balaska.
Science & Technology
Richard Smyth. The return of the native: An account of England at once traditional and idiosyncratic. Review of: ENGLAND: A natural history / John Lewis-Stempel.
Anthony Grafton. Rise of the northern stars: A history of sixteenth-century science told through its cities. Review of: INSIDE THE STARGAZER’S PALACE: The transformation of science in 16th-century northern Europe / Violet Moller.
History, Politics, Society, & Geography
Ben Kolbeck. A smooth operator’s soap opera: Correcting the record of a demonized client king. Review of: HEROD THE GREAT: Jewish king in a Roman world / Martin Goodman.
John Tolan. From Mainz to murder: The origins of European Jewry, and of a timeless hatred. Review of: HOW THE WEST BECAME ANTISEMITIC: Jews and the formation of Europe, 800–1500 / Ivan G. Marcus.
Charles Glass. Saved from the ashes: A ground-breaking account of an underexamined horror. Review of: THE DAMASCUS EVENTS: The 1860 massacre and the destruction of the old Ottoman world / Eugene Rogan.
Stefan Bauer. Trading places: Lessons from Lisbon’s exports in the Renaissance. Review of: PROVENANCE AND POSSESSION: Acquisitions from the Portuguese Empire in Renaissance Italy / K. J. P. Lowe.
Richard Overy. Not a stone shall stand: When military defeat becomes total destruction. Review of: THE END OF EVERYTHING: How wars descend into annihilation / Victor Davis Hanson.
Anna Katharina Schaffner. Going with the flow: An extensive ‘biography’ of the River Rhine. Review of: THE BOUNDLESS RIVER: Stories from the realm of the Rhine / Mathijs Deen; translated by Jane Headley-Prôle and Jonathan Reeder.
Ann Kennedy Smith. Happy trails: A lifetime of hiking without prejudice. Review of: TAKING THE RISK: My adventures in travel and publishing / Hilary Bradt.
In Brief Review of: TRAVELLERS IN THE GOLDEN REALM: How Mughal India connected England to the world / Lubaaba Al-Azami.
Featured
Fiona Green. Scattered effects: The poetic epistles of Emily Dickinson. Review of: THE LETTERS OF EMILY DICKINSON / Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell, editors.
Owen Matthews. Best of enemies: Cold wars past and present. Review of: NEW COLD WARS: China’s rise, Russia’s invasion, and America’s struggle to defend the West / David E. Sanger -- TO RUN THE WORLD: The Kremlin’s Cold War bid for global power / Sergey Radchenko -- THE LOST PEACE: How the West failed to prevent a second Cold War / Richard Sakwa.
Diarmaid MacCulloch. Secret servants: Undercover work for the Tudor and Stuart state. Review of: ALL HIS SPIES: The secret world of Robert Cecil / Stephen Alford -- SPYCRAFT: Tricks and tools of the dangerous trade from Elizabeth I to the Restoration / Nadine Akkerman and Pete Langman.
Andrew Irwin. The world’s kitchen: Recipe book meets memoir meets travelogue. Review of: COLD KITCHEN: A year of culinary journeys / Caroline Eden.
Literature & Bibliography
Jonathan Keates. Slumber Room, then Paradise: Evelyn Waugh’s pitiless vision of a Los Angeles cemetery. Review of: THE LOVED ONE: An Anglo-American tragedy / Evelyn Waugh; edited by Adrian Poole.
Suzi Feay. Just don’t stray too far: A picaresque journey through a segregated society. Review of: THE UNICORN WOMAN / Gayl Jones.
Alex Peake-Tomkinson. On failing to make: Two hard-up women attempt to live a creative life. Review of: THE LAST SANE WOMAN / Hannah Regel.
Anna Aslanyan. Adventures in book-surfing: A metafictional romp through time, space and genre. Review of: THE WATERMARK / Sam Mills.
Susie Mesure. Then and now: Charting a relationship breakdown. Review of: WIFE / Charlotte Mendelson.
Michael Caines. Back to the future: The Napoleon of Notting Hill at 120. Review of: THE NAPOLEON OF NOTTING HILL / G.K. Chesterton.
Declan Ryan. Temporary solutions: A poet’s exploration of faith and the void. Review of: Silver: poems / Rowan Ricardo Phillips.
Ian Sansom. Ink work: On writers and tattoos. (Essay)
In Brief Review of: GROLIER CLUB BOOKPLATES: Past and present / Alexander Lawrence Ames and Mark Samuels Lasner.
In Brief Review of: TEN: Stories / Juan Emar; translated by Megan McDowell.
In Brief Review of: SO MANY PEOPLE, MARIANA / Maria Judite de Carvalho; translated by Margaret Jull Costa.
Arts
Adam Smyth. A play of gathered parts: A new production of a long-neglected work. Review of Shakespeare's Pericles, Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until September 21.
Andrew Hadfield. Acting their parts: What Shakespeare and the monarchy made of each other. Review of: SHAKESPEARE AND THE ROYAL ACTOR: Performing monarchy, 1760–1952 / Sally Barnden.
Tom Cook. Dragged to the playhouse: A reappraisal of Shakespearean sexualities. Review of: STRAIGHT ACTING: The many queer lives of William Shakespeare / Will Tosh (US subtitle: The hidden queer lives of ...)
Rod Mengham. Skin in the game: Francis Alÿs explores how children play – especially in precarious situations. Review of FRANCIS ALŸS: Ricochets, Barbican Art Gallery, London, until September (documentary film loops).
In Brief Review of: REVOLUCIÓN TO ROXY / Phil Manzanera (the Roxy Music guitarist).
In Brief Review of: VAN GOGH AND THE END OF NATURE / Michael Lobel.
In Brief Review of: EVERYTHING/NOTHING/SOMEONE: a memoir / Alice Carrière.
Philosophy
Jane O'Grady. Worry away: Philosophers wrestle with their difficult feelings. Review of: DANCING WITH THE DEVIL: Why bad feelings make life good / Krista K Thomason -- ANXIETY: A philosophical guide / Samir Chopra -- ANXIETY AND WONDER: On being human / Maria Balaska.
Science & Technology
Richard Smyth. The return of the native: An account of England at once traditional and idiosyncratic. Review of: ENGLAND: A natural history / John Lewis-Stempel.
Anthony Grafton. Rise of the northern stars: A history of sixteenth-century science told through its cities. Review of: INSIDE THE STARGAZER’S PALACE: The transformation of science in 16th-century northern Europe / Violet Moller.
History, Politics, Society, & Geography
Ben Kolbeck. A smooth operator’s soap opera: Correcting the record of a demonized client king. Review of: HEROD THE GREAT: Jewish king in a Roman world / Martin Goodman.
John Tolan. From Mainz to murder: The origins of European Jewry, and of a timeless hatred. Review of: HOW THE WEST BECAME ANTISEMITIC: Jews and the formation of Europe, 800–1500 / Ivan G. Marcus.
Charles Glass. Saved from the ashes: A ground-breaking account of an underexamined horror. Review of: THE DAMASCUS EVENTS: The 1860 massacre and the destruction of the old Ottoman world / Eugene Rogan.
Stefan Bauer. Trading places: Lessons from Lisbon’s exports in the Renaissance. Review of: PROVENANCE AND POSSESSION: Acquisitions from the Portuguese Empire in Renaissance Italy / K. J. P. Lowe.
Richard Overy. Not a stone shall stand: When military defeat becomes total destruction. Review of: THE END OF EVERYTHING: How wars descend into annihilation / Victor Davis Hanson.
Anna Katharina Schaffner. Going with the flow: An extensive ‘biography’ of the River Rhine. Review of: THE BOUNDLESS RIVER: Stories from the realm of the Rhine / Mathijs Deen; translated by Jane Headley-Prôle and Jonathan Reeder.
Ann Kennedy Smith. Happy trails: A lifetime of hiking without prejudice. Review of: TAKING THE RISK: My adventures in travel and publishing / Hilary Bradt.
In Brief Review of: TRAVELLERS IN THE GOLDEN REALM: How Mughal India connected England to the world / Lubaaba Al-Azami.
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Jennifer Szalai. NYT, 08/14/2024: His Trilogy Explored the Nazi Era. Now He Looks at the People Behind It. Review of: HITLER’S PEOPLE: The Faces of the Third Reich / Richard J. Evans.
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Brenda Wineapple. Atlantic, 08/14/2024: The Monumental Discovery That Changed How Humans See Themselves. Review of: Impossible Monsters: Dinosaurs, Darwin, and the Battle Between Science and Religion / Michael Taylor -- Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party: How an Eccentric Group of Victorians Discovered Prehistoric Creatures and Accidentally Upended the World / Edward Dolnick.
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Richard Brody. New Yorker, 08/15/2024: How Agnès Varda Became an Icon of Cinema. Review of: A Complicated Passion: The Life and Work of Agnès Varda / Carrie Rickey.
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Literary Hub. 08/14/2024: A Literary Road Trip Across America: Where to Go and What to Read There.
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Tajja Isen. The Walrus, 08/14/2024: The Hidden Racism of Book Cover Design.
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Kirsty Stark. The Critic (UK), 08/15/2024: The warp and weft of women’s history. Review of: The Missing Thread: A Women’s History of the Ancient World / Daisy Dunn.
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Lauren Christensen. NYT, 08/16/2024: A Dossier of Courtroom Sketches Captures the Faces of Evil. Review of: DRAWN TESTIMONY: My Four Decades as a Courtroom Sketch Artist / Jane Rosenberg.
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Becca Rothfeld. WaPo, 08/16/2024: A provocative look at how living things transform our world. Review of: Living on Earth: Forests, Corals, Consciousness, and the Making of the World / Peter Godfrey-Smith.
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Ross Terrill, 1938-2024
Brian Murphy. WaPo, 08/15/2024: Ross Terrill, chronicler of China from Mao onward, dies at 85.
"As China gradually opened to the West after the widespread repression and isolation of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, Dr. Terrill was seen as an insightful interpreter of momentous events such as President Richard M. Nixon’s groundbreaking trip to China in 1972.
"Dr. Terrill also recognized the importance of the ordinary. He sought out farmers, shopkeepers and laborers to build portraits of China’s successes and failures as the monolithic Communist Party tried to juggle the complexities of a modern state.
"“China also lacks a magnetic message for the world that could replace the American brew of democracy, free markets, pop culture, a near universal language, and innovation,” Dr. Terrill wrote in a 2010 essay for the Wilson Quarterly, an international affairs journal. “Beijing’s model of authoritarian-led prosperity may prove useful for minor Third World countries, but Chinese nationalism is empty of answers for most of the non-Chinese world.”"
Author of: Mao: a biography -- The White-Boned Demon: A Biography of Madame Mao Zedong
His LT page is at https://www.librarything.com/author/terrillross
Brian Murphy. WaPo, 08/15/2024: Ross Terrill, chronicler of China from Mao onward, dies at 85.
"As China gradually opened to the West after the widespread repression and isolation of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, Dr. Terrill was seen as an insightful interpreter of momentous events such as President Richard M. Nixon’s groundbreaking trip to China in 1972.
"Dr. Terrill also recognized the importance of the ordinary. He sought out farmers, shopkeepers and laborers to build portraits of China’s successes and failures as the monolithic Communist Party tried to juggle the complexities of a modern state.
"“China also lacks a magnetic message for the world that could replace the American brew of democracy, free markets, pop culture, a near universal language, and innovation,” Dr. Terrill wrote in a 2010 essay for the Wilson Quarterly, an international affairs journal. “Beijing’s model of authoritarian-led prosperity may prove useful for minor Third World countries, but Chinese nationalism is empty of answers for most of the non-Chinese world.”"
Author of: Mao: a biography -- The White-Boned Demon: A Biography of Madame Mao Zedong
His LT page is at https://www.librarything.com/author/terrillross
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Frances Lindemann. The Drift, 07/19/2024: Reading Oneself | Auto-Critics and the Sylvia Plath Problem
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Randy Boyagoda. Atlantic, 08/16/2024: A Vision of England Today, Dark and Rotten. Review of: Caledonian Road: a novel / Andrew O'Hagan.
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Book discussions from The New Yorker:
Joshua Rothman. New Yorker, 08/13/2024: Are We Living in the Age of Info-Determinism? Thoughts taking off from: Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI / Yuval Noah Harari & The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium / Martin Gurri.
Jessica Winter. New Yorker, 08/16/2024: The Story That “Hillbilly Elegy” Doesn’t Tell. On Hillbilly Elegy: a memoir of a family and culture in crisis by erstwhile hillbilly J.D. Vance.
Parul Seghal. New Yorker, 08/02/2024: Is the End of Marriage the Beginning of Self-Knowledge? Review of Liars / Sarah Manguso.
Joshua Rothman. New Yorker, 08/13/2024: Are We Living in the Age of Info-Determinism? Thoughts taking off from: Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI / Yuval Noah Harari & The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium / Martin Gurri.
Jessica Winter. New Yorker, 08/16/2024: The Story That “Hillbilly Elegy” Doesn’t Tell. On Hillbilly Elegy: a memoir of a family and culture in crisis by erstwhile hillbilly J.D. Vance.
Parul Seghal. New Yorker, 08/02/2024: Is the End of Marriage the Beginning of Self-Knowledge? Review of Liars / Sarah Manguso.
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Olivia Rutigliano. crimereads.com, 08/16/2024: Murder in Middlemarch. "Everyone performs, in George Eliot's famous novel. But some are performing to cover up a killing!"
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Harvey Neptune. Aeon, 08/16/2024: C L R James and America.
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Alejandro Varela. WaPo, 08/17/2024: In the 1990s, these books cracked the world open. "Works by Dorothy Allison, Edward P. Jones and Sarah Schulman were among those that were beautifully written and also expanded our sense of experience."
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Sunday books roundup from Washington Post:
Zito Madu. WaPo, 08/17/2024: A ‘cosmic’ biography tries to see Audre Lorde as she saw herself. Review of: Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde / Alexis Pauline Gumbs.
Nora Krug. WaPo, 08/16/2024: Trump said hello. Tom Brady said thanks. A court sketch artist tells all. "Jane Rosenberg talks about her new book, “Drawn Testimony: My Four Decades as a Courtroom Sketch Artist,” and shares the highs and lows of more than 40 years drawing dramatic courtroom moments."
Marion Winik. WaPo, 08/15/2024: Imagining the life of Peggy Guggenheim, heiress and art collector. "In her novel “Peggy: a novel,” the late writer Rebecca Godfrey dives into the complicated enigmas of the woman who helped bring abstract expressionism to the world."
Felix Salmon. WaPo, 08/13/2024: Is Bill Gates a savior or a villain? "Journalist Anupreeta Das examines the life and legacy of the Microsoft co-founder in her book “Billionaire, Nerd, Savior, King: Bill Gates and His Quest to Shape Our World.”
Zito Madu. WaPo, 08/17/2024: A ‘cosmic’ biography tries to see Audre Lorde as she saw herself. Review of: Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde / Alexis Pauline Gumbs.
Nora Krug. WaPo, 08/16/2024: Trump said hello. Tom Brady said thanks. A court sketch artist tells all. "Jane Rosenberg talks about her new book, “Drawn Testimony: My Four Decades as a Courtroom Sketch Artist,” and shares the highs and lows of more than 40 years drawing dramatic courtroom moments."
Marion Winik. WaPo, 08/15/2024: Imagining the life of Peggy Guggenheim, heiress and art collector. "In her novel “Peggy: a novel,” the late writer Rebecca Godfrey dives into the complicated enigmas of the woman who helped bring abstract expressionism to the world."
Felix Salmon. WaPo, 08/13/2024: Is Bill Gates a savior or a villain? "Journalist Anupreeta Das examines the life and legacy of the Microsoft co-founder in her book “Billionaire, Nerd, Savior, King: Bill Gates and His Quest to Shape Our World.”
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David Frum. Atlantic, 08/18/2024: Why Alice Munro’s Work Felt so Empty.
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Louis Menand. New Yorker, 08/19/2024: Are Bookstores Just a Waste of Space?
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Paul Allen Anderson. LARB, 08/19/2024: How to Hug a Cactus Tree. Review of: Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell / Ann Powers.
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Jonathan Gaisman. The Critic (UK), 08/19/2024: Wagner: the long and short of it. Review of: Wagner’s Theatre: In Search of a Legacy / Patrick Carnegy.
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Mark Greif. Harper's, Sept 2024: Glimmers of Totality: Fredric Jameson at ninety. Review of: Inventions of a Present: The Novel in Its Crisis of Globalization / Fredric Jameson.
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Sophie Vershbow. Atlantic, 08/20/2024: When Is It Okay to Not Finish a Book?.
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Two recent reviews from The Critic (UK):
Peter Sarris. 08/20/2024: Crossroads of history. Review of: Cypria: A Journey to the Heart of the Mediterranean / Alex Christofi.
Amelia Butler-Gallie. 08/21/2024: Rehabilitating an Edwardian genius. Review of: Sir Edwin Lutyens: Britain’s Greatest Architect? / Clive Aslet.
Peter Sarris. 08/20/2024: Crossroads of history. Review of: Cypria: A Journey to the Heart of the Mediterranean / Alex Christofi.
Amelia Butler-Gallie. 08/21/2024: Rehabilitating an Edwardian genius. Review of: Sir Edwin Lutyens: Britain’s Greatest Architect? / Clive Aslet.
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Camille Ralphs. Poetry Foundation, 08/19/2024: Arsy-versy Argy-bargy: How Chaucer remade language.
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TLS August 23 / 30, 2024|No. 6334/5
Featured
C.K. Stead. Laughter and tears: Remembering Janet Frame on her centenary. (Essay)
Peter Kemp. At the House of Atreus: The final instalment of Pat Barker’s Trojan War trilogy. Review of: THE VOYAGE HOME / Pat Barker.
Clive Stafford Smith. Thinking outside the box: Is it time to reconsider prison’s place in the penal system? Review of: THE PRISON BEFORE THE PANOPTICON: Incarceration in ancient and modern political philosophy / Jacob Abolafia.
Will Eaves. Making notes: Contemplations on the creative process – an extract from The Point of Distraction.
Literature
Kirsty Gunn. Looking at the lonely ones: The welcome revival of Janet Frame’s uncanny, disruptive novel. Review of: THE EDGE OF THE ALPHABET / Janet Frame.
Charlotte Mitchell. Chatting about Boz: The exciting academic product of a pandemic pastime. Review of: IN DIALOGUE WITH DICKENS: The mind of the heart / Rosemarie Bodenheimer and Philip Davis.
