Exploring Books Through Articles, Reviews, Announcements, & Lists 2024-4 Oct-Dec

NYRB Online Oct 3 2024

Literature

Alice Kaplan. The Posthumous Autobiographer. Review of: Frail Riffs: The Rules of the Game, Volume 4 / Michel Leiris, translated from the French by Richard Sieburth.

Christopher Bellaigue. Elegy for a ‘Separate Civilization.’ Review of: The Borrowed Hills / Scott Preston.

Arts

Daphne Merkin. The Bliss and the Risks. Review of: Paula Modersohn-Becker: Ich bin Ich/I Am Me / an exhibition at the Neue Galerie, New York City, June 6–September 9, 2024, and the Art Institute of Chicago, October 12, 2024–January 12, 2025; catalog of the exhibition edited by Jay A. Clarke and Jill Lloyd.

Science & Technology

Elizabeth Kolbert. Savvy in the Grass. "Some botanists maintain that peas are capable of associative learning, others that tropical vines have a sort of vision. If plants possess sentience, what is the morally appropriate response?" Review of: The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth / Zoë Schlanger -- The Nation of Plants / Stefano Mancuso, translated from the Italian by Gregory Conti -- Planta Sapiens: The New Science of Plant Intelligence / Paco Calvo with Natalie Lawrence.

History, Politics, & Society

Kathryn Hughes. An Entry of One’s Own. Review of: Secret Voices: A Year of Women’s Diaries / edited by Sarah Gristwood.

Matthew Desmond. A Prophet for the Poor. Review of: White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy / Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove.

Linda Greenhouse. Are Sheriffs Above the Law? Review of: The Highest Law in the Land: How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy / Jessica Pishko.

Ian Johnson. China’s Iconoclast. Review of: I Have No Enemies: The Life and Legacy of Liu Xiaobo / Perry Link and Wu Dazhi.

E. Tammy Kim. Duterte’s Cruel Tricks. Review of: Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in My Country / Patricia Evangelista.

Tareq Baconi. Living the Nakba. Review of: We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I: A Palestinian Memoir / Raja Shehadeh -- Stranger in My Own Land: Palestine, Israel and One Family’s Story of Home / Fida Jiryis.

Wallace Shawn. The End of a Village. (Essay: "Jonathan Schell’s account of the US military’s destruction of the village of Ben Suc in Vietnam laid bare the problem with many American interventions.")

Fintan O'Toole. Dynamism & Discipline. (Essay: "The excitement that radiated through the Democratic National Convention was the other side of what had until recently been a deep despair.")

NYRB Online Oct 17 2024

Literature

Clare Bucknell. The Fact Man. Review of: The Oxford Handbook of Daniel Defoe / edited by Nicholas Seager and J.A. Downie.

Christopher Tayler. ‘The Death of Some Ideal.’ Review of: The Wren, the Wren / Anne Enright.

Anahid Nersessian. Speaking the Unspeakable. Review of: ...: poems / Fady Joudah.

Julius Taranto. The Father-Daughter Dance. Review of: The Hypocrite / Jo Hamya.

Arts

Simon Callow. Under the Spotlight. Review of: The Performer: Art, Life, Politics / Richard Sennett.

Peter E. Gordon. Music and Memory. Review of: Time’s Echo: The Second World War, the Holocaust, and the Music of Remembrance / Jeremy Eichler.

Carolina A. Miranda. Mythic Chaps. Review of: Cowboy, an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, September 29, 2023–February 18, 2024, and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, September 28, 2024–March 23, 2025; catalog of the exhibition edited by Nora Burnett Abrams and Miranda Lash -- The American West in Art: Selections from the Denver Art Museum / edited by Thomas Brent Smith and Jennifer R. Henneman -- Eight Seconds: Black Rodeo Culture / Ivan McClellan.

Beatrice Radden Keefe. Happy Island of Psalters and Cucumbers. Review of: World Heritage of the Middle Ages: 1,300 Years of the Monastic Island of Reichenau, an exhibition at the Baden-Württemberg State Archaeological Museum, Konstanz, Germany, April 20–October 20, 2024; catalog (2 v.) of the exhibition by Badisches Landesmuseum.

Science & Technology

Verlyn Klinkenberg. What the Ocean Holds. Review of: The Blue Machine: How the Ocean Works / Helen Czerski -- The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean / Susan Casey.

History, Politics, & Society

David S. Reynolds. Grant vs. the Klan. Review of: Soldier of Destiny: Slavery, Secession, and the Redemption of Ulysses S. Grant / John Reeves -- Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction / Fergus M. Bordewich.