E.J. Clery. Women write back: How eighteenth-century female authors described illness. Review of: REIMAGINING ILLNESS: Women writers and medicine in eighteenth-century Britain / Heather Meek.
Lorna Scott Fox. Artists in residence: Culture and creativity in Guantánamo. Review of: A NEW NO-MAN’S-LAND: Writing and art at Guantánamo, Cuba / Esther Whitfield.
Suzi Feay. Uninterested in truth: Hybrids of myth and rumour, animal and human. Review of: DOGS AND MONSTERS: stories / Mark Haddon.
Maya Jaggi. Imperial pipe dreams: A Georgian satire on the human will to conquer. Review of: HUMAN SADNESS / Goderdzi Chokheli; translated by Geoffrey Gosby, Clifford Marcus et al.
Daniel Clarke. So many locks: A retired teacher revisits a formative love affair. Review of: MR GEOGRAPHY / Tim Parks.
Catherine Taylor. All the little earls: Donal Ryan’s ambitious sequel to The Spinning Heart. Review of: HEART, BE AT PEACE / Donal Ryan.
Graeme Richardson. One for the paperweight: Assessing the sizeable oeuvre of Roger McGough. Review of: THE COLLECTED POEMS: 1959–2024 / Roger McGough.
Irina Dumitrescu. Staying power: The rise and fall of literary reputations. (Essay)
Libby Purves. Classicist, pig fancier: Elspeth Barker’s intense and idiosyncratic essays. Review of: NOTES FROM THE HENHOUSE / Elspeth Barker.
In Brief Review of: FINDING DUENDE: Duende: play and theory | Imagination, inspiration, evasion / Federico García Lorca; translated by Christopher Maurer; edited by José Javier León and Christopher Maurer.
In Brief Review of: WHALE FALL / Elizabeth O'Connor.
In Brief Review of: Couples Couplets: a love story / Maggie Millner.
Arts
Matthew Bown. Cosmopolitan folk: The complex history of Ukrainian art from a century ago. Review of the catalog EYE OF THE STORM: Modernism in Ukraine, 1900-1930s / Konstantin Akinsha, Katia Denysova and Olena Kashuba-Volvach, editors, & the exhibition of the same title, Royal Academy of Art, London, until October 13.
Toby Lichtig. Filled with anger: A new production of a Great Depression classic of struggle against injustice. Review of THE GRAPES OF WRATH / John Steinbeck, Adapted by Frank Galati, National Theatre, until September 14.
Science & Technology
Guy Standing. The deep green sea?: Why greater environmental protections for our oceans are urgently needed. Review of: THE HIGH SEAS: Ambition, power and greed on the unclaimed ocean / Olive Heffernan -- WHAT THE WILD SEA CAN BE: The future of the world’s ocean / Helen Scales.
Pragya Arawal. We are never well: A history of hypochondria. Review of: A BODY MADE OF GLASS: A history of hypochondria / Caroline Crampton.
Joe Moran. In the dark: The mysterious world of sleep science. Review of: SLEEPLESS: Discovering the power of the Night Self / Annabel Abbs -- MAPPING THE DARKNESS: The visionary scientists who unlocked the mysteries of sleep / Kenneth Miller.
Barbara Taylor. Tea time: Treating addiction with hallucinogenic drugs. Review of: THE CAPTIVE IMAGINATION: Addiction, reality and our search for meaning / Elias Dakwar.
Oonagh Devitt Tremblay. Just what the doctors ordered: One woman’s story of surviving mental health treatment. Review of: COMMITTED: A memoir of finding meaning in madness / Suzanne Scanlon. (US subtitle: On meaning and madwomen)
In Brief Review of: STILL A BIT OF SNAP IN THE CELERY, Or, K.B.O. / Marcus Berkmann. ("A predominantly male tract on early old age")
In Brief Review of: WONDERSTRUCK: How wonder and awe shape the way we think / Helen De Cruz.
In Brief Review of: THE RETURN OF THE GREY PARTRIDGE: Restoring nature on the South Downs / Roger Morgan-Grenville and Edward Norfolk.
Religion
Alister McGrath. Bringing forth monsters: What theology might teach us about technological hubris. Review of: PLAYING GOD: Science, religion and the future of humanity / NIck Spencer and Hannah Waite.
History, Politics, Society, & Culture
Jan Michielsen. Shadow of the Inquisition: Jews who converted to and from Christianity. Review of: STRANGERS WITHIN: The rise and fall of the New Christian trading elite / Francisco Bethencourt.
Paul Seabright. O lucky man!: What poker players do and don’t have in common with plutocrats. Review of: ON THE EDGE: The art of risking everything / Nate Silver.
Declan Ryan. End of the bacchanal: A Spectator columnist records the last decade of his life. Review of: LOW LIFE: THE SPECTATOR COLUMNS: ‘The final years.’ / Jeremy Clarke.
In Brief Review of: GENERAL HASTINGS ‘PUG’ ISMAY: Soldier, statesman, diplomat: a new biography / John Kiszely.
Featured
C.K. Stead. Laughter and tears: Remembering Janet Frame on her centenary. (Essay)
Peter Kemp. At the House of Atreus: The final instalment of Pat Barker’s Trojan War trilogy. Review of: THE VOYAGE HOME / Pat Barker.
Clive Stafford Smith. Thinking outside the box: Is it time to reconsider prison’s place in the penal system? Review of: THE PRISON BEFORE THE PANOPTICON: Incarceration in ancient and modern political philosophy / Jacob Abolafia.
Will Eaves. Making notes: Contemplations on the creative process – an extract from The Point of Distraction.
Literature
Kirsty Gunn. Looking at the lonely ones: The welcome revival of Janet Frame’s uncanny, disruptive novel. Review of: THE EDGE OF THE ALPHABET / Janet Frame.
Charlotte Mitchell. Chatting about Boz: The exciting academic product of a pandemic pastime. Review of: IN DIALOGUE WITH DICKENS: The mind of the heart / Rosemarie Bodenheimer and Philip Davis.
E.J. Clery. Women write back: How eighteenth-century female authors described illness. Review of: REIMAGINING ILLNESS: Women writers and medicine in eighteenth-century Britain / Heather Meek.
Lorna Scott Fox. Artists in residence: Culture and creativity in Guantánamo. Review of: A NEW NO-MAN’S-LAND: Writing and art at Guantánamo, Cuba / Esther Whitfield.
Suzi Feay. Uninterested in truth: Hybrids of myth and rumour, animal and human. Review of: DOGS AND MONSTERS: stories / Mark Haddon.
Maya Jaggi. Imperial pipe dreams: A Georgian satire on the human will to conquer. Review of: HUMAN SADNESS / Goderdzi Chokheli; translated by Geoffrey Gosby, Clifford Marcus et al.
Daniel Clarke. So many locks: A retired teacher revisits a formative love affair. Review of: MR GEOGRAPHY / Tim Parks.
Catherine Taylor. All the little earls: Donal Ryan’s ambitious sequel to The Spinning Heart. Review of: HEART, BE AT PEACE / Donal Ryan.
Graeme Richardson. One for the paperweight: Assessing the sizeable oeuvre of Roger McGough. Review of: THE COLLECTED POEMS: 1959–2024 / Roger McGough.
Irina Dumitrescu. Staying power: The rise and fall of literary reputations. (Essay)
Libby Purves. Classicist, pig fancier: Elspeth Barker’s intense and idiosyncratic essays. Review of: NOTES FROM THE HENHOUSE / Elspeth Barker.
In Brief Review of: FINDING DUENDE: Duende: play and theory | Imagination, inspiration, evasion / Federico García Lorca; translated by Christopher Maurer; edited by José Javier León and Christopher Maurer.
In Brief Review of: WHALE FALL / Elizabeth O'Connor.
In Brief Review of: Couples Couplets: a love story / Maggie Millner.
Arts
Matthew Bown. Cosmopolitan folk: The complex history of Ukrainian art from a century ago. Review of the catalog EYE OF THE STORM: Modernism in Ukraine, 1900-1930s / Konstantin Akinsha, Katia Denysova and Olena Kashuba-Volvach, editors, & the exhibition of the same title, Royal Academy of Art, London, until October 13.
Toby Lichtig. Filled with anger: A new production of a Great Depression classic of struggle against injustice. Review of THE GRAPES OF WRATH / John Steinbeck, Adapted by Frank Galati, National Theatre, until September 14.
Science & Technology
Guy Standing. The deep green sea?: Why greater environmental protections for our oceans are urgently needed. Review of: THE HIGH SEAS: Ambition, power and greed on the unclaimed ocean / Olive Heffernan -- WHAT THE WILD SEA CAN BE: The future of the world’s ocean / Helen Scales.
Pragya Arawal. We are never well: A history of hypochondria. Review of: A BODY MADE OF GLASS: A history of hypochondria / Caroline Crampton.
Joe Moran. In the dark: The mysterious world of sleep science. Review of: SLEEPLESS: Discovering the power of the Night Self / Annabel Abbs -- MAPPING THE DARKNESS: The visionary scientists who unlocked the mysteries of sleep / Kenneth Miller.
Barbara Taylor. Tea time: Treating addiction with hallucinogenic drugs. Review of: THE CAPTIVE IMAGINATION: Addiction, reality and our search for meaning / Elias Dakwar.
Oonagh Devitt Tremblay. Just what the doctors ordered: One woman’s story of surviving mental health treatment. Review of: COMMITTED: A memoir of finding meaning in madness / Suzanne Scanlon. (US subtitle: On meaning and madwomen)
In Brief Review of: STILL A BIT OF SNAP IN THE CELERY, Or, K.B.O. / Marcus Berkmann. ("A predominantly male tract on early old age")
In Brief Review of: WONDERSTRUCK: How wonder and awe shape the way we think / Helen De Cruz.
In Brief Review of: THE RETURN OF THE GREY PARTRIDGE: Restoring nature on the South Downs / Roger Morgan-Grenville and Edward Norfolk.
Religion
Alister McGrath. Bringing forth monsters: What theology might teach us about technological hubris. Review of: PLAYING GOD: Science, religion and the future of humanity / NIck Spencer and Hannah Waite.
History, Politics, Society, & Culture
Jan Michielsen. Shadow of the Inquisition: Jews who converted to and from Christianity. Review of: STRANGERS WITHIN: The rise and fall of the New Christian trading elite / Francisco Bethencourt.
Paul Seabright. O lucky man!: What poker players do and don’t have in common with plutocrats. Review of: ON THE EDGE: The art of risking everything / Nate Silver.
Declan Ryan. End of the bacchanal: A Spectator columnist records the last decade of his life. Review of: LOW LIFE: THE SPECTATOR COLUMNS: ‘The final years.’ / Jeremy Clarke.
In Brief Review of: GENERAL HASTINGS ‘PUG’ ISMAY: Soldier, statesman, diplomat: a new biography / John Kiszely.
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Peter Salmon. The Jacobin, 08/09/2024: How Two Leftist Scholars Saved Nietzsche’s Archive.
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Kamran Javadizadeh. New Yorker, 08/21/2024: When Emily Dickinson Mailed It In: The supposed recluse constantly sent letters to friends, family, and lovers. What do they show us? Review of: The Letters of Emily Dickinson / Cristanne Miller & Domhnall Mitchell, editors.
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Daniel Johnson. The Critic (UK), 08/22/2024: From the monstrous to the grotesque: Hitler’s cult of charismatic leadership is indistinguishable from the ideology of National Socialism. Review of: Hitler’s People: The Faces of the Third Reich / Richard J. Evans.
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Robert Barsky. MIT Press Reader, 07/03/2024: How George Orwell Paved Noam Chomsky’s Path to Anarchism. "Robert Barsky examines the profound impact of Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia" on Noam Chomsky's early embrace of left-libertarian and anarchist ideologies."
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Lincoln Michel. Counter Craft, 08/21/2024: What Lasts and (Mostly) Doesn't Last: On the books that are remembered, rejected, repudiated, and rediscovered.
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Samuel Rubenstein. The Critic (UK), 08/23/2024: Digging the Holy Land’s past: Our modern controversies about Jerusalem have ancient and medieval roots. Review of: Jerusalem Through the Ages: From Its Beginnings to the Crusades / Jodi Magness.
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Michael Ledwidge. crimereads.com, 08/23/2024: An Ode to Charles Willeford.
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Jeffrey Fleishman. LA Times, 08/22/2024: Hell hath no fury like a librarian scorned in the book banning wars. On That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America / Amanda Jones.
Christopher Myers. WaPo, 08/27/2024: Threatened for protesting book bans, this librarian won’t keep quiet. Another review of That Librarian: the fight against book banning in American / Amanda Jones.
Christopher Myers. WaPo, 08/27/2024: Threatened for protesting book bans, this librarian won’t keep quiet. Another review of That Librarian: the fight against book banning in American / Amanda Jones.
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Laura Miller. NYT, 08/23/2024: The Children’s Fantasy Novel That Flew Off Britain’s Shelves. Review of: IMPOSSIBLE CREATURES / Katherine Rundell. Illustrated by Ashley Mackenzie.
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Niall Ferguson & Jacob Howland. Atlantic, 08/24/2024: What the Freshman Class Needs to Read.
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Francine Prose. WaPo, 08/24/2024: As this millennium began, books reflected tragedies and anxieties. Temporarily unlocked.
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Zahra Fatima. BBC (via X), 08/24/2024: Italian burglar caught after sitting down with book.
"A would-be burglar in Rome was caught after stopping to read a book on Greek mythology in the middle of a robbery.
"The 38-year-old reportedly gained access to a flat in the Italian capital's Prati district via the balcony but became distracted after picking up a book about Homer's Iliad on a bedside table."
"A would-be burglar in Rome was caught after stopping to read a book on Greek mythology in the middle of a robbery.
"The 38-year-old reportedly gained access to a flat in the Italian capital's Prati district via the balcony but became distracted after picking up a book about Homer's Iliad on a bedside table."
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Alexandra Alter & Elizabeth Harris. NYT, 08/21/2024: ‘A Lot of Us Are Gone’: How the Push to Diversify Publishing Fell Short.
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Hettie Jones, 1934-2024
Penelope Green. NYT, 08/24/2024: Hettie Jones, Poet and Author Who Nurtured the Beats, Dies at 90. (Temporarily unlocked)
"She and her husband, LeRoi Jones, published works by their literary friends. After he left her and became Amiri Baraka, she found her own voice.
"In 1958, the couple started a literary magazine called Yūgen — a Japanese word that, the table of contents noted, translated to “elegance, beauty, grace, transcendence of these things, and also nothing at all.” Beat heroes like Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Diane di Prima and Jack Kerouac were among the contributors, along with Frank O’Hara and Robert Creeley.
"Even though her mother and father had disowned her for dating Mr. Jones (his parents had welcomed her from the get-go), “I was the happiest and best-loved woman in New York,” she wrote of her wedding day in 1958, “when I traded Hettie Cohen for Hettie Jones.”
"“Her default setting was joy,” her daughter Lisa Jones Brown said. “She was the patron saint of lost children of all persuasions. Our favorite nickname for her was ‘Mother of the Masses.’”
"Ms. Jones was the author of 20 books, many of them works for children and young adults that focused on Black and Native American themes, among them “Big Star Fallin’ Mama: Five Women in Black Music” (1974), which included the biographies of Ma Rainey, Mahalia Jackson and Billie Holiday."
Author of, among others: How I Became Hettie Jones
Her LT page: https://www.librarything.com/author/joneshettie
Penelope Green. NYT, 08/24/2024: Hettie Jones, Poet and Author Who Nurtured the Beats, Dies at 90. (Temporarily unlocked)
"She and her husband, LeRoi Jones, published works by their literary friends. After he left her and became Amiri Baraka, she found her own voice.
"In 1958, the couple started a literary magazine called Yūgen — a Japanese word that, the table of contents noted, translated to “elegance, beauty, grace, transcendence of these things, and also nothing at all.” Beat heroes like Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Diane di Prima and Jack Kerouac were among the contributors, along with Frank O’Hara and Robert Creeley.
"Even though her mother and father had disowned her for dating Mr. Jones (his parents had welcomed her from the get-go), “I was the happiest and best-loved woman in New York,” she wrote of her wedding day in 1958, “when I traded Hettie Cohen for Hettie Jones.”
"“Her default setting was joy,” her daughter Lisa Jones Brown said. “She was the patron saint of lost children of all persuasions. Our favorite nickname for her was ‘Mother of the Masses.’”
"Ms. Jones was the author of 20 books, many of them works for children and young adults that focused on Black and Native American themes, among them “Big Star Fallin’ Mama: Five Women in Black Music” (1974), which included the biographies of Ma Rainey, Mahalia Jackson and Billie Holiday."
Author of, among others: How I Became Hettie Jones
Her LT page: https://www.librarything.com/author/joneshettie
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Margaret Renkl. NYT, 08/26/2024: My Bookshelf, Myself. Temporarily unlocked.
Joshua Barone. NYT, 08/26/2024: Love Them or Hate Them, This Couple Reign in Russian Literature. "For Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, translating together extended naturally from their relationship as husband and wife. Now, it is their life’s work." Temporarily unlocked.
Joshua Barone. NYT, 08/26/2024: Love Them or Hate Them, This Couple Reign in Russian Literature. "For Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, translating together extended naturally from their relationship as husband and wife. Now, it is their life’s work." Temporarily unlocked.
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Recent books in The New Yorker:
Rebecca Mead. 08/26/2024: The Forgotten History of Sex in America. Review of: Fierce Desires: A New History of Sex and Sexuality in America / Rebecca L. Davis.
Kathryn Schulz. 08/26/2024: Studying Stones Can Rock Your World. Review of: Turning to Stone: Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks / Marcia Bjornerud.
Hanna Goldfield. 08/26/2024: Bonnie Slotnick, the Downtown Food-History Savant. "In the forty-eight years that she’s lived in the West Village, the owner of the iconic cookbook shop has never ordered delivery."
Rebecca Mead. 08/26/2024: The Forgotten History of Sex in America. Review of: Fierce Desires: A New History of Sex and Sexuality in America / Rebecca L. Davis.
Kathryn Schulz. 08/26/2024: Studying Stones Can Rock Your World. Review of: Turning to Stone: Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks / Marcia Bjornerud.