Linda Colley. A Constitution Nowhere and Everywhere. Review of: The Cambridge Constitutional History of the United Kingdom (2 volumes) / edited by Peter Cane and H. Kumarasingham.

Colin Thubron. The Artificiality of Nations. Review of: The Case for Open Borders / John Washington -- A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging / Lauren Markham.

Samuel Earle. The Problems with Polls. Review of: Strength in Numbers: How Polls Work and Why We Need Them / G. Elliott Morris.

Jessica T. Mathews. The Race That Can’t Be Won. (Essay: "A new nuclear arms race is beginning. It will be far more dangerous than the last one.")

Gary Younge. Scapegoating the Immigrant. (Essay: "In the aftermath of anti-immigrant riots this summer, the British government has refused to confront the root cause of the violence and cracked down on immigration instead.")

Aryeh Neier. Torture in Israel’s Prisons. (Essay: "Recent reports on the conditions in Israeli detention facilities describe them as sites of systematic abuse.")

Clutchin' my pearls. Of course it would be my alma mater:

Rose Horowitch. Atlantic, 10/01/2024: The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books.

Addendum:

Leiter Reports Blog, Oct. 2024: Do your undergraduates have trouble reading whole books?

Sean Carswell. Public Books, 10/01/2024: To Fix the University, Return to Moo U. Regarding Moo (1995) / Jane Smiley.

Bill Thompson. LARB, 10/01/2024: They Haven’t Kept Austin Weird. Review of: Lost in Austin: The Evolution of an American City / Alex Hannaford.

Sophia Nguyen. WaPo, 10/01/2024: National Book Awards finalists announced for 2024.

Fiction

Ghostroots / Pemi Aguda ("a dozen stories is set in a fantastical version of Lagos, Nigeria") -- My Friends / Hisham Matar -- Martyr! / Kaveh Akbar ("the story of Cyrus Shams, a 20-something Iranian poet and recovering alcoholic. He grew up in the United States after his mother was killed on Iran Air Flight 655, which was shot down by a U.S. Navy ship in 1988") -- All Fours / Miranda July -- James / Percival Everett.

Nonfiction

Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder / Salman Rushdie -- Whiskey Tender / Deborah Jackson Taffa ("personal memories with the larger history of Native American oppression and survival") -- Circle of Hope: A Reckoning With Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church / Eliza Griswold ("portrait of a left-leaning church in Philadelphia as it descended into crisis over issues of race and sexuality") -- Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling / Jason De León -- Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia / Kate Manne.

Literature in Translation

Aednan / Linnea Axelsson, translated from Swedish by Saskia Vogel ("epic novel, told in verse, charts generations of the Sámi, the Indigenous people of northern Scandinavia") -- Taiwan Travelogue / Yang Shuang-zi, translated from Mandarin Chinese by Lin King ("the relationship between a young writer and her interpreter as they travel and share meals together in 1930s Taiwan") -- The Book Censor’s Library / Bothayna Al-Essa, translated from Arabic by Ranya Abdelrahman and Sawad Hussain -- Where the Wind Calls Home / Samar Yazbek, translated from Arabic by Leri Price ("The drama of recent Syrian history — the reign of the dictatorial Assad family, the brutal civil war begun in 2011 — plays out in the struggle of one single consciousness trapped in its gears") -- The Villain’s Dance / Fiston Mwanza Mujila, translated from French by Roland Glasser ("the Democratic Republic of Congo, as the government of Mobutu Sese Seko totters — and the characters try desperately to survive").

Poetry

Wrong Norma / Anne Carson -- Something About Living / Lena Khalaf Tuffaha -- ...:poems / Fady Joudah -- Modern Poetry: Poems / Diane Seuss -- mother / m.s. RedCherries.

Young People's Literature

Buffalo Dreamer / Violet Duncan -- The Great Cool Ranch Dorito in the Sky / Josh Galarza -- The Unboxing of a Black Girl / Angela Shanté -- The First State of Being / Erin Entrada Kelly -- Kareem Between / Shifa Saltagi Safadi.

TLS October 4, 2024|No. 6340

Featured

Nicola Upson. She’s bloody clever: Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple approaches 100. Review of: MARPLE: Expert on wickedness / Mark Aldridge.