Hanna Goldfield. 08/26/2024: Bonnie Slotnick, the Downtown Food-History Savant. "In the forty-eight years that she’s lived in the West Village, the owner of the iconic cookbook shop has never ordered delivery."
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Lily Meyer. Atlantic, 08/27/2024: When Victimhood Takes a Bad-Faith Turn. Review of: Wronged: The Weaponization of Victimhood / Lilie Chouliaraki.
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Joshua Rothman. New Yorker, 08/27/2024: What Does It Really Mean to Learn? Review of: The Importance of Being Educable: A New Theory of Human Uniqueness / Leslie Valiant, with some thoughts on reading Middlemarch when young.
Joshua Rothman. New Yorker, 08/20/2024: Should We Think of Our Children as Strangers? Review of: Begetting: What Does It Mean to Create a Child? / Mara van der Lugt, with additional reference to Family Values: The Ethics of Parent-Child Relationships / Harry Brighouse & Adam Swift (2016).
Joshua Rothman. New Yorker, 08/20/2024: Should We Think of Our Children as Strangers? Review of: Begetting: What Does It Mean to Create a Child? / Mara van der Lugt, with additional reference to Family Values: The Ethics of Parent-Child Relationships / Harry Brighouse & Adam Swift (2016).
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fivebooks.com. 08/28/2024: Classic Chinese Novels. "During China's Ming and Qing dynasties, a number of novels were written which are regarded as classics of Chinese literature. Several of them have been recommended on Five Books, including one modern retelling."
Three Kingdoms / Luo Guanzhong & Moss Roberts (translator)
The Water Margin / Shi Naian & translated by J M Jackson
The Water Outlaws / S L Huang ("The Water Outlaws is a modern retelling of the Chinese classic, The Water Margin.")
Monkey King: Journey to the West / Wu Cheng'en and Julia Lovell (translator)
The Story of the Stone (also called Dream of the Red Chamber) / Cao Xueqin (ref the Penguin edition)
Three Kingdoms / Luo Guanzhong & Moss Roberts (translator)
The Water Margin / Shi Naian & translated by J M Jackson
The Water Outlaws / S L Huang ("The Water Outlaws is a modern retelling of the Chinese classic, The Water Margin.")
Monkey King: Journey to the West / Wu Cheng'en and Julia Lovell (translator)
The Story of the Stone (also called Dream of the Red Chamber) / Cao Xueqin (ref the Penguin edition)
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John Self. Guardian, 08/30/2024: The best translated fiction – review roundup.
Mammoth / Eva Baltasar; trans. Eva Sanches.
Dear Dickhead / Virginie Despentes; trans. Frank Wynne.
The Book of Disappearance / Ibtisam Azem; trans. Sinan Antoon
Dead-End Memories / Banana Yoshimoto; trans. Asa Yoneda.
Mammoth / Eva Baltasar; trans. Eva Sanches.
Dear Dickhead / Virginie Despentes; trans. Frank Wynne.
The Book of Disappearance / Ibtisam Azem; trans. Sinan Antoon
Dead-End Memories / Banana Yoshimoto; trans. Asa Yoneda.
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Sophia Nguyen. WaPo, 08/30/2024: Fewer new books this fall? Blame politics. "Conventional wisdom has long held that it’s best to avoid releasing new books during the fall of a presidential election."
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Richard J. Evans, interviewer Isaac Chotiner. New Yorker, 08/29/2024: The Inner Lives of the Nazis. Evans talks about his new book Hitler's People: The Faces of the Third Reich.
Somewhat amazed to learn Chotiner read the entire Evans trilogy in 2016. I'm a slow reader, for sure.
Somewhat amazed to learn Chotiner read the entire Evans trilogy in 2016. I'm a slow reader, for sure.
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Leonard Riggio, 1941-2024
Penelope Green. NYT, 08/30/2024: Leonard Riggio, 83, Dies; Founded Barnes & Noble and Upended Publishing. "He pioneered the bookstore-as-superstore, a retail behemoth that dominated the industry before Amazon overtook it with its online reach."
Penelope Green. NYT, 08/30/2024: Leonard Riggio, 83, Dies; Founded Barnes & Noble and Upended Publishing. "He pioneered the bookstore-as-superstore, a retail behemoth that dominated the industry before Amazon overtook it with its online reach."
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Allen Stratton. Quillette, 09/01/2024: Monstrous Things. "Dostoevsky, Alice Munro, and the nature of fiction—what does our inability to forgive do to our ability to confess?"
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NYRB online 09/19/2024
Literature & Language
Anahid Nersessian. The Secret AgentThe Secret Agent. Review of Creation Lake / Rachel Kushner. "Rachel Kushner’s fourth novel tells the story of a spy-for-hire who infiltrates the ranks of a radical French commune."
Laura Marsh. Not So Bad Guys. Review of: Godwin / Joseph O’Neill. ("a workplace drama that also manages to animate the forces that are fracturing our politics.")
Charlie Lee. Between a Joke & a Prophecy. Review of: Same Bed Different Dreams / Ed Park.
Marina Warner. Torrents of Magpies, Spheres of Hope. (Essay: "Throughout Rikki Ducornet’s prolific writing career, she has adhered to a Surrealist commitment to dream knowledge as well as a belief in literature’s ability to confront all of experience.")
Ian Frazier. Can We Talk! Review of: Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York / Ross Perlin.
Elaine Blair. Satire in a Skittish Time. Review of: The Book of Ayn / Lexi Freiman. ("a canceled writer never quite makes the case against the imperatives of cultural sensitivity.")
Rumaan Alam. Monsters Real & Imaginary. Review of: Lone Women / Victor LaValle. "In a novel that fuses horror with historical fiction, Victor LaValle explores the lives of African American women who went west around the turn of the twentieth century."
Lola Seaton. Major Details. Review of: Ordinary Human Failings / Megan Nolan.
Arts
Andrew Katzenstein. Fools in Love. Review of: Hollywood Screwball Comedy, 1934–1945: Sex, Love, and Democratic Ideals / Grégoire Halbout, translated from the French by Aliza Krefetz -- Becoming Nick and Nora: The Thin Man and the Films of William Powell and Myrna Loy / Rob Kozlowski -- Crooked, But Never Common: The Films of Preston Sturges / Stuart Klawans.
Jed Perl. Succumbing to Spectacle. "During the last half-century, artists, curators, and scholars have been increasingly preoccupied with the idea of spectacle and with how to embrace, critique, or co-opt the power of work that envelops and overwhelms the viewer." Review of: Jenny Holzer: Light Line, an exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City, May 17–September 29, 2024 -- Tricks of the Light: Essays on Art and Spectacle / Jonathan Crary -- The Avant-Gardists: Artists in Revolt in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, 1917–1935 / Sjeng Scheijen.
Science & Technology
Jenny Uglow. Worms’ Work. Review of: Silk: A World History / Aarathi Prasad.
Law
David Shulman. An ‘Unlawful Presence.’ (Essay: "The International Court of Justice has ruled that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is illegal, yet this will do little to reduce the settlers’ savage violence against Palestinians or force Israelis to become conscious of it.")
Jed S. Rakoff. The Most Conservative Branch. Review of: Reading the Constitution: Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism / Stephen Breyer.
Regina Marler. Culpability and the Culture. Review of: 1974: A Personal History / Francine Prose. "In Francine Prose’s memoir 1974, she recounts a brief, intense relationship with one of the men behind the leak of the Pentagon Papers."
Claudio Lomnitz. Mexico: Anatomy of a Mass Murder. Review of: San Fernando, Última Parada: Viaje al crimen autorizado en Tamaulipas = San Fernando, Last Stop: A Journey Through Organized Crime in Tamaulipas / Marcela Turati.
William Neuman. Chavismo’s Chokehold. (Article: "The party of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro maintains a strong hold on state institutions, but it has lost the people’s mandate. Will there be a transfer of power to the opposition candidate, Edmundo González—the true victor of this summer’s election?")
Colm Tóibín. Haunted by Fiction. Review of: A Thread of Violence: A Story of Truth, Invention, and Murder / Mark O’Connell.
History, Politics, & Society
Lynn Hunt. In Search of Steady Reform. Review of: Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present / Fareed Zakaria.
Ruth Franklin. Writing Out of Annihilation. Review of: Warsaw Testament / Rokhl Auerbach, translated from the Yiddish by Samuel Kassow. ("In the Warsaw Ghetto, the journalist Rokhl Auerbach risked her life to capture the stories of the Jewish community and, by writing about the people she knew, memorialized an entire lost world.")
Charlie Savage. A Terrible Mistake. Review of: The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the CIA, and the Origins of America’s Invasion of Iraq / Steve Coll. ("the long history of confusions, misconceptions, and miscalculations in the relationship between the US and Iraq, from Saddam Hussein’s rise to power in 1979 to the the American invasion in 2003.")
Ben Tarnoff. Venture-Backed Trumpism. (Article: "Why have right-wing ideas found such an eager audience among tech elites during Biden’s presidency?")
Fintan O'Toole. Kamala’s Moment. (Article: "Kamala Harris’s campaign asks: Who is a normal American now?")
Some callback pieces from late August:
J.W. McCormack. 08/25/2024: ‘An Ass-Backward Sherlock Holmes.’ "Over seven seasons on NBC, Columbo put a charming, shambolic gloss on the crime show. Now it has a new generation of imitators."
David Levi Strauss. 08/24/2024: Three Kinds of Sun. (Essay: "I never saw my father as comfortable and relaxed as when he was holding a gun.")
Fintan O'Toole. 08/27/2024: Fear and Joy in Chicago (Article: "The excitement that radiated through the Democratic National Convention was the other side of what had until recently been a deep despair.")
Victoria Baena. 08/22/2024: Pitiless, Restless Brecht. (Essay: "A recent show of Bertolt Brecht’s collages and ephemera suggested that he viewed all his work as forever in progress.")
Literature & Language
Anahid Nersessian. The Secret AgentThe Secret Agent. Review of Creation Lake / Rachel Kushner. "Rachel Kushner’s fourth novel tells the story of a spy-for-hire who infiltrates the ranks of a radical French commune."
Laura Marsh. Not So Bad Guys. Review of: Godwin / Joseph O’Neill. ("a workplace drama that also manages to animate the forces that are fracturing our politics.")
Charlie Lee. Between a Joke & a Prophecy. Review of: Same Bed Different Dreams / Ed Park.
Marina Warner. Torrents of Magpies, Spheres of Hope. (Essay: "Throughout Rikki Ducornet’s prolific writing career, she has adhered to a Surrealist commitment to dream knowledge as well as a belief in literature’s ability to confront all of experience.")
Ian Frazier. Can We Talk! Review of: Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York / Ross Perlin.
Elaine Blair. Satire in a Skittish Time. Review of: The Book of Ayn / Lexi Freiman. ("a canceled writer never quite makes the case against the imperatives of cultural sensitivity.")
Rumaan Alam. Monsters Real & Imaginary. Review of: Lone Women / Victor LaValle. "In a novel that fuses horror with historical fiction, Victor LaValle explores the lives of African American women who went west around the turn of the twentieth century."
Lola Seaton. Major Details. Review of: Ordinary Human Failings / Megan Nolan.
Arts
Andrew Katzenstein. Fools in Love. Review of: Hollywood Screwball Comedy, 1934–1945: Sex, Love, and Democratic Ideals / Grégoire Halbout, translated from the French by Aliza Krefetz -- Becoming Nick and Nora: The Thin Man and the Films of William Powell and Myrna Loy / Rob Kozlowski -- Crooked, But Never Common: The Films of Preston Sturges / Stuart Klawans.
Jed Perl. Succumbing to Spectacle. "During the last half-century, artists, curators, and scholars have been increasingly preoccupied with the idea of spectacle and with how to embrace, critique, or co-opt the power of work that envelops and overwhelms the viewer." Review of: Jenny Holzer: Light Line, an exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City, May 17–September 29, 2024 -- Tricks of the Light: Essays on Art and Spectacle / Jonathan Crary -- The Avant-Gardists: Artists in Revolt in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, 1917–1935 / Sjeng Scheijen.
Science & Technology
Jenny Uglow. Worms’ Work. Review of: Silk: A World History / Aarathi Prasad.
Law
David Shulman. An ‘Unlawful Presence.’ (Essay: "The International Court of Justice has ruled that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is illegal, yet this will do little to reduce the settlers’ savage violence against Palestinians or force Israelis to become conscious of it.")
Jed S. Rakoff. The Most Conservative Branch. Review of: Reading the Constitution: Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism / Stephen Breyer.
Regina Marler. Culpability and the Culture. Review of: 1974: A Personal History / Francine Prose. "In Francine Prose’s memoir 1974, she recounts a brief, intense relationship with one of the men behind the leak of the Pentagon Papers."
Claudio Lomnitz. Mexico: Anatomy of a Mass Murder. Review of: San Fernando, Última Parada: Viaje al crimen autorizado en Tamaulipas = San Fernando, Last Stop: A Journey Through Organized Crime in Tamaulipas / Marcela Turati.
William Neuman. Chavismo’s Chokehold. (Article: "The party of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro maintains a strong hold on state institutions, but it has lost the people’s mandate. Will there be a transfer of power to the opposition candidate, Edmundo González—the true victor of this summer’s election?")
Colm Tóibín. Haunted by Fiction. Review of: A Thread of Violence: A Story of Truth, Invention, and Murder / Mark O’Connell.
History, Politics, & Society
Lynn Hunt. In Search of Steady Reform. Review of: Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present / Fareed Zakaria.
Ruth Franklin. Writing Out of Annihilation. Review of: Warsaw Testament / Rokhl Auerbach, translated from the Yiddish by Samuel Kassow. ("In the Warsaw Ghetto, the journalist Rokhl Auerbach risked her life to capture the stories of the Jewish community and, by writing about the people she knew, memorialized an entire lost world.")
Charlie Savage. A Terrible Mistake. Review of: The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the CIA, and the Origins of America’s Invasion of Iraq / Steve Coll. ("the long history of confusions, misconceptions, and miscalculations in the relationship between the US and Iraq, from Saddam Hussein’s rise to power in 1979 to the the American invasion in 2003.")
Ben Tarnoff. Venture-Backed Trumpism. (Article: "Why have right-wing ideas found such an eager audience among tech elites during Biden’s presidency?")
Fintan O'Toole. Kamala’s Moment. (Article: "Kamala Harris’s campaign asks: Who is a normal American now?")
Some callback pieces from late August:
J.W. McCormack. 08/25/2024: ‘An Ass-Backward Sherlock Holmes.’ "Over seven seasons on NBC, Columbo put a charming, shambolic gloss on the crime show. Now it has a new generation of imitators."
David Levi Strauss. 08/24/2024: Three Kinds of Sun. (Essay: "I never saw my father as comfortable and relaxed as when he was holding a gun.")
Fintan O'Toole. 08/27/2024: Fear and Joy in Chicago (Article: "The excitement that radiated through the Democratic National Convention was the other side of what had until recently been a deep despair.")
Victoria Baena. 08/22/2024: Pitiless, Restless Brecht. (Essay: "A recent show of Bertolt Brecht’s collages and ephemera suggested that he viewed all his work as forever in progress.")
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Cherith King. LARB, 09/01/2024: For the God of Love, for the Love of Florida. Review of: Florida / Lauren Goff (2018).
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Daniel M. Rothschild. Discourse, 08/30/2024: In Praise of Reference Books.
Personal faves? Mine of the moment, though I rarely consult them cause there's too much stuff streaming and Wikipedia: Encyclopedia of Philosophy -- Dictionary of the History of Ideas -- The American Cinema: directors and directions, 1929-1968 -- Oxford Companion to Christian Art and Architecture -- Makers of Modern Culture: a biographical dictionary -- Penguin Dictionary of Architecture and landscape architecture -- Roadfood and Goodfood -- The Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation
I have copies of Allan Bullock's 2 reference books I'm unable to find, to my frustration: 20th century culture: a biographical companion & The Norton Dictionary of Modern Thought; I seem to recall reading all through the former
Personal faves? Mine of the moment, though I rarely consult them cause there's too much stuff streaming and Wikipedia: Encyclopedia of Philosophy -- Dictionary of the History of Ideas -- The American Cinema: directors and directions, 1929-1968 -- Oxford Companion to Christian Art and Architecture -- Makers of Modern Culture: a biographical dictionary -- Penguin Dictionary of Architecture and landscape architecture -- Roadfood and Goodfood -- The Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation
I have copies of Allan Bullock's 2 reference books I'm unable to find, to my frustration: 20th century culture: a biographical companion & The Norton Dictionary of Modern Thought; I seem to recall reading all through the former
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Judith Thurman. New Yorker, 09/02/2024: The Supreme Contradictions of Simone Weil. On the occasion of the publication of Simone Weil: a life in letters / Robert Chevanier et al.
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Lily Meyer. Atlantic, 09/03/2024: Rachel Kushner’s Surprising Swerve. Review of Creation Lake.
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Alexandra Alter. NYT, 09/03/2024: From School Librarian to Activist: ‘The Hate Level and the Vitriol Is Unreal.’ "Amid a surge in book bans nationwide, the librarian Amanda Jones was targeted by vicious threats. So she decided to fight back." Temporarily unlocked.
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Joshua Rothman. New Yorker, 09/03/2024: How Natural Are We? Review of: Living on Earth: Forests, Corals, Consciousness, and the Making of the World / Peter Godfrey-Smith.
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TLS September 6, 2024|No. 6336
Featured
Seth Widden. Lover and hater: The complete works of Baudelaire, the first modern urban poet. Review of: Charles Baudelaire: ŒUVRES COMPLÈTES (Two volumes, 1,760pp and 1,792pp. Gallimard.)
Tony Klug. No strategy, no destination: Four conflicting perspectives on the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Review of: POLICY OF DECEIT: Britain and Palestine, 1914–1939 / Peter Shambrook -- LOBBYING FOR ZIONISM: On both sides of the Atlantic / Ilan Pappe -- ISRAELOPHOBIA: The newest version of the oldest hatred and what to do about it / Jake Wallis Simons -- WHAT DOES ISRAEL FEAR FROM PALESTINE? / Raja Shehadeh.
Bill Allan. Greek tragedies from an Egyptian tomb: Discovering a new Euripides papyrus. (Essay)
David Annand. The best United: David Peace’s harrowing reimagining of the 1958 Munich air crash. Review of: MUNICHS / David Peace. (novel)
Literature
Giles Foyden. Soulmate, saviour, murderer?: Lies, intrigue and male crisis in 1960s Léopoldville and London. Review of: GABRIEL’S MOON / William Boyd.
Keith Miller. The Golden Age: Salvador Dalí’s quietly erotic novel of French aristocrats in peril. Review of: HIDDEN FACES / Salvador Dalí; translated by Haakon Chevalier.
In Brief Review of: ON PURPOSE: Ten lessons on the meaning of life / Ben Hutchinson. (Hutchinson: "“ten precepts … capturing it in ten commandments, I am attempting to hold my vague humanist credo up to the light … to convey the power of literature to power our lives”)
In Brief Review of: HOW TO READ MIDDLE ENGLISH POETRY / Daniel Sawyer.
In Brief Review of: AMMA / Saraid de Silva ("novel follows three Sri Lankan women – the stunt double Annie, her mother, Sithara, and her grandmother Josephina – whose stories, taking us from 1950s Singapore to contemporary London and New Zealand, are relayed in alternating chapters that converge in a tight coda.")
Arts
Boyd Tonkin. Grace, ease and struggle: Four nineteenth-century female artists of the French avant-garde. Review of the exhibition WOMEN IMPRESSIONISTS, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, until October 6.
Hettie Judah. In the flesh: Lucian Freud’s daughter recalls their complex relationship. Review of: NAKED PORTRAIT: A memoir of Lucian Freud / Rose Boyt.
Ben Street. Faces being looked at: Nicholson Baker’s memoir of learning to draw and paint. Review of: FINDING A LIKENESS: How I got somewhat better at art / Nicholson Baker.
Armand D'Angour. Ancient airs: The ‘quest to recover lost sounds.’ Review of: SOUND TRACKS: Uncovering our musical past / Graeme Lawson.
Jim Keaveney. Smiley in the shadows: The first stage adaptation of a John le Carré novel. Review of John le Carré, THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, adapted by David Eldridge, Minerva Theatre, Chichester, until September 21.
Kieran Setiya. Learning how to die on stage: From philosophy to stand-up. (Essay)
In Brief Review of: HOW TO RUN AN INDIE LABEL / Alan McGee.
Natural History
Lucy Dallas. Creature of Heaven: An anecdotal history of dogs as companions. Review of: ISLE OF DOGS: My canine adventure through Britain / Clare Balding.
David Barrie. Rough and tumble: The evolutionary purpose of play in the animal kingdom. Review of: KINGDOM OF PLAY: What ball-bouncing octopuses, belly-flopping monkeys, and mud-sliding elephants reveal about life itself / David Toomey.
Modern History
Calder Walton. An unlikely high-wire act: The circus showman who became a top MI6 agent. Review of: THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE CIRCUS: The secret life of Cyril Bertram Mills / Christopher Andrew -- SEX, SPIES AND SCANDAL: The John Vassall affair / Alex Grant.
Richard Davenport-Hines. Their trade was secrecy: How the British state’s attempt to gag a former spy backfired. Review of: TO CATCH A SPY: How the Spycatcher affair brought MI5 in from the cold / Tim Tate.
Mary Fulbrook. Ordinary people: The Führer’s accomplices, high and low. Review of: HITLER’S PEOPLE: The faces of the Third Reich / Richard J. Evans.
Andrew Preston. Chill before Cold War: The Soviet dictator’s suspicions about his wartime allies. Review of: THE STALIN AFFAIR: The impossible alliance that won the war / Giles Milton.
Benjamin Nathans. Go west, comrade: The Soviet Union’s loss of fine minds and great literature. Review of: TAMIZDAT: Contraband Russian literature in the Cold War era / Yasha Klots -- DEFECTORS: How the illicit flight of Soviet citizens built the borders of the Cold War world / Erik R. Scott.
Julian Wright. Saving the city of light: How the liberation of Paris was claimed by many parties. Review of: PARIS ’44: The shame and the glory / Patrick Bishop.
In Brief Review of: DOMICIDE: Architecture, war and the destruction of home in Syria / Ammar Azzouz.
In Brief Review of: LIFE IN OUR HANDS / Pamela Bright. ("In the days following June 6, 1944, hard on the heels of the tanks and artillery, came the doctors, orderlies and nurses of the Casualty Clearing Stations, setting broken limbs, sewing up torn flesh. ... These, and so many other startling details, are recorded in a Territorial Army nursing sister’s memoir, first published in 1955, of working her way from Normandy to Potsdam.")
In Brief Review of: MY BATTLE OF HASTINGS: Chronicle of a year by the sea / Xiaolu Guo ("the third and final instalment in the author’s triptych of memoirs, following Once Upon a Time in the East (2017) and Radical: A life of my own (2023)")
Featured
Seth Widden. Lover and hater: The complete works of Baudelaire, the first modern urban poet. Review of: Charles Baudelaire: ŒUVRES COMPLÈTES (Two volumes, 1,760pp and 1,792pp. Gallimard.)
Tony Klug. No strategy, no destination: Four conflicting perspectives on the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Review of: POLICY OF DECEIT: Britain and Palestine, 1914–1939 / Peter Shambrook -- LOBBYING FOR ZIONISM: On both sides of the Atlantic / Ilan Pappe -- ISRAELOPHOBIA: The newest version of the oldest hatred and what to do about it / Jake Wallis Simons -- WHAT DOES ISRAEL FEAR FROM PALESTINE? / Raja Shehadeh.
Bill Allan. Greek tragedies from an Egyptian tomb: Discovering a new Euripides papyrus. (Essay)
David Annand. The best United: David Peace’s harrowing reimagining of the 1958 Munich air crash. Review of: MUNICHS / David Peace. (novel)
Literature
Giles Foyden. Soulmate, saviour, murderer?: Lies, intrigue and male crisis in 1960s Léopoldville and London. Review of: GABRIEL’S MOON / William Boyd.
Keith Miller. The Golden Age: Salvador Dalí’s quietly erotic novel of French aristocrats in peril. Review of: HIDDEN FACES / Salvador Dalí; translated by Haakon Chevalier.
In Brief Review of: ON PURPOSE: Ten lessons on the meaning of life / Ben Hutchinson. (Hutchinson: "“ten precepts … capturing it in ten commandments, I am attempting to hold my vague humanist credo up to the light … to convey the power of literature to power our lives”)
In Brief Review of: HOW TO READ MIDDLE ENGLISH POETRY / Daniel Sawyer.
In Brief Review of: AMMA / Saraid de Silva ("novel follows three Sri Lankan women – the stunt double Annie, her mother, Sithara, and her grandmother Josephina – whose stories, taking us from 1950s Singapore to contemporary London and New Zealand, are relayed in alternating chapters that converge in a tight coda.")
Arts
Boyd Tonkin. Grace, ease and struggle: Four nineteenth-century female artists of the French avant-garde. Review of the exhibition WOMEN IMPRESSIONISTS, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, until October 6.
Hettie Judah. In the flesh: Lucian Freud’s daughter recalls their complex relationship. Review of: NAKED PORTRAIT: A memoir of Lucian Freud / Rose Boyt.
Ben Street. Faces being looked at: Nicholson Baker’s memoir of learning to draw and paint. Review of: FINDING A LIKENESS: How I got somewhat better at art / Nicholson Baker.
Armand D'Angour. Ancient airs: The ‘quest to recover lost sounds.’ Review of: SOUND TRACKS: Uncovering our musical past / Graeme Lawson.
Jim Keaveney. Smiley in the shadows: The first stage adaptation of a John le Carré novel. Review of John le Carré, THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, adapted by David Eldridge, Minerva Theatre, Chichester, until September 21.
Kieran Setiya. Learning how to die on stage: From philosophy to stand-up. (Essay)
In Brief Review of: HOW TO RUN AN INDIE LABEL / Alan McGee.
Natural History
Lucy Dallas. Creature of Heaven: An anecdotal history of dogs as companions. Review of: ISLE OF DOGS: My canine adventure through Britain / Clare Balding.
David Barrie. Rough and tumble: The evolutionary purpose of play in the animal kingdom. Review of: KINGDOM OF PLAY: What ball-bouncing octopuses, belly-flopping monkeys, and mud-sliding elephants reveal about life itself / David Toomey.
Modern History
Calder Walton. An unlikely high-wire act: The circus showman who became a top MI6 agent. Review of: THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE CIRCUS: The secret life of Cyril Bertram Mills / Christopher Andrew -- SEX, SPIES AND SCANDAL: The John Vassall affair / Alex Grant.
Richard Davenport-Hines. Their trade was secrecy: How the British state’s attempt to gag a former spy backfired. Review of: TO CATCH A SPY: How the Spycatcher affair brought MI5 in from the cold / Tim Tate.
Mary Fulbrook. Ordinary people: The Führer’s accomplices, high and low. Review of: HITLER’S PEOPLE: The faces of the Third Reich / Richard J. Evans.
Andrew Preston. Chill before Cold War: The Soviet dictator’s suspicions about his wartime allies. Review of: THE STALIN AFFAIR: The impossible alliance that won the war / Giles Milton.
Benjamin Nathans. Go west, comrade: The Soviet Union’s loss of fine minds and great literature. Review of: TAMIZDAT: Contraband Russian literature in the Cold War era / Yasha Klots -- DEFECTORS: How the illicit flight of Soviet citizens built the borders of the Cold War world / Erik R. Scott.
Julian Wright. Saving the city of light: How the liberation of Paris was claimed by many parties. Review of: PARIS ’44: The shame and the glory / Patrick Bishop.
In Brief Review of: DOMICIDE: Architecture, war and the destruction of home in Syria / Ammar Azzouz.
In Brief Review of: LIFE IN OUR HANDS / Pamela Bright. ("In the days following June 6, 1944, hard on the heels of the tanks and artillery, came the doctors, orderlies and nurses of the Casualty Clearing Stations, setting broken limbs, sewing up torn flesh. ... These, and so many other startling details, are recorded in a Territorial Army nursing sister’s memoir, first published in 1955, of working her way from Normandy to Potsdam.")
In Brief Review of: MY BATTLE OF HASTINGS: Chronicle of a year by the sea / Xiaolu Guo ("the third and final instalment in the author’s triptych of memoirs, following Once Upon a Time in the East (2017) and Radical: A life of my own (2023)")
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Samanta Schweblin and Translated by Megan McDowell. NYT, 09/04/2024: Read Your Way Through Buenos Aires. "Buenos Aires is a literary city: Its residents like to boast about its many bookstores and independent publishers. Samanta Schweblin suggest which books and authors to start with."
Samanta Schweblin’s Buenos Aires Reading List
The Slaughter Yard / Esteban Echeverría, translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni
The Aleph / Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Anthony Bonner
House Taken Over / Julio Cortázar, translated by Paul Blackburn
White Glory / Sara Gallardo, translated by Jessica Sequeira
Early This Morning / Pedro Mairal, translated by Kit Maude
Optic Nerve / María Gainza, translated by Thomas Bunstead
Ghosts / César Aira, translated by Chris Andrews
School for Patriots / Martín Kohan, translated by Nick Caistor
The Dangers of Smoking in Bed / Mariana Enriquez, translated by Megan McDowell
The Adventures of China Iron / Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, translated by Iona Macintyre and Fiona Mackintosh
The Wind that Lays Waste / Selva Almada, translated by Chris Andrews
A Question of Belonging / Hebe Uhart, translated by Anna Vilner
A Perfect Cemetery / Federico Falco, translated by Jennifer Croft
Bad Girls / Camila Sosa Villada, translated by Kit Maude
Zama and Nest in the Bones / Antonio di Benedetto, translated by Esther Allen and Martina Broner
The Witness / Juan José Saer, translated by Margaret Jull Costa
The Invention of Morel / Adolfo Bioy Casares, translated by Ruth L.S. Sims
Samanta Schweblin’s Buenos Aires Reading List
The Slaughter Yard / Esteban Echeverría, translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni
The Aleph / Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Anthony Bonner
House Taken Over / Julio Cortázar, translated by Paul Blackburn
White Glory / Sara Gallardo, translated by Jessica Sequeira
Early This Morning / Pedro Mairal, translated by Kit Maude
Optic Nerve / María Gainza, translated by Thomas Bunstead
Ghosts / César Aira, translated by Chris Andrews
School for Patriots / Martín Kohan, translated by Nick Caistor
The Dangers of Smoking in Bed / Mariana Enriquez, translated by Megan McDowell
The Adventures of China Iron / Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, translated by Iona Macintyre and Fiona Mackintosh
The Wind that Lays Waste / Selva Almada, translated by Chris Andrews
A Question of Belonging / Hebe Uhart, translated by Anna Vilner
A Perfect Cemetery / Federico Falco, translated by Jennifer Croft
Bad Girls / Camila Sosa Villada, translated by Kit Maude
Zama and Nest in the Bones / Antonio di Benedetto, translated by Esther Allen and Martina Broner
The Witness / Juan José Saer, translated by Margaret Jull Costa
The Invention of Morel / Adolfo Bioy Casares, translated by Ruth L.S. Sims
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New from the UK Literary Review in Sept:
Claire Harman. Handbags & Handcuffs Review of: The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective / Sara Lodge.
John Keay. Krishna Goes to Sea. Review of: The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World / William Dalrymple.
Philip Womack. Oh, the Places You’ll Go. Review of: The Haunted Wood: A History of Childhood Reading / Sam Leith.
Georgina Adam. Forging Ahead. Review of: Rogues and Scholars: Boom and Bust in the London Art Market, 1945–2000 / James Stourton.
Claire Harman. Handbags & Handcuffs Review of: The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective / Sara Lodge.
John Keay. Krishna Goes to Sea. Review of: The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World / William Dalrymple.
Philip Womack. Oh, the Places You’ll Go. Review of: The Haunted Wood: A History of Childhood Reading / Sam Leith.
Georgina Adam. Forging Ahead. Review of: Rogues and Scholars: Boom and Bust in the London Art Market, 1945–2000 / James Stourton.
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Katie Razall. BBC Culture, 09/05/2024: . Gillian Anderson: I was surprised by shame of sharing sexual fantasies. On her new book: Want: Sexual Fantasies by Anonymous / Gillian Anderson.
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Katy Waldman. New Yorker, 09/04/2024: The Temporary License of Literary Bratdom. Under review: Brat: A Novel / Gabriel Smith -- My First Book / Honor Levy -- Mood Swings: A Novel / Frankie Barnet.
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UK views on libraries:
Alfie Packham. Guardian, 09/06/2024: ‘A shell of the place it used to be’: readers on the importance of libraries - and their fragile future. "As sources of inspiration, havens from noise or social support service, council-run libraries have had a positive impact on lives all over the UK."
Alfie Packham. Guardian, 09/06/2024: ‘A shell of the place it used to be’: readers on the importance of libraries - and their fragile future. "As sources of inspiration, havens from noise or social support service, council-run libraries have had a positive impact on lives all over the UK."
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I'm w/Nabokov on this one
Oscar Schwartz. Paris Review, 09/04/2024: Against Rereading.
More Paris Review:
Aaron Shuster. 09/05/2024: Portrait of the Philosopher as a Young Dog: Kafka’s Philosophical Investigations.
Oscar Schwartz. Paris Review, 09/04/2024: Against Rereading.
More Paris Review:
Aaron Shuster. 09/05/2024: Portrait of the Philosopher as a Young Dog: Kafka’s Philosophical Investigations.
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Justin Germain. Works in Progress, 08/30/2024: Doom scrolling. "We may be close to rediscovering thousands of texts that had been lost for millennia. Their contents may reshape how we understand the Ancient World."
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Chelsea Leu. Atlantic, 09/05/2024: Seven Books That Demystify Human Behavior.
Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst / Robert M. Sapolsky
Middlemarch / George Eliot
Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness / William Styron
Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives / James H. Fowler, Nicholas A. Christakis
Milkman / Anna Burns
The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing / Merve Emre
Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age / Sherry Turkle
Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst / Robert M. Sapolsky
Middlemarch / George Eliot
Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness / William Styron
Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives / James H. Fowler, Nicholas A. Christakis
Milkman / Anna Burns
The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing / Merve Emre
Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age / Sherry Turkle
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Brittany Allen. LitHub, 09/06/2024: The Internet Archive lost their latest appeal. Here’s what that means for you.
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Culture clashin':
Brendan Chambers. Public Books, 09/04/2024: What’s a Theory to Do? Review of: Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late Capitalism / Anna Kornbluh -- The Grounds of the Novel / Daniel Wright.
Joanna Kenty. Public Books, 09/05/2024: Protest Pedagogy.
John Lloyd. Quillette, 08/06/2024: Totems and Taboos. Review of: Taboo: How Making Race Sacred Produced a Cultural Revolution / Eric Kaufmann.
Brendan Chambers. Public Books, 09/04/2024: What’s a Theory to Do? Review of: Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late Capitalism / Anna Kornbluh -- The Grounds of the Novel / Daniel Wright.
Joanna Kenty. Public Books, 09/05/2024: Protest Pedagogy.
John Lloyd. Quillette, 08/06/2024: Totems and Taboos. Review of: Taboo: How Making Race Sacred Produced a Cultural Revolution / Eric Kaufmann.
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Maggie Doherty. New Yorker, 09/02/2024: How Seamus Heaney Wrote His Way Through a War. Review of The Letters of Seamus Heaney / Christopher Reid, editor.
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Fara Dabhoiwala. Guardian, 09/07/2024: The Golden Road by William Dalyrmple review – when India ruled the world. Review of: The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World / William Dalrymple.
Dalrymple countering The Silk Roads: A New History of the World / Peter Frankopan. Who wins?
Dalrymple countering The Silk Roads: A New History of the World / Peter Frankopan. Who wins?
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Elizabeth Catte. Boston Review, 09/05/2024: Who’s to Blame for White Poverty? Review of: Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right / Arlie Russell Hochschild -- White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy / Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove -- White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy / Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman.
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Simon Evans. The Critic (UK), 09/08/2024: The kindest of ghosts. Review of: The Haunted Wood: A History of Childhood Reading / Sam Leith.
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Danielle Amir Jackson. Atlantic, 09/08/2024: The Bold New Biography That Gets Audre Lorde Right. Review of: Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde / Alexis Pauline Gumbs.
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Dan Morgenstern, 1929-2024
Barry Singer. NYT, 09/07/2024: Dan Morgenstern, Chronicler and Friend of Jazz, Dies at 94.
Author of, among others: Jazz People and Living with Jazz
His LT page: https://www.librarything.com/author/morgensterndan
Barry Singer. NYT, 09/07/2024: Dan Morgenstern, Chronicler and Friend of Jazz, Dies at 94.
Author of, among others: Jazz People and Living with Jazz
His LT page: https://www.librarything.com/author/morgensterndan
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Anton Hur. WaPo, 09/07/2024: Literature that expands the borders of what ‘international’ can mean. On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the National Book Awards, Hur considers books recognized & overlooked in the 2010s. Temporarily unlocked.
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fivebooks.com, 09/07/2024: The Best Politics Books of 2024: The Orwell Prize for Political Writing. "Comments are from the prize’s judging panel, which in 2024 was chaired by Peter Frankopan, and also included Christina Lamb, Lola Seaton, Rohan Silva and Sunder Katwala. This year’s winner was The Picnic by Matthew Longo."
A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: anatomy of a Jerusalem tragedy / Nathan Thrall
Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution / Cat Bohannon
Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad: A Family Memoir of Miraculous Survival / Daniel Finkelstein
Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence / Yaroslav Trofimov
Revolutionary Acts: love & brotherhood in Black Gay Britain / Jason Okundaye
The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America's Invasion of Iraq / Steve Coll
The Incarcerations: BK16 and the Search for Democracy in India / Alpa Shah
We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt's Lessons in Love and Disobedience / Lyndsey Stonebridge
The Picnic: A Dream of Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain / Matthew Longo
A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: anatomy of a Jerusalem tragedy / Nathan Thrall
Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution / Cat Bohannon
Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad: A Family Memoir of Miraculous Survival / Daniel Finkelstein
Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence / Yaroslav Trofimov
Revolutionary Acts: love & brotherhood in Black Gay Britain / Jason Okundaye
The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America's Invasion of Iraq / Steve Coll
The Incarcerations: BK16 and the Search for Democracy in India / Alpa Shah
We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt's Lessons in Love and Disobedience / Lyndsey Stonebridge
The Picnic: A Dream of Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain / Matthew Longo
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Daniel Immerwahr. New Yorker, 09/09/2024: What if Ronald Reagan’s Presidency Never Really Ended? Review of: Reagan: His Life and Legend / Max Boot.
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V.E. Schwab. Guardian, 09/06/2024: She convinces us that magic lives in our world’: VE Schwab on Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.
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Recent fiction reviews from The New Yorker:
Hua Hsu. 09/09/2024: Richard Powers on What We Do to the Earth and What It Does to Us. On his latest, Playground.
Parul Sehgal. 09/09/2024: An Anatomist of Pleasure Gives Voice to the Body in Pain. On Small Rain: a novel / Garth Greenwell.
Kathryn Schulz. 09/09/2024: Where Dragons Are Real and the Unicorns Are in Serious Trouble. Review of: Impossible Creatures / Katherine Rundell.
Also, a sort of review of the (non-fiction) literature on performative morality & evolutionary theory:
Manvir Singh. 09/09/2024: Are Your Morals Too Good to Be True?
Hua Hsu. 09/09/2024: Richard Powers on What We Do to the Earth and What It Does to Us. On his latest, Playground.
Parul Sehgal. 09/09/2024: An Anatomist of Pleasure Gives Voice to the Body in Pain. On Small Rain: a novel / Garth Greenwell.
Kathryn Schulz. 09/09/2024: Where Dragons Are Real and the Unicorns Are in Serious Trouble. Review of: Impossible Creatures / Katherine Rundell.
Also, a sort of review of the (non-fiction) literature on performative morality & evolutionary theory:
Manvir Singh. 09/09/2024: Are Your Morals Too Good to Be True?
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Len Gutkin. Yale Review, 09/09/2024: Is Blasphemy Illiberal?: Salman Rushdie’s thoroughly modern controversies.
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Natasha Wheatley. The Dial, 09/05/2024: Don’t Take Advice From a Habsburg. "Eduard Habsburg, with the help of his royal ancestors, wants to fix your marriage, your soul, and your politics." Reviewing The Habsburg Way: Seven Rules for Turbulent Times / Eduard Habsburg.
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TLS September 13, 2024|No. 6337
Featured
Sean O'Brien. A long, strange trip: Thom Gunn had the conviction that his poetry and life were ‘continuous with each other.’ Review of: THOM GUNN: A cool queer life / Michael Nott.
Nikhil Venkatesh. To be or not to be: Should we delay human extinction? Review of: WHAT WE OWE TO FUTURE PEOPLE: A contractualist account of intergenerational ethics / Elizabeth Finneron-Burns -- PHILOSOPHY FOR AN ENDING WORLD / Tim Mulgan.
Andrew Van Der Vlies. Blow, wind, blow!: Garth Greenwell’s antidote to our crisis of attention. Review of: SMALL RAIN / Garth Greenwell.
Tom Cook. True to type: The strange lives behind artistic innovation in lettering. Review of: ALBERTUS: The biography of a typeface / Simon Garfield -- BASKERVILLE: The biography of a typeface / Simon Garfield -- COMIC SANS: The biography of a typeface / Simon Garfield.
Literature
Kevin Brazil. Another country: American writers at a dark period in the history of masculinity. Review of: STRANGE RELATIONS: Masculinity, sexuality and art in mid-century America / Ralf Webb.
Craig Raine. Twain and the vernacular: The vividness of dialect. (Essay)
John Garth. Full of sound and Faërie: Poetry was an integral part of Tolkien’s fiction. Review of: THE COLLECTED POEMS OF J. R. R. TOLKIEN / Edited by Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond.
Houman Barekat. Inept caresses: Will Self inhabits the libidinal consciousness of his mother. Review of: ELAINE / Will Self.
Sarah Crown. Then they have a baby: A ‘beautifully bitter’ novel about marriage. Review of: LIARS / Sara Manguso.
In Brief Review of: SCRIPTING EMPIRE: Broadcasting, the BBC, and the Black Atlantic / James Procter.
In Brief Review of: TIME OF THE FLIES / Claudia Piñeiro; translated by Frances Riddle. (Novel: "ex-convict Inés’s reintegration into society following a fifteen-year stint in prison for killing her husband’s lover. Keen to make a new life for herself, she and her fellow former inmate Manca establish “FFF” (Fumigations, Females, Flies), an ethical pest-control company that doubles up as a detective agency offering help to women in distress.")
Arts
Graham Desler. The odd couple: Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler’s unfilmable film noir. Review of: FROM THE MOMENT THEY MET IT WAS MURDER: Double Indemnity and the rise of film noir / Alain Silver and James Ursini.
Keith Hopper. Big in pictures too: More than ninety of Somerset Maugham’s works were adapted for the screen. Review of: SOMERSET MAUGHAM AND THE CINEMA / Robert Calder -- WILDE IN THE DREAM FACTORY: Decadence and the American movies / Kate Hext -- PEGGY WEBLING AND THE STORY BEHIND FRANKENSTEIN: The making of a Hollywood monster / Bruce Graver and Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum.
Maria Margaronis. How to write love: Tom Stoppard’s exploration of intimacy, over forty years on. Review of Tom Stoppard's play THE REAL THING, Old Vic, London, until October 26.
Keith Miller. Building anew: Contemporary architecture in postcolonial states. Review of the exhibition TROPICAL MODERNISM: Architecture and independence, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, until September 22.
In Brief Review of: SARAH SIDDONS: The first celebrity actress / Jo Willett.
In Brief Review of: AN EXORCISM / Penny Slinger. ("first published in 1977, a psychosexual narrative in which she lays bare her own life and body to explore the female psyche. It is a photo-collage work, ironically subtitled “A photo romance”: a genre more usually associated with the girl-meets-boy photo-comic strips of yesterday’s popular girls’ magazines.")
Science & Technology
Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow. Atomic cocktails: The ‘lighter side’ of uranium, one of the heaviest elements. Review of: CHAIN REACTIONS: A hopeful history of uranium / LUCY JANE SANTOS.
Kathryn Harkup. Our life support: The everyday and unusual things that gases do. Review of: IT’S A GAS: The magnificent and elusive elements / Mark Miodownik.
History, Politics, & Culture
Mary Beard. The narrative of true myth: A history of ancient history-making. Review of: THE MUSE OF HISTORY: The ancient Greeks from the Enlightenment to the present / Oswyn Murray.
John Darwin. Empires strike back: The unfinished business of decolonization. Review of: THE END OF EMPIRES AND A WORLD REMADE: A global history of decolonization / Martin Thomas.
Harrison Stetler. Angry, not fascist?: A ground-up analysis of the rise of the French far right. Review of DES ÉLECTEURS ORDINAIRES / Félicien Faury.
In Brief Review of: THE GIANT ON THE SKYLINE / Clover Stroud. (Memoir: "The mother of five children, Stroud is trying to decide whether to follow her husband, Pete, to Washington, where he has started a new job, and leave the Ridgeway, which has been the backdrop to so much of her life’s joy, heartache and grief.")
In Brief Review of: WISE WOMEN: Myths and stories for midlife and beyond / Sharon Blackie and Angharad Wynne.
In Brief Review of: KENT STATE: An American tragedy / Brian VanDeMark.
Featured
Sean O'Brien. A long, strange trip: Thom Gunn had the conviction that his poetry and life were ‘continuous with each other.’ Review of: THOM GUNN: A cool queer life / Michael Nott.
Nikhil Venkatesh. To be or not to be: Should we delay human extinction? Review of: WHAT WE OWE TO FUTURE PEOPLE: A contractualist account of intergenerational ethics / Elizabeth Finneron-Burns -- PHILOSOPHY FOR AN ENDING WORLD / Tim Mulgan.
Andrew Van Der Vlies. Blow, wind, blow!: Garth Greenwell’s antidote to our crisis of attention. Review of: SMALL RAIN / Garth Greenwell.
Tom Cook. True to type: The strange lives behind artistic innovation in lettering. Review of: ALBERTUS: The biography of a typeface / Simon Garfield -- BASKERVILLE: The biography of a typeface / Simon Garfield -- COMIC SANS: The biography of a typeface / Simon Garfield.
Literature
Kevin Brazil. Another country: American writers at a dark period in the history of masculinity. Review of: STRANGE RELATIONS: Masculinity, sexuality and art in mid-century America / Ralf Webb.
Craig Raine. Twain and the vernacular: The vividness of dialect. (Essay)
John Garth. Full of sound and Faërie: Poetry was an integral part of Tolkien’s fiction. Review of: THE COLLECTED POEMS OF J. R. R. TOLKIEN / Edited by Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond.
Houman Barekat. Inept caresses: Will Self inhabits the libidinal consciousness of his mother. Review of: ELAINE / Will Self.
Sarah Crown. Then they have a baby: A ‘beautifully bitter’ novel about marriage. Review of: LIARS / Sara Manguso.
In Brief Review of: SCRIPTING EMPIRE: Broadcasting, the BBC, and the Black Atlantic / James Procter.
In Brief Review of: TIME OF THE FLIES / Claudia Piñeiro; translated by Frances Riddle. (Novel: "ex-convict Inés’s reintegration into society following a fifteen-year stint in prison for killing her husband’s lover. Keen to make a new life for herself, she and her fellow former inmate Manca establish “FFF” (Fumigations, Females, Flies), an ethical pest-control company that doubles up as a detective agency offering help to women in distress.")
Arts
Graham Desler. The odd couple: Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler’s unfilmable film noir. Review of: FROM THE MOMENT THEY MET IT WAS MURDER: Double Indemnity and the rise of film noir / Alain Silver and James Ursini.
Keith Hopper. Big in pictures too: More than ninety of Somerset Maugham’s works were adapted for the screen. Review of: SOMERSET MAUGHAM AND THE CINEMA / Robert Calder -- WILDE IN THE DREAM FACTORY: Decadence and the American movies / Kate Hext -- PEGGY WEBLING AND THE STORY BEHIND FRANKENSTEIN: The making of a Hollywood monster / Bruce Graver and Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum.
Maria Margaronis. How to write love: Tom Stoppard’s exploration of intimacy, over forty years on. Review of Tom Stoppard's play THE REAL THING, Old Vic, London, until October 26.
Keith Miller. Building anew: Contemporary architecture in postcolonial states. Review of the exhibition TROPICAL MODERNISM: Architecture and independence, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, until September 22.
In Brief Review of: SARAH SIDDONS: The first celebrity actress / Jo Willett.
In Brief Review of: AN EXORCISM / Penny Slinger. ("first published in 1977, a psychosexual narrative in which she lays bare her own life and body to explore the female psyche. It is a photo-collage work, ironically subtitled “A photo romance”: a genre more usually associated with the girl-meets-boy photo-comic strips of yesterday’s popular girls’ magazines.")
Science & Technology
Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow. Atomic cocktails: The ‘lighter side’ of uranium, one of the heaviest elements. Review of: CHAIN REACTIONS: A hopeful history of uranium / LUCY JANE SANTOS.
Kathryn Harkup. Our life support: The everyday and unusual things that gases do. Review of: IT’S A GAS: The magnificent and elusive elements / Mark Miodownik.
History, Politics, & Culture
Mary Beard. The narrative of true myth: A history of ancient history-making. Review of: THE MUSE OF HISTORY: The ancient Greeks from the Enlightenment to the present / Oswyn Murray.
John Darwin. Empires strike back: The unfinished business of decolonization. Review of: THE END OF EMPIRES AND A WORLD REMADE: A global history of decolonization / Martin Thomas.
Harrison Stetler. Angry, not fascist?: A ground-up analysis of the rise of the French far right. Review of DES ÉLECTEURS ORDINAIRES / Félicien Faury.
In Brief Review of: THE GIANT ON THE SKYLINE / Clover Stroud. (Memoir: "The mother of five children, Stroud is trying to decide whether to follow her husband, Pete, to Washington, where he has started a new job, and leave the Ridgeway, which has been the backdrop to so much of her life’s joy, heartache and grief.")
In Brief Review of: WISE WOMEN: Myths and stories for midlife and beyond / Sharon Blackie and Angharad Wynne.
In Brief Review of: KENT STATE: An American tragedy / Brian VanDeMark.
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Ellen O'Connell Whittet. LitHub, 09/11/2024: When Threats of Violence Come to University Libraries.
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Alexander Manshell. The Nation, 09/11/2024: How Historical Fiction Redefined the Literary Canon.
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The New Yorker has been spinning out the National Book Awards longlist over the past week -- I'm assuming this is it:
New Yorker, 09/13/2024: The 2024 National Book Awards Longlist.
Nonfiction
Hanif Abdurraqib, There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension
Rebecca Boyle, Our Moon: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are
Jason De León, Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling
Eliza Griswold, Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church
Kate Manne, Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia
Salman Rushdie, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder
Ernest Scheyder, The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives
Richard Slotkin, A Great Disorder: National Myth and the Battle for America
Deborah Jackson Taffa, Whiskey Tender
Vanessa Angélica Villarreal, Magical/Realism: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders
Translated Literature
Nasser Abu Srour, The Tale of a Wall: Reflections on the Meaning of Hope and Freedom Translated from the Arabic by Luke Leafgren
Bothayna Al-Essa, The Book Censor’s Library Translated from the Arabic by Sawad Hussain and Ranya Abdelrahman
Linnea Axelsson, Ædnan Translated from the Swedish by Saskia Vogel
Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume (Book I) Translated from the Danish by Barbara J. Haveland
Layla Martínez, Woodworm Translated from the Spanish by Sophie Hughes and Annie McDermott
Fiston Mwanza Mujila, The Villain’s Dance Translated from the French by Roland Glasser
Fernanda Trías, Pink Slime Translated from the Spanish by Heather Cleary
Fernando Vallejo, The Abyss Translated from the Spanish by Yvette Siegert
Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, Taiwan Travelogue Translated from the Mandarin Chinese by Lin King
Samar Yazbek, Where the Wind Calls Home Translated from the Arabic by Leri Price
Poetry
Anne Carson, Wrong Norma
Fady Joudah, ...: Poems
Dorianne Laux, Life on Earth: poems
Gregory Pardlo, Spectral Evidence: poems
Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Silver: poems
Octavio Quintanilla, The Book of Wounded Sparrows
m.s. RedCherries, mother
Diane Seuss, Modern Poetry: poems
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, Something About Living
Elizabeth Willis, Liontaming in America
Fiction
’Pemi Aguda, Ghostroots
Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!
Jessica Anthony, The Most
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, Catalina
Percival Everett, James
Miranda July, All Fours
Riverhead / Penguin Random House
Rachel Kushner, Creation Lake
Hisham Matar, My Friends
Sam Sax, Yr Dead
Tony Tulathimutte, Rejection
Young People's Literature
Olivia A. Cole, Ariel Crashes a Train
Violet Duncan, Buffalo Dreamer
Margarita Engle, Wild Dreamers
Josh Galarza, The Great Cool Ranch Dorito in the Sky
Erin Entrada Kelly, The First State of Being
Randy Ribay, Everything We Never Had
Shifa Saltagi Safadi, Kareem Between
Angela Shanté, The Unboxing of a Black Girl
Ali Terese, Free Period
Alicia D. Williams, Mid-Air
New Yorker, 09/13/2024: The 2024 National Book Awards Longlist.
Nonfiction
Hanif Abdurraqib, There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension
Rebecca Boyle, Our Moon: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are
Jason De León, Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling
Eliza Griswold, Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church
Kate Manne, Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia
Salman Rushdie, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder
Ernest Scheyder, The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives
Richard Slotkin, A Great Disorder: National Myth and the Battle for America
Deborah Jackson Taffa, Whiskey Tender
Vanessa Angélica Villarreal, Magical/Realism: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders
Translated Literature
Nasser Abu Srour, The Tale of a Wall: Reflections on the Meaning of Hope and Freedom Translated from the Arabic by Luke Leafgren
Bothayna Al-Essa, The Book Censor’s Library Translated from the Arabic by Sawad Hussain and Ranya Abdelrahman
Linnea Axelsson, Ædnan Translated from the Swedish by Saskia Vogel
Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume (Book I) Translated from the Danish by Barbara J. Haveland
Layla Martínez, Woodworm Translated from the Spanish by Sophie Hughes and Annie McDermott
Fiston Mwanza Mujila, The Villain’s Dance Translated from the French by Roland Glasser
Fernanda Trías, Pink Slime Translated from the Spanish by Heather Cleary
Fernando Vallejo, The Abyss Translated from the Spanish by Yvette Siegert
Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, Taiwan Travelogue Translated from the Mandarin Chinese by Lin King
Samar Yazbek, Where the Wind Calls Home Translated from the Arabic by Leri Price
Poetry
Anne Carson, Wrong Norma
Fady Joudah, ...: Poems
Dorianne Laux, Life on Earth: poems
Gregory Pardlo, Spectral Evidence: poems
Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Silver: poems
Octavio Quintanilla, The Book of Wounded Sparrows
m.s. RedCherries, mother
Diane Seuss, Modern Poetry: poems
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, Something About Living
Elizabeth Willis, Liontaming in America
Fiction
’Pemi Aguda, Ghostroots
Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!
Jessica Anthony, The Most
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, Catalina
Percival Everett, James
Miranda July, All Fours
Riverhead / Penguin Random House
Rachel Kushner, Creation Lake
Hisham Matar, My Friends
Sam Sax, Yr Dead
Tony Tulathimutte, Rejection
Young People's Literature
Olivia A. Cole, Ariel Crashes a Train
Violet Duncan, Buffalo Dreamer
Margarita Engle, Wild Dreamers
Josh Galarza, The Great Cool Ranch Dorito in the Sky
Erin Entrada Kelly, The First State of Being
Randy Ribay, Everything We Never Had
Shifa Saltagi Safadi, Kareem Between
Angela Shanté, The Unboxing of a Black Girl
Ali Terese, Free Period
Alicia D. Williams, Mid-Air
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Anna Ballan. Hedgehog Review, summer 2024: The Analyst and the Bard: Considering the concept of the second chance. Review of: Second Chances: Shakespeare and Freud / Stephen Greenblatt and Adam Phillips.
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Andrew DeCort. LARB, 09/16/2024: A Gospel of Violence. Review of: The Abiy Project: God, Power and War in the New Ethiopia / Tom Gardner.
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Recent New Yorker reviews:
Jackson Arn. 09/16/2024: The Anguish of Looking at a Monet. Review of: Monet: The Restless Vision / Jackie Wullschläger.
Laura Miller. 09/16/2024: Other People’s Money Can Drive You Mad. Review of: Entitlement: A Novel / Rumaan Alam.
Jackson Arn. 09/16/2024: The Anguish of Looking at a Monet. Review of: Monet: The Restless Vision / Jackie Wullschläger.
Laura Miller. 09/16/2024: Other People’s Money Can Drive You Mad. Review of: Entitlement: A Novel / Rumaan Alam.
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See also >203 featherbear:
Sam Tanenhaus. NYT, 09/16/2024: Why Has ‘The Power Broker’ Had Such a Long Life? Essay on The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York / Robert A. Caro.
Sam Tanenhaus. NYT, 09/16/2024: Why Has ‘The Power Broker’ Had Such a Long Life? Essay on The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York / Robert A. Caro.
164featherbear
Oops! see >167 featherbear:
TLS November 8, 2019|No. 6084
Featured
Michael Hofmann. Consciously verbal: The undervaluing of Les Murray. Review of: Les Murray: Collected Poems.
Turkey’s treatment of its minorities: Turkey in recent history, Prisons, Patron saint of PLR, etc. (This week's Letters to the Editor)
Andrea Scrimer. Slowly falling: Andrea Scrima recalls November 1989 in Berlin. (Essay)
Mick Herron. ‘Point me and I’ll march’: Re-reading John le Carré (1931–2020). (Essay)
Literature
Ian Thomson. The great clusterfuck: A tale of Russian intrigue in Britain’s mess. Review of: AGENT RUNNING IN THE FIELD / John le Carré.
Rebecca Liu. Necessary words: How we express what we want to express. Review of: CRISES OF THE SENTENCE / Jan Mieszkowski.
Sarah Lonsdale. Political correspondents: How authors became enmeshed in national struggles. Review of: COLD WARRIORS: Writers who waged the literary Cold War / Duncan White.
Vladimir Nabokov. Melting with tenderness: An interview with Bernard Pivot on Apostrophes. ("To mark the imminent publication of the French translation of Ada, Bernard Pivot interviewed Vladimir Nabokov for an episode of Apostrophes, the prime-time literary talk show on French television.")
Beejay Silcox. The uses of suffering: The Freudian family saga gripping Norway. Review of: WILL AND TESTAMENT / Vigdis Hjorth; translated by Charlotte Barslund.
Kate Webb. Profit’s monsters: Amitav Ghosh’s portrait of nature taking its course. Review of: GUN ISLAND / Amitav Ghosh.
Yelena Moskovich. There’s always Mama: Love at arm's reach. Review of: KLOTSVOG / Margarita Khemlin; translated by Lisa C. Hayden.
Jennifer Hodgson. Ask the penguin: ‘a dialogue in the void.’ Review of: ONE ANOTHER / Monique Schwitter; translated by Tess Lewis.
Evelyn Toynton. Champion of grief: Bluntly navigating widowhood at thirty-six. Review of: LET’S HOPE FOR THE BEST / Carolina Setterwall; translated by Elizabeth Clark Wessel.
Zuneerah Shah. More than a woman’s plight: Polyamory, intimacy and impotence. Review of: ONE PART WOMAN / Perumal Murugan; translated by Aniruddhan Vasudevan.
Kathryn Maris. Half-open door: Symmetry in life and death. Review of: LINES OFF / Hugo Williams.
Rory Waterman. Sick of sadness: Lyrics of the personal and political. Review of: THE TRADITION / Jericho Brown.
In Brief Poetry Reviews
In Brief Review of: SISSY / Ben Borek. (novel in verse?)
In Brief Review of: THE GIRL WHO FORGETS HOW TO WALK / Kate Davis.
In Brief Review of: BEGINNER’S LUCK / U. A. Fanthorpe; edited by R. V. Bailey.
In Brief Review of: SO MANY ROOMS / Laura Scott.
In Brief Review of: PROPHECY / Thomas McCarthy.
Arts
Jane Yager. Existential screams: DIY punk in the DDR. Review of: BURNING DOWN THE HAUS: Punk rock, revolution and the fall of the Berlin / Tim Mohr.
Richard Hamblyn. Flights of fancy: Victorian science and meteorological adventure. Review of Tom Harper's film The Aeronauts, Various cinemas, then on Amazon Prime from December.
Samuel Graydon. Language, big and old: Grief, memory and change in Ed Thomas’s new play. Review of Ed Thomas's play ON BEAR RIDGE, Royal Court Theatre, until November 23.
Rob Doyle. Multiple fronts on the culture war: Aspirational artforms of the East. Review of: NEW KINGS OF THE WORLD: Dispatches from Bollywood, dizi and K-pop / Fatima Bhutto.
Larry Wolff. Century of trauma: Poland’s cultural response to its bloody recent history. Review of: BEING POLAND: A new history of Polish literature and culture since 1918 / Tamara Trojanowska, Joanna Niżyńska and Przemysław Czapliński, with Agnieszka Polakowska, editors.
Donna Zuckerberg. Creamily stately: Wit, erudition and looking at modernity through an ancient prism. Review of: THE BAD BOY OF ATHENS: Classics from the Greeks to Game of Thrones / Daniel Mendelsohn.
Christina Riggs. Boy-king bling: The treasures of Tutankhamun, accompanied by myth, nostalgia and a consumer wonderland. Review of the exhibition TUTANKHAMUN, Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh Saatchi Gallery, until May 3, 2020.
History, Politics and Society
Malcolm Gaskill. For the unfallen: Remembering a survivor from the First World War. (Essay)
James McConnachie. Stirring emotional meat: Talking to neighbours about modernity. Review of: THE FUTURE STARTS HERE: Adventures in the twenty-first century / John Higgs.
Georgina Paul. Memory building: Managing the legacy of the Berlin Wall. Review of: AFTER THE BERLIN WALL: Memory and the making of the new Germany / Hope M. Harrison.
Marius Ivaškevičius. Beast from the East: A Lithuanian perspective on war in Europe. (Essay)
Lewis H. Siegelbaum. The rise of democracy: How nations asserted their own sovereignty in the early Cold War. Review of: STALIN AND THE FATE OF EUROPE: The postwar struggle for sovereignty / Norman M. Naimark.
Toby Vogel. Beginning of history: Changes at the end of the Cold War. Review of: POST WALL POST SQUARE: Rebuilding the world after 1989 / Kristina Spohr.
TLS November 8, 2019|No. 6084
Featured
Michael Hofmann. Consciously verbal: The undervaluing of Les Murray. Review of: Les Murray: Collected Poems.
Turkey’s treatment of its minorities: Turkey in recent history, Prisons, Patron saint of PLR, etc. (This week's Letters to the Editor)
Andrea Scrimer. Slowly falling: Andrea Scrima recalls November 1989 in Berlin. (Essay)
Mick Herron. ‘Point me and I’ll march’: Re-reading John le Carré (1931–2020). (Essay)
Literature
Ian Thomson. The great clusterfuck: A tale of Russian intrigue in Britain’s mess. Review of: AGENT RUNNING IN THE FIELD / John le Carré.
Rebecca Liu. Necessary words: How we express what we want to express. Review of: CRISES OF THE SENTENCE / Jan Mieszkowski.
Sarah Lonsdale. Political correspondents: How authors became enmeshed in national struggles. Review of: COLD WARRIORS: Writers who waged the literary Cold War / Duncan White.
Vladimir Nabokov. Melting with tenderness: An interview with Bernard Pivot on Apostrophes. ("To mark the imminent publication of the French translation of Ada, Bernard Pivot interviewed Vladimir Nabokov for an episode of Apostrophes, the prime-time literary talk show on French television.")
Beejay Silcox. The uses of suffering: The Freudian family saga gripping Norway. Review of: WILL AND TESTAMENT / Vigdis Hjorth; translated by Charlotte Barslund.
Kate Webb. Profit’s monsters: Amitav Ghosh’s portrait of nature taking its course. Review of: GUN ISLAND / Amitav Ghosh.
Yelena Moskovich. There’s always Mama: Love at arm's reach. Review of: KLOTSVOG / Margarita Khemlin; translated by Lisa C. Hayden.
Jennifer Hodgson. Ask the penguin: ‘a dialogue in the void.’ Review of: ONE ANOTHER / Monique Schwitter; translated by Tess Lewis.
Evelyn Toynton. Champion of grief: Bluntly navigating widowhood at thirty-six. Review of: LET’S HOPE FOR THE BEST / Carolina Setterwall; translated by Elizabeth Clark Wessel.
Zuneerah Shah. More than a woman’s plight: Polyamory, intimacy and impotence. Review of: ONE PART WOMAN / Perumal Murugan; translated by Aniruddhan Vasudevan.
Kathryn Maris. Half-open door: Symmetry in life and death. Review of: LINES OFF / Hugo Williams.
Rory Waterman. Sick of sadness: Lyrics of the personal and political. Review of: THE TRADITION / Jericho Brown.
In Brief Poetry Reviews
In Brief Review of: SISSY / Ben Borek. (novel in verse?)
In Brief Review of: THE GIRL WHO FORGETS HOW TO WALK / Kate Davis.
In Brief Review of: BEGINNER’S LUCK / U. A. Fanthorpe; edited by R. V. Bailey.
In Brief Review of: SO MANY ROOMS / Laura Scott.
In Brief Review of: PROPHECY / Thomas McCarthy.
Arts
Jane Yager. Existential screams: DIY punk in the DDR. Review of: BURNING DOWN THE HAUS: Punk rock, revolution and the fall of the Berlin / Tim Mohr.
Richard Hamblyn. Flights of fancy: Victorian science and meteorological adventure. Review of Tom Harper's film The Aeronauts, Various cinemas, then on Amazon Prime from December.
Samuel Graydon. Language, big and old: Grief, memory and change in Ed Thomas’s new play. Review of Ed Thomas's play ON BEAR RIDGE, Royal Court Theatre, until November 23.
Rob Doyle. Multiple fronts on the culture war: Aspirational artforms of the East. Review of: NEW KINGS OF THE WORLD: Dispatches from Bollywood, dizi and K-pop / Fatima Bhutto.
Larry Wolff. Century of trauma: Poland’s cultural response to its bloody recent history. Review of: BEING POLAND: A new history of Polish literature and culture since 1918 / Tamara Trojanowska, Joanna Niżyńska and Przemysław Czapliński, with Agnieszka Polakowska, editors.
Donna Zuckerberg. Creamily stately: Wit, erudition and looking at modernity through an ancient prism. Review of: THE BAD BOY OF ATHENS: Classics from the Greeks to Game of Thrones / Daniel Mendelsohn.
Christina Riggs. Boy-king bling: The treasures of Tutankhamun, accompanied by myth, nostalgia and a consumer wonderland. Review of the exhibition TUTANKHAMUN, Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh Saatchi Gallery, until May 3, 2020.
History, Politics and Society
Malcolm Gaskill. For the unfallen: Remembering a survivor from the First World War. (Essay)
James McConnachie. Stirring emotional meat: Talking to neighbours about modernity. Review of: THE FUTURE STARTS HERE: Adventures in the twenty-first century / John Higgs.
Georgina Paul. Memory building: Managing the legacy of the Berlin Wall. Review of: AFTER THE BERLIN WALL: Memory and the making of the new Germany / Hope M. Harrison.
Marius Ivaškevičius. Beast from the East: A Lithuanian perspective on war in Europe. (Essay)
Lewis H. Siegelbaum. The rise of democracy: How nations asserted their own sovereignty in the early Cold War. Review of: STALIN AND THE FATE OF EUROPE: The postwar struggle for sovereignty / Norman M. Naimark.
Toby Vogel. Beginning of history: Changes at the end of the Cold War. Review of: POST WALL POST SQUARE: Rebuilding the world after 1989 / Kristina Spohr.
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Vincent Chow. LARB, 09/18/2024: Explaining Chinese Food—and China. Review of: Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food / Fuchsia Dunlop -- China in Seven Banquets: A Flavorful History / Thomas David DuBois.
Yangyang Cheng. LARB, 09/20/2024: Tastes Like Home. Review of: Chop Fry Watch Learn: Fu Pei-mei and the Making of Modern Chinese Food / Michelle T. King -- Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant / Curtis Chin.
Yangyang Cheng. LARB, 09/20/2024: Tastes Like Home. Review of: Chop Fry Watch Learn: Fu Pei-mei and the Making of Modern Chinese Food / Michelle T. King -- Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant / Curtis Chin.
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Elizabeth Kaye Cook and Melanie Jennings. Persuasion, 09/13/2024: Scenes From The Literary Blacklist: Widespread censorship is killing writers’ careers before they begin.
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>164 featherbear: Apologies for the 2019 posting -- computer hiccup on my connection that I didn't notice -- here's what I hope is the correct TLS listing for the week (belatedly):
TLS September 20, 2024|No. 6338
Featured
Rozalind Dineen. Tempering the death drive: Rachel Kushner’s philosophical thriller about how to navigate a random, violent world. Review of: CREATION LAKE / Rachel Kushner.
Claire Lowdon. Everything led to women: Olga Tokarczuk’s subversive homage to The Magic Mountain Review of: THE EMPUSIUM: A health resort horror story / Olga Tokarczuk; translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones.
Sonia Solicari. Home is where the heart is: Philosophy has neglected the domestic sphere. Review of: PHILOSOPHY OF THE HOME: Domestic space and happiness / Emanuele Coccia; translated by Richard Dixon.
Ian Sansom. The case for pencils: A few points about writing implements. (Essay)
Literature
Jonathan Sawday. Pandaemonium: John Milton and the Defence of London. (Essay)
Edward Tyerman. Revolutionary road: The Soviet Union as an inspiration and a warning to Turkish writers. Review of: WRITING IN RED: Literature and revolution across Turkey and the Soviet Union / Nergis Ertürk.
Boris Dralyuk. From dark naked fields: Yiddish literature after the pogroms of 1919. Review of: AS THE DUST OF THE EARTH: The literature of abandonment in revolutionary Russia and Ukraine / Harriet Murav.
Nick Holdstock. Least worst options: An avenging angel offers false hope to a complacent town. Review of: HERSCHT 07769 / László Krasznahorkai; translated by Ottilie Mulzet.
In Brief Review of: SILKEN GAZELLES / Jokha Alharthi; translated by Marilyn Booth.
In Brief Review of: REGIONALISMS AND RESISTANCE IN THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY PORTUGUESE NOVEL: Spatialized ideologies / Peter Haysom-Rodríguez.
Arts
Muriel Zagha. Roots and bones: Daniel Kokotajlo’s new film: everyday horror in 1970s Yorkshire. Review of the film STARVE ACRE, Various cinemas.
Russell Williams. The ABC of BD: An exhibition exploring the world of comic art. Review of the catalog BANDE DESSINÉE, 1964–2024 / Thierry Groensteen, Lucas Hureau, Anne Lemonnier and Emmanuèle Payen, editors, & the exhibition of the same name, Centre Pompidou, Paris, until November 4.
In Brief Review of: PROUST'S SONGBOOK: Songs and their uses / Jennifer Rushworth.
In Brief Review of: NOT THAT I'M BITTER / Helen Lederer.
Philosophy
Andrew Wynn Owen. Thinking is habit forming: How science and our fluctuating human nature relate. Review of: THE ENTANGLEMENT: How art and philosophy make us what we are / Alva Noë. (subtitle of the review a typo? "art" rather than "science"?)
Science & Technology
Isaac Nowell. A paradise of apples: Symbol of luxury and abundance and forbidden fruit. Review of: THE APPLE: A delicious history / Sally Coulthard.
Henry Hitchings. Code red: The ‘haunting, alien logic’ of modern computing. Review of: DEVIL IN THE STACK: A coding odyssey / Andrew Smith.
In Brief Review of: TURNING TO STONE: Discovering the subtle wisdom of rocks / Marcie Bjornerud.
History, Politics, & Society
Llewelyn Morgan. Gift-giver: The statesman who bound Horace, Virgil and Propertius to the regime of Augustus. Review of: ROME’S PATRON: The lives and afterlives of Maecenas / Emily Gowers.
Krishan Kumar. The Lion and the Dragon: A history of Anglo-Chinese entanglement. Review of: THE GREAT REVERSAL: Britain, China and the 400-year contest for power / Kerry Brown.
Miranda France. Queen of dreams: Britain’s ‘curious’ relationship with royalty. Review of: A VOYAGE AROUND THE QUEEN / Craig Brown.
Libby Lewis. The rewards of failure: How US bankruptcy law and corporate rights undermine the free market. Review of: THE QUIET COUP: Neoliberalism and the looting of America / Mehrsa Baradaran -- UNJUST DEBTS: How our bankruptcy system makes America more unequal / Melissa B. Jacoby.
Roger Atwood. China’s global bid: The engineering and economics of a new world empire. Review of: THE BELT AND ROAD CITY: Geopolitics, urbanization, and China’s search for a new international order / Simon Curtis and Ian Klaus.
In Brief Review of: GOD'S OWN GENTLEWOMAN: The life of Margaret Paston / Diane Watt.
In Brief Review of: AGENT ZO: The untold story of fearless WW2 Resistance fighter Elżbieta Zawacka / Clare Mulley.
TLS September 20, 2024|No. 6338
Featured
Rozalind Dineen. Tempering the death drive: Rachel Kushner’s philosophical thriller about how to navigate a random, violent world. Review of: CREATION LAKE / Rachel Kushner.
Claire Lowdon. Everything led to women: Olga Tokarczuk’s subversive homage to The Magic Mountain Review of: THE EMPUSIUM: A health resort horror story / Olga Tokarczuk; translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones.
Sonia Solicari. Home is where the heart is: Philosophy has neglected the domestic sphere. Review of: PHILOSOPHY OF THE HOME: Domestic space and happiness / Emanuele Coccia; translated by Richard Dixon.
Ian Sansom. The case for pencils: A few points about writing implements. (Essay)
Literature
Jonathan Sawday. Pandaemonium: John Milton and the Defence of London. (Essay)
Edward Tyerman. Revolutionary road: The Soviet Union as an inspiration and a warning to Turkish writers. Review of: WRITING IN RED: Literature and revolution across Turkey and the Soviet Union / Nergis Ertürk.
Boris Dralyuk. From dark naked fields: Yiddish literature after the pogroms of 1919. Review of: AS THE DUST OF THE EARTH: The literature of abandonment in revolutionary Russia and Ukraine / Harriet Murav.
Nick Holdstock. Least worst options: An avenging angel offers false hope to a complacent town. Review of: HERSCHT 07769 / László Krasznahorkai; translated by Ottilie Mulzet.
In Brief Review of: SILKEN GAZELLES / Jokha Alharthi; translated by Marilyn Booth.
In Brief Review of: REGIONALISMS AND RESISTANCE IN THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY PORTUGUESE NOVEL: Spatialized ideologies / Peter Haysom-Rodríguez.
Arts
Muriel Zagha. Roots and bones: Daniel Kokotajlo’s new film: everyday horror in 1970s Yorkshire. Review of the film STARVE ACRE, Various cinemas.
Russell Williams. The ABC of BD: An exhibition exploring the world of comic art. Review of the catalog BANDE DESSINÉE, 1964–2024 / Thierry Groensteen, Lucas Hureau, Anne Lemonnier and Emmanuèle Payen, editors, & the exhibition of the same name, Centre Pompidou, Paris, until November 4.
In Brief Review of: PROUST'S SONGBOOK: Songs and their uses / Jennifer Rushworth.
In Brief Review of: NOT THAT I'M BITTER / Helen Lederer.
Philosophy
Andrew Wynn Owen. Thinking is habit forming: How science and our fluctuating human nature relate. Review of: THE ENTANGLEMENT: How art and philosophy make us what we are / Alva Noë. (subtitle of the review a typo? "art" rather than "science"?)
Science & Technology
Isaac Nowell. A paradise of apples: Symbol of luxury and abundance and forbidden fruit. Review of: THE APPLE: A delicious history / Sally Coulthard.
Henry Hitchings. Code red: The ‘haunting, alien logic’ of modern computing. Review of: DEVIL IN THE STACK: A coding odyssey / Andrew Smith.
In Brief Review of: TURNING TO STONE: Discovering the subtle wisdom of rocks / Marcie Bjornerud.
History, Politics, & Society
Llewelyn Morgan. Gift-giver: The statesman who bound Horace, Virgil and Propertius to the regime of Augustus. Review of: ROME’S PATRON: The lives and afterlives of Maecenas / Emily Gowers.
Krishan Kumar. The Lion and the Dragon: A history of Anglo-Chinese entanglement. Review of: THE GREAT REVERSAL: Britain, China and the 400-year contest for power / Kerry Brown.
Miranda France. Queen of dreams: Britain’s ‘curious’ relationship with royalty. Review of: A VOYAGE AROUND THE QUEEN / Craig Brown.
Libby Lewis. The rewards of failure: How US bankruptcy law and corporate rights undermine the free market. Review of: THE QUIET COUP: Neoliberalism and the looting of America / Mehrsa Baradaran -- UNJUST DEBTS: How our bankruptcy system makes America more unequal / Melissa B. Jacoby.
Roger Atwood. China’s global bid: The engineering and economics of a new world empire. Review of: THE BELT AND ROAD CITY: Geopolitics, urbanization, and China’s search for a new international order / Simon Curtis and Ian Klaus.
In Brief Review of: GOD'S OWN GENTLEWOMAN: The life of Margaret Paston / Diane Watt.
In Brief Review of: AGENT ZO: The untold story of fearless WW2 Resistance fighter Elżbieta Zawacka / Clare Mulley.
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Alexander Prescott-Couch. Aeon, 09/19/2024: The value of our values. "When Nietzsche used the tools of philology to explore the nature of morality, he became a ‘philosopher of the future.’"
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Paul Reitter. LARB, 09/19/2024: Why (Re)translation Matters. "the aesthetic and cultural value of “retranslating” classic texts."
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James Miller. NYT, 09/19/2024: Karl Marx, Weirder Than Ever. Essay regarding Capital / Karl Marx on the occasion of a new translation of v. 1 by Paul Reitter, Princeton University Press.
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Ron Charles. WaPo, 09/18/2024: Nicholas Sparks knows what he’s doing. Review of: Counting Miracles / Nicholas Sparks. "Last week, I read “Playground,” a timely, dazzlingly brilliant novel by Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Powers.
"This week, I read “Counting Miracles,” a new romance novel by Nicholas Sparks. That sequence tasted like chasing a fine dish of lobster thermidor with an Almond Joy candy bar from last Valentine’s Day.
"As a professional book reviewer, confessing how much I enjoyed “Counting Miracles” is almost more humiliation than I can bear, but what can I say? Sometimes you feel like a nut; sometimes you don’t."
"This week, I read “Counting Miracles,” a new romance novel by Nicholas Sparks. That sequence tasted like chasing a fine dish of lobster thermidor with an Almond Joy candy bar from last Valentine’s Day.
"As a professional book reviewer, confessing how much I enjoyed “Counting Miracles” is almost more humiliation than I can bear, but what can I say? Sometimes you feel like a nut; sometimes you don’t."
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David P. Goldman. Tablet, 09/18/2024: Right-Hegel Meets Left-Hegel: The misreading of Hegel that Alexandre Kojève shared with Leo Strauss. Appears to be about The End of History and the Last Man / Francis Fukuyama.
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Jessica Winter. New Yorker, 09/20/2024: The Banned Irish Writer Who Mined the Pain and Perks of Mid-Century Masculinity. A second look at The Pornographer / John McGahern, also referencing his once banned novel The Dark.
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LARB reviews:
Jane Marcellus. 09/20/2024: Why Don’t We Know Who Bombed Nashville? Review of: Dynamite Nashville: Unmasking the FBI, the KKK, and the Bombers Beyond Their Control / Betsy Phillips.
Lisa Locascio Nighthawk. 09/19/2024: Seeing in the Half-Light. Review of: Creation Lake / Rachel Kushner.
Jane Marcellus. 09/20/2024: Why Don’t We Know Who Bombed Nashville? Review of: Dynamite Nashville: Unmasking the FBI, the KKK, and the Bombers Beyond Their Control / Betsy Phillips.
Lisa Locascio Nighthawk. 09/19/2024: Seeing in the Half-Light. Review of: Creation Lake / Rachel Kushner.
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Kevin P. Donovan. Boston Review, 09/18/2024: The Politics of Price: How accounting protocols undermine public goals—from decolonization to climate action. Review of: Discounting the Future: The Ascendancy of a Political Technology / Liliana Doganova.
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"In honor of the 18th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style, we asked its most ardent fans to tell us what they think."
Literary Hub, 09/19/2024: “A Very Smart and Accessible Friend.” Why the Chicago Manual of Style Remains Essential. "Seven Writers and Editors Discuss What they Love Most About This Faithful Companion of Grammar Nerds Everywhere."
Literary Hub, 09/19/2024: “A Very Smart and Accessible Friend.” Why the Chicago Manual of Style Remains Essential. "Seven Writers and Editors Discuss What they Love Most About This Faithful Companion of Grammar Nerds Everywhere."
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Nelson DeMille, 1943-2024
Penelope Green. NYT, 09/20/2024: Nelson DeMille, Blockbuster Author Who Thrilled Millions, Dies at 81. "In best seller after best seller, world-weary investigators tackled military malfeasance and Russian spies, cracking jokes and beers to the delight of legions of devoted fans."
His LT page is https://www.librarything.com/author/demillenelson
(I have 4 of his books in my library per that page); the ones that ring a bell would be By the Rivers of Babylon & Cathedral (which I don't own; not to be confused with the David Macaulay construction-of book that I downloaded recently)
Penelope Green. NYT, 09/20/2024: Nelson DeMille, Blockbuster Author Who Thrilled Millions, Dies at 81. "In best seller after best seller, world-weary investigators tackled military malfeasance and Russian spies, cracking jokes and beers to the delight of legions of devoted fans."
His LT page is https://www.librarything.com/author/demillenelson
(I have 4 of his books in my library per that page); the ones that ring a bell would be By the Rivers of Babylon & Cathedral (which I don't own; not to be confused with the David Macaulay construction-of book that I downloaded recently)
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Simon Reader. Public Books, 09/19/2024: You Could Use the Exercise. Review of: The Virtual Sentence: A Book of Exercises / Kyle Booten, D. Graham Burnett, Brian Dillon, Jeff Dolven, Jan Mieszkowski, Sally O’Reilly, Mónica de la Torre, and Elena Vogman -- The Pocket Instructor: Writing: 50 Exercises for the College Classroom / Edited by Amanda Irwin Wilkins and Keith Shaw.
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Trevor Quirk. The Point, 08/07/2024: The Dome of Heaven: John Barth’s escape from nihilism.
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Julia Wertz. New Yorker, 09/18/2024: What Am I Reading These Days?
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Kasey Butcher Santana. SplitLiptheMag, 09/14/2024: Contraband Marginalia. The marginalia of prison library books.
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Keith Goldsmith. WaPo, 09/16/2024: Rereading, with trepidation, the fiction I loved long ago. On The Alexandria Quartet / Lawrence Durrell (which I'm currently reading for the first time, so I'll hold off reading the article until then).
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Erika Howsare. LARB, 09/22/2024: More than Human. Review of: Anima: A Wild Pastoral / Kapka Kassabova.
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Banned Books Week round-up:
Elizabeth Harris. NYT, 09/23/2024: New State Laws Are Fueling a Surge in Book Bans. "Two reports from advocacy groups show that book banning continues at higher rates than before the pandemic. Newly implemented state laws are impacting the numbers this year."
Gloria Oladipo. Guardian, 09/23/2024: US public schools banned 10,000 books in most recent academic year. "Survey by PEN America suggests bans nearly tripled nationwide from previous year’s figure."
Gina Gagliano. Comics Journal, 09/23/2024: The state of comics and censorship during Banned Books Week.
Niha Masih. WaPo, 09/24/2024: It’s Banned Books Week. LGBTQ+ content tops the most-challenged list. Temporarily unlocked.
Olivia Empson. Guardian, 09/27/2024: Activists ‘fight against censorship’ in the largest US book bans: prisons. "Tens of thousands of titles, from dictionaries to Leonardo, are restricted across prisons – and its impact is palpable."
Elizabeth Harris. NYT, 09/23/2024: New State Laws Are Fueling a Surge in Book Bans. "Two reports from advocacy groups show that book banning continues at higher rates than before the pandemic. Newly implemented state laws are impacting the numbers this year."
Gloria Oladipo. Guardian, 09/23/2024: US public schools banned 10,000 books in most recent academic year. "Survey by PEN America suggests bans nearly tripled nationwide from previous year’s figure."
Gina Gagliano. Comics Journal, 09/23/2024: The state of comics and censorship during Banned Books Week.
Niha Masih. WaPo, 09/24/2024: It’s Banned Books Week. LGBTQ+ content tops the most-challenged list. Temporarily unlocked.
Olivia Empson. Guardian, 09/27/2024: Activists ‘fight against censorship’ in the largest US book bans: prisons. "Tens of thousands of titles, from dictionaries to Leonardo, are restricted across prisons – and its impact is palpable."
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Fredric Jameson, 1934-2024
Clay Risen. NYT, 09/23/2024: Fredric Jameson, Critic Who Linked Literature to Capitalism, Dies at 90. "Among the world’s leading academic critics, he brought his analytical rigor to topics as diverse as German opera and sci-fi movies."
A.O. Scott. NYT, 09/23/2024: Fredric Jameson, Critic Who Linked Literature to Capitalism, Dies at 90.
Author of The Political Unconscious & Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, among many others
His LT page is at https://www.librarything.com/author/jamesonfredric
Jacob Brogan. WaPo, 09/25/2024: Fredric Jameson was a generous intellectual giant.
Caleb Smith. Yale Review, 10/03/2024: Fredric Jameson: The Marxist critic who remained open to mystery.
Clay Risen. NYT, 09/23/2024: Fredric Jameson, Critic Who Linked Literature to Capitalism, Dies at 90. "Among the world’s leading academic critics, he brought his analytical rigor to topics as diverse as German opera and sci-fi movies."
A.O. Scott. NYT, 09/23/2024: Fredric Jameson, Critic Who Linked Literature to Capitalism, Dies at 90.
Author of The Political Unconscious & Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, among many others
His LT page is at https://www.librarything.com/author/jamesonfredric
Jacob Brogan. WaPo, 09/25/2024: Fredric Jameson was a generous intellectual giant.
Caleb Smith. Yale Review, 10/03/2024: Fredric Jameson: The Marxist critic who remained open to mystery.
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Daniel Bergner. Atlantic, 09/24/2024: The Problem With Moral Purity. Review of The Message / Ta Nehisi-Coates.
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Olga Tokarczuk & Antonia Lloyd Jones. LitHub, 09/24/2024: On Returning to and Reinterpreting the Classics: Olga Tokarczuk in Conversation with Translator Antonia Lloyd-Jones. Regarding her book (& presumably its translation), The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story / Olga Tokarczuk; translated by Antonia Lloyd Jones, loosely based on The Magic Mountain as indicated in the interview.
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Oliver Wainwright. Guardian, 09/25/2024: Occult? Try upstairs! Inside the world’s weirdest library, now open to the public. "It has folders marked ‘Grasping the victim’s head’ and now – after a £15m revamp and some help from Albert Einstein and the patron saint of the internet – the extraordinary Warburg Institute is letting passersby in to view its ‘books emanating sorcery.’"
‘We are essentially devoted to the study of what you would now call memes’ … the Warburg.
‘We are essentially devoted to the study of what you would now call memes’ … the Warburg.
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September 27, 2024|No. 6339
Featured
Noel Malcolm. Sacred passions: How the church handled sexual relations. Review of: LOWER THAN THE ANGELS: A history of sex and Christianity / Diarmaid MacCulloch.
Frances Wilson. Coming out of her shell: Lucy Sante’s latest refashioning of the past. Review of: I HEARD HER CALL MY NAME: A memoir of transition / Lucy Sante.
Samuel Earle. A country on the slide: Different prescriptions for how to cure Britain. Review of: FAILED STATE: Why nothing works and how we fix it / Sam Freedman -- WHAT EVERYONE KNOWS ABOUT BRITAIN*: *Except the British / Michael Peel.
Joanne Brueton. Imperial graffiti: Jean Genet’s recently discovered play about a teenage tyrant. Review of: HÉLIOGABALE / Jean Genet
Literature, Philology, Bibliography
Miranda France. Body politic: Fernanda Eberstadt’s youthful desire to test her limits. Review of: Bite Your Friends: Stories of the Body Militant / Fernanda Eberstadt.
Nina Allan. Doing the devil’s work: A fragmented portrait of the psychopomp, collector of souls. Review of: CONCERNING THE FUTURE OF SOULS: Ninety-nine stories of Azrael / Joy Williams.
Kevin Brazil. So hard to be oneself: Speculative fiction on empathy, justice and storytelling. Review of: THE REPEAT ROOM / Jesse Ball.
David Herman. The edges of atrocity: Aharon Appelfeld’s unique post-Holocaust fictions. Review of: BADENHEIM 1939 / translated by Dalya Bilu -- THE STORY OF A LIFE / translated by Aloma Halter -- KATERINA / translated by Jeffrey M. Green.
Mark Kamine. Wrong answer: Tensions rise between a young woman and her billionaire boss. Review of: ENTITLEMENT / Rumaan Alam.
Michael LaPointe. Just do it: A troubled love triangle set against the backdrop of a despoiled landscape. Review of: THE MIGHTY RED / Louise Erdrich.
Rowland Bagnall. ‘Darling, they have discovered Dynamite’: Bunny Lang, a forgotten female voice of the New York School. Review of: THE MIRACULOUS SEASON: Selected poems / V. R. ‘Bunny’ Lang; edited by Rosa Campbell.
Kathryn Maris. Buried twice: Rediscovering Genevieve Taggard, a poet of her time. Review of: TO TEST THE JOY: Selected poetry and prose / Genevieve Taggard; edited by Anne Hammond.
In Brief Review of: TRIAL BY FARCE: A dozen medieval French comedies in English for the modern stage / Jody Enders.
In Brief Review of: HEMINGWAY’S ART OF REVISION: The making of the short fiction / John Beall.
In Brief Review of: THE HOUSE IN CORNWALL / Noel Streatfeild.
M.C.'s NB Column: Pint taken: Pubs in literature, British Library woes, From Blairgowrie to Norwich, Correspondence.
Arts
Irina Dumitrescu. Unconfined creativity: Art Brut and its lessons for all of us. (Essay)
Aida Amoako. That year’s kisses: A new biography of Billie Holiday focuses on her relationships. Review of: BITTER CROP: The heartache and triumph of Billie Holiday’s last year / Paul Alexander.
Milo Nesbitt. Running out of futures: What the music of the past used to look forward to. Review of: FUTUROMANIA: Electronic dreams, desiring machines and tomorrow’s music today / Simon Reynolds.
Sarah Jilani. Like mother, like daughter: A vibrant, bittersweet take on inter-generational tensions. Review of "Fawzia Mirza’s debut film" THE QUEEN OF MY DREAMS, Various cinemas.
Michael Caines. Re-creating Lonesome: The latest incarnation of ‘Your Arkansas Traveler’ – from story to film to musical. Review of the musical A FACE IN THE CROWD, Book by Sarah Ruhl, with songs by Elvis Costello, from the story by Budd Schulberg, Young Vic, London, until November 9.
Philosophy
In Brief Review of: SHOULD WE GO EXTINCT?: A philosophical dilemma for our unbearable times / Todd May. (144 pages)
Science & Technology
Kathleen Taylor. Thinking differently: Alternative approaches to autism. Review of: NINE MINDS: Inner lives on the spectrum / Daniel Tammet -- HOW TO FIND A FOUR-LEAF CLOVER: What autism can teach us about difference, connection and belonging / Jodi Rogers -- AUTISM IS NOT A DISEASE: The politics of neurodiversity / Jodie Hare.
In Brief Review of: RAISING HARE / Chloe Dalton.
Food & Drink
Aliya Whiteley. Mappa fungi: A ramble through the magical world of mushrooms. Review of: CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE FUNGAL KIND: In pursuit of remarkable mushrooms / Richard Fortey.
Roger Domeneghetti. From Falstaff’s pocket: The irresistible rise of the anchovy. Review of: A TWIST IN THE TAIL: How the humble anchovy flavoured western cuisine / Christopher Beckman.
Politics, Society, Geography, Culture
Robert Mayhew. Cartographical imperatives: Two works encompassing history, geography and politics. Review of: FOUR POINTS OF THE COMPASS: The unexpected history of direction / Jerry Brotton (Nov 12 US publ date per Amazon) -- THIS EARTHLY GLOBE: A Venetian geographer and the quest to map the world / Andrea Di Robilant.
Ann Kennedy Smith. Trinkets of the Thames: Finding buried histories on the riverbank. Review of: A MUDLARKING YEAR: Finding treasure in every season / Lara Maiklem.
Jonathan Buckley. Careless: Observations from three decades working in family law. Review of: IN HARM’S WAY: The memoir of a child protection lawyer / Teresa Thornhill.
David Willetts. Share nicely?: The statistical story of how Britain fails its poorest children. Review of: SEVEN CHILDREN: Inequality and Britain’s next generation / Danny Dorling.
Caroline Moorehead. No place like home: A painful memoir by a perpetual émigré. Review of: EXIT WOUNDS: A story of love, loss and occasional wars / Peter Godwin.
In Brief Review of: CRIMEAN QUAGMIRE: Tolstoy, Russell and the birth of modern warfare / Gregory Carleton.
Featured
Noel Malcolm. Sacred passions: How the church handled sexual relations. Review of: LOWER THAN THE ANGELS: A history of sex and Christianity / Diarmaid MacCulloch.
Frances Wilson. Coming out of her shell: Lucy Sante’s latest refashioning of the past. Review of: I HEARD HER CALL MY NAME: A memoir of transition / Lucy Sante.
Samuel Earle. A country on the slide: Different prescriptions for how to cure Britain. Review of: FAILED STATE: Why nothing works and how we fix it / Sam Freedman -- WHAT EVERYONE KNOWS ABOUT BRITAIN*: *Except the British / Michael Peel.
Joanne Brueton. Imperial graffiti: Jean Genet’s recently discovered play about a teenage tyrant. Review of: HÉLIOGABALE / Jean Genet
Literature, Philology, Bibliography
Miranda France. Body politic: Fernanda Eberstadt’s youthful desire to test her limits. Review of: Bite Your Friends: Stories of the Body Militant / Fernanda Eberstadt.
Nina Allan. Doing the devil’s work: A fragmented portrait of the psychopomp, collector of souls. Review of: CONCERNING THE FUTURE OF SOULS: Ninety-nine stories of Azrael / Joy Williams.
Kevin Brazil. So hard to be oneself: Speculative fiction on empathy, justice and storytelling. Review of: THE REPEAT ROOM / Jesse Ball.
David Herman. The edges of atrocity: Aharon Appelfeld’s unique post-Holocaust fictions. Review of: BADENHEIM 1939 / translated by Dalya Bilu -- THE STORY OF A LIFE / translated by Aloma Halter -- KATERINA / translated by Jeffrey M. Green.
Mark Kamine. Wrong answer: Tensions rise between a young woman and her billionaire boss. Review of: ENTITLEMENT / Rumaan Alam.
Michael LaPointe. Just do it: A troubled love triangle set against the backdrop of a despoiled landscape. Review of: THE MIGHTY RED / Louise Erdrich.
Rowland Bagnall. ‘Darling, they have discovered Dynamite’: Bunny Lang, a forgotten female voice of the New York School. Review of: THE MIRACULOUS SEASON: Selected poems / V. R. ‘Bunny’ Lang; edited by Rosa Campbell.
Kathryn Maris. Buried twice: Rediscovering Genevieve Taggard, a poet of her time. Review of: TO TEST THE JOY: Selected poetry and prose / Genevieve Taggard; edited by Anne Hammond.
In Brief Review of: TRIAL BY FARCE: A dozen medieval French comedies in English for the modern stage / Jody Enders.
In Brief Review of: HEMINGWAY’S ART OF REVISION: The making of the short fiction / John Beall.
In Brief Review of: THE HOUSE IN CORNWALL / Noel Streatfeild.
M.C.'s NB Column: Pint taken: Pubs in literature, British Library woes, From Blairgowrie to Norwich, Correspondence.
Arts
Irina Dumitrescu. Unconfined creativity: Art Brut and its lessons for all of us. (Essay)
Aida Amoako. That year’s kisses: A new biography of Billie Holiday focuses on her relationships. Review of: BITTER CROP: The heartache and triumph of Billie Holiday’s last year / Paul Alexander.
Milo Nesbitt. Running out of futures: What the music of the past used to look forward to. Review of: FUTUROMANIA: Electronic dreams, desiring machines and tomorrow’s music today / Simon Reynolds.
Sarah Jilani. Like mother, like daughter: A vibrant, bittersweet take on inter-generational tensions. Review of "Fawzia Mirza’s debut film" THE QUEEN OF MY DREAMS, Various cinemas.
Michael Caines. Re-creating Lonesome: The latest incarnation of ‘Your Arkansas Traveler’ – from story to film to musical. Review of the musical A FACE IN THE CROWD, Book by Sarah Ruhl, with songs by Elvis Costello, from the story by Budd Schulberg, Young Vic, London, until November 9.
Philosophy
In Brief Review of: SHOULD WE GO EXTINCT?: A philosophical dilemma for our unbearable times / Todd May. (144 pages)
Science & Technology
Kathleen Taylor. Thinking differently: Alternative approaches to autism. Review of: NINE MINDS: Inner lives on the spectrum / Daniel Tammet -- HOW TO FIND A FOUR-LEAF CLOVER: What autism can teach us about difference, connection and belonging / Jodi Rogers -- AUTISM IS NOT A DISEASE: The politics of neurodiversity / Jodie Hare.
In Brief Review of: RAISING HARE / Chloe Dalton.
Food & Drink
Aliya Whiteley. Mappa fungi: A ramble through the magical world of mushrooms. Review of: CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE FUNGAL KIND: In pursuit of remarkable mushrooms / Richard Fortey.
Roger Domeneghetti. From Falstaff’s pocket: The irresistible rise of the anchovy. Review of: A TWIST IN THE TAIL: How the humble anchovy flavoured western cuisine / Christopher Beckman.
Politics, Society, Geography, Culture
Robert Mayhew. Cartographical imperatives: Two works encompassing history, geography and politics. Review of: FOUR POINTS OF THE COMPASS: The unexpected history of direction / Jerry Brotton (Nov 12 US publ date per Amazon) -- THIS EARTHLY GLOBE: A Venetian geographer and the quest to map the world / Andrea Di Robilant.
Ann Kennedy Smith. Trinkets of the Thames: Finding buried histories on the riverbank. Review of: A MUDLARKING YEAR: Finding treasure in every season / Lara Maiklem.
Jonathan Buckley. Careless: Observations from three decades working in family law. Review of: IN HARM’S WAY: The memoir of a child protection lawyer / Teresa Thornhill.
David Willetts. Share nicely?: The statistical story of how Britain fails its poorest children. Review of: SEVEN CHILDREN: Inequality and Britain’s next generation / Danny Dorling.
Caroline Moorehead. No place like home: A painful memoir by a perpetual émigré. Review of: EXIT WOUNDS: A story of love, loss and occasional wars / Peter Godwin.
In Brief Review of: CRIMEAN QUAGMIRE: Tolstoy, Russell and the birth of modern warfare / Gregory Carleton.
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Cass R. Sunstein. WaPo, 09/25/2024: This book could change the way conservatives read the constitution. Review of: Against Constitutional Originalism: A Historical Critique / Jonathan Gienapp. "What are the chances that, in 2024, a new book could fundamentally reorient how we understand America’s founding? Jonathan Gienapp, a historian at Stanford, has written such a book ... You read it, and you get vertigo." Temporarily unlocked.
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Jess Libow. Public Books, 09/25/2024: Stomaching Wellness. Review of: The Fruit Cure: The Story of Extreme Wellness Turned Sour / Jacqueline Alnes.
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Morgan Leigh Davies. crimereads.com, 09/25/2024: Elyse Graham on the Librarian Spies of World War Two. Regarding Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II / Elyse Graham.
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LARB round-up:
M. Keith Booker. 09/24/2024: The Source of All Amazement. Review of: Playground / Richard Powers.
Dennis Wilson Wise. 09/25/2024: Tolkien Criticism Today, Revisited. Review of: The Literary Role of History in the Fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien / Nicholas Birns -- Representing Middle-earth: Tolkien, Form, and Ideology / Robert T. Tally Jr.
Michael Downs. 09/26/2024: Arizona! You Won’t Believe It! Review of: A Race to the Bottom of Crazy: Dispatches from Arizona / Richard Grant.
Sasha Karsavina. 09/26/2024: The Dark Shadow of the Chinese Dream. Review of Fear of Seeing: A Poetics of Chinese Science Fiction / Mingwei Song -- Hospital / Han Song -- Exorcism / Han Song.
M. Keith Booker. 09/24/2024: The Source of All Amazement. Review of: Playground / Richard Powers.
Dennis Wilson Wise. 09/25/2024: Tolkien Criticism Today, Revisited. Review of: The Literary Role of History in the Fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien / Nicholas Birns -- Representing Middle-earth: Tolkien, Form, and Ideology / Robert T. Tally Jr.
Michael Downs. 09/26/2024: Arizona! You Won’t Believe It! Review of: A Race to the Bottom of Crazy: Dispatches from Arizona / Richard Grant.
Sasha Karsavina. 09/26/2024: The Dark Shadow of the Chinese Dream. Review of Fear of Seeing: A Poetics of Chinese Science Fiction / Mingwei Song -- Hospital / Han Song -- Exorcism / Han Song.
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Dan Sheehan. LitHub, 09/25/2024: 500 international publishers demand Frankfurt Book Fair cut ties with Israel.
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Steve Pyke, interviewed by Alex King. Aesthetics for Birds, 09/24/2024: What the Photographer Who’s Taken Hundreds of Philosopher Portraits Really Thinks of Philosophers.
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Oliver Watson, 1949-2023
Mariam Rosser-Owen. Burlington Magazine, 09/2024: Oliver James Watson (1949–2023).
Author of, among others: Ceramics from Islamic Lands
His LT page: https://www.librarything.com/author/watsonoliver
Mariam Rosser-Owen. Burlington Magazine, 09/2024: Oliver James Watson (1949–2023).
Author of, among others: Ceramics from Islamic Lands
His LT page: https://www.librarything.com/author/watsonoliver
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Harry Turtledove, interviewer not ID'd. fivebooks.com, 08/28/2024: The Best Alternate History Novels. Does not list but includes discussion of his The Wages of Sin, where AIDS emerges earlier in history. Not all the books recommended particularly interest me, but the topic & discussion itself were interesting.
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Two recent books related articles from the New York Times:
Charly Wilder. 09/25/2024: Tracing Dostoyevsky’s Wayward Path Through Three German Spa Towns. "The Russian novelist, a compulsive gambler, lost everything in the opulent spa and gambling towns of Baden-Baden, Bad Homburg and Wiesbaden. An admirer of his books follows his footsteps." Temporarily unlocked.
Emma Goldberg. 09/26/2024: Malcolm Gladwell Holds His Ideas Loosely. He Thinks You Should, Too. On the occasion of the release of his Revenge of the Tipping Point. Temporarily unlocked.
Addendum to the Malcolm Gladwell article from another publication:
Gal Beckerman. Atlantic, 09/27/2024: Malcolm Gladwell, Meet Mark Zuckerberg. "The writer’s insistence on ignoring the web is an even bigger blind spot today than it was when The Tipping Point came out."
Charly Wilder. 09/25/2024: Tracing Dostoyevsky’s Wayward Path Through Three German Spa Towns. "The Russian novelist, a compulsive gambler, lost everything in the opulent spa and gambling towns of Baden-Baden, Bad Homburg and Wiesbaden. An admirer of his books follows his footsteps." Temporarily unlocked.
Emma Goldberg. 09/26/2024: Malcolm Gladwell Holds His Ideas Loosely. He Thinks You Should, Too. On the occasion of the release of his Revenge of the Tipping Point. Temporarily unlocked.
Addendum to the Malcolm Gladwell article from another publication:
Gal Beckerman. Atlantic, 09/27/2024: Malcolm Gladwell, Meet Mark Zuckerberg. "The writer’s insistence on ignoring the web is an even bigger blind spot today than it was when The Tipping Point came out."
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Becky Meloan. WaPo, 09/26/2024: Five feel-good books for animal lovers. Temporarily unlocked.
The books: Meet Ella: The Dog Who Saved My Life / James Middleton -- We’ll Prescribe You a Cat / Syou Ishida, translated by E. Madison Shimoda -- The Wisdom of Sheep: Observations From a Family Farm / Rosamund Young -- Puppy Kindergarten: The New Science of Raising a Great Dog / Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods -- Pearly Everlasting / Tammy Armstrong.
The books: Meet Ella: The Dog Who Saved My Life / James Middleton -- We’ll Prescribe You a Cat / Syou Ishida, translated by E. Madison Shimoda -- The Wisdom of Sheep: Observations From a Family Farm / Rosamund Young -- Puppy Kindergarten: The New Science of Raising a Great Dog / Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods -- Pearly Everlasting / Tammy Armstrong.
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Progressive take on Lebensraum?
Nandita Sharma. Public Books, 09/26/2024: National Sovereignty’s Foundational Violence. Review of: Against Borders: The Case for Abolition / Gracie Mae Bradley and Luke de Noronha -- Seeing Like a Smuggler: Borders from Below / Edited by Mahmoud Keshavarz and Shahram Khosravi -- Mapping Deathscapes: Digital Geographies of Racial and Border Violence / Edited by Suvendrini Perera and Joseph Pugliese.
Nandita Sharma. Public Books, 09/26/2024: National Sovereignty’s Foundational Violence. Review of: Against Borders: The Case for Abolition / Gracie Mae Bradley and Luke de Noronha -- Seeing Like a Smuggler: Borders from Below / Edited by Mahmoud Keshavarz and Shahram Khosravi -- Mapping Deathscapes: Digital Geographies of Racial and Border Violence / Edited by Suvendrini Perera and Joseph Pugliese.
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Blake Smith. ARC, 09/13/2024: The Illiberalism of Marilynne Robinson. "The novelist’s humorless nonfiction wants to order us around."
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New Yorker books on constitution & kids:
Louis Menand. New Yorker, 09/23/2024: Is It Time to Torch the Constitution? Review of: No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States / Erwin Chemerinsky -- Partisan Nation: The Dangerous New Logic of American Politics in a Nationalized Era / Paul Pierson, Eric Schickler.
Adrienne Raphael. New Yorker, 09/23/2024: How Ruth Krauss Made a New Kind of Children’s Literature.
Louis Menand. New Yorker, 09/23/2024: Is It Time to Torch the Constitution? Review of: No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States / Erwin Chemerinsky -- Partisan Nation: The Dangerous New Logic of American Politics in a Nationalized Era / Paul Pierson, Eric Schickler.
Adrienne Raphael. New Yorker, 09/23/2024: How Ruth Krauss Made a New Kind of Children’s Literature.
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See also >163 featherbear:
Marisa Charpentier. WaPo, 09/26/2024: ‘The Power Broker’ is 50. Its latest fans are much younger. "A new generation is reading Robert Caro’s classic biography — sometimes aloud on social media — for its insights about how (and how not) to plan cities." (Temporarily unlocked)
Ross Barkan. NYT, 09/30/2024: What ‘The Power Broker’ Gets Wrong About Robert Moses and Ambition.
Marisa Charpentier. WaPo, 09/26/2024: ‘The Power Broker’ is 50. Its latest fans are much younger. "A new generation is reading Robert Caro’s classic biography — sometimes aloud on social media — for its insights about how (and how not) to plan cities." (Temporarily unlocked)
Ross Barkan. NYT, 09/30/2024: What ‘The Power Broker’ Gets Wrong About Robert Moses and Ambition.
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Ed Simon. LitHub, 09/27/2024: Life Imitates Art: On The Sorrows of Young Werther, Moral Panic and the Power of Books. "Ed Simon Considers the Phenomenon of Killing Yourself (and Others) in the Name of Literature." On The Sorrows of Young Werther / JW von Goethe.
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Caroline Reilly. LARB, 09/28/2024: Imagine More for Women. "how Scandinavian women writers have become known for a more complex kind of crime fiction."
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Ben Yagoda. Guardian, 09/26/2024: The other British invasion: how UK lingo conquered the US. "It used to be that Brits would complain about Americanisms diluting the English language. But in fact it’s a two-way street."
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Simon Torracinta. Boston Review, 09/30/2024: Can Social Democracy Win Again? Review of: The Rise and Fall of Swedish Social Democracy / Kjell Östberg.
This topic was continued by Exploring Books Through Articles, Reviews, Announcements, & Lists 2024-4 Oct-Dec.