Emma Smith. A question of attribution: Expanding the canon of ‘industrious’ Thomas Kyd. Review of: THE COLLECTED WORKS OF THOMAS KYD: Volume One / Brian Vickers, ed. -- THE COLLECTED WORKS OF JOHN FORD: Volume Four / Brian Vickers, ed.

Nat Segnit. South Sea adventure: Oceanographers and tech billionaires clash in Polynesia. Review of: PLAYGROUND / Richard Powers.

J.E. Smyth. All smirk and no play: A West End murder mystery with a national treasure. Review of the film The Critic, various cinemas.

Literature

Brian Vickers. Doubts about Thomas: Who wrote Thomas of Woodstock? Review of: THE CRITICAL LEGACY OF ‘THOMAS OF WOODSTOCK OR RICHARD II, PART ONE’ 1870–PRESENT / Michael Egan.

Alice Kelly. Beaming up Scottie: The many lives of a great American author. Review of: SOME UNFINISHED CHAOS: The lives of F. Scott Fitzgerald / Arthur Krystal -- F. SCOTT FITZGERALD: A composite biography / Niklas Salmose and David Rennie, editors.

Catherine Tayler. Swash backwash: Role reversals in a decades-old mother-daughter saga. Review of: THE WOMEN BEHIND THE DOOR / Roddy Doyle.

Beejay Silcox. Olive meets Lucy: Two long-running characters discover ‘a kindred loneliness.’ Review of: TELL ME EVERYTHING / Elizabeth Strout. ("after sixteen years and eight volumes of fiction, the author’s indelible heroines – Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton – have finally made it on to the same page.")

In Brief Review of: COTERIE POETICS AND THE BEGINNINGS OF THE ENGLISH LITERARY TRADITION: From Chaucer to Spenser / R. D. Perry.

In Brief Review of: FIRE (NYRB Classics) / George R. Stewart

In Brief Review of: CROSSINGS: Essays on poetry and translation from Hölderlin to Jaccottet / Charlie Louth.

In Brief Review of: TABLE FOR ONE / Yun Ko-eun; translated by Lizzie Buehler.

In Brief Review of: ELIETE: A normal life / Dulce Maria Cardoso; translated by Ángel Gurría-Quintana.

Arts

John Stokes. The play’s not the thing: Adapting F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece for the stage. Review of THE GREAT GATSBY: The 1926 Broadway script by Owen Davis / Anne Margaret Daniel and James L. W. West III, editors.

Paul Griffiths. Lust in music: An operatic reversal of villainy and virtue. Review of Verdi's Rigoletto, Welsh National Opera, on tour until November 16.

Larry Wolff. She’s lost control again: A drone pilot’s doubts take flight. Review of Jeanine Tesori's opera GROUNDED, Libretto by George Brant; Metropolitan Opera, New York, until October 19.

Media & Publishing

Joe Moran. Educating the masses: The irresistible rise of the Macmillan brothers. Review of: LITERATURE FOR THE PEOPLE: How the pioneering Macmillan brothers built a publishing powerhouse / Sarah Harkness.

Lisa Hilton. Getting their hands dirty: How French high culture was bound to the yellow press. Review of: HUSTLERS IN THE IVORY TOWER: Press and modernism from Mallarmé to Proust / Max McGuinness.

Conrad Ladin. Hack’s yer lot: The rise and fall of the popular press. Review of: THE NEWSMONGERS: A history of tabloid journalism / Terry Kirby.

Navtej Sarna. Friend and guide: A writer’s relationship with his editor. Review of: THE COOKING OF BOOKS: A literary memoir / Ramachandra Guha.

Natural History

Cal Flyn. Feathering her nest: An ‘enchanting’ account of a woman who tends eider ducks. Review of: THE PLACE OF TIDES / James Rebanks.

Andrew H. Knoll. The living planet: James Lovelock’s Gaia theory of a world optimized for life. Review of: THE MANY LIVES OF JAMES LOVELOCK: Science, secrets and Gaia Theory / Jonathan Watts.

Religion

Timothy Winter. Muslim modernism: The faithful pay little attention to religious reformers. Review of: BEING MUSLIM TODAY: Reclaiming the faith from orthodoxy and Islamophobia / Saqib Iqbal Qureshi.

Esmé Partridge. Jigsaw of faith: What Christianity can learn from other religions. Review of: LEARNING FROM OTHER RELIGIONS / David Brown.

History, Politics, & Society

Justine Firnhaber-Baker. A history of violence: Richard II, Henry IV and Henry V and illusory victory over France. Review of: THE EAGLE AND THE HART: The tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV / Helen Castor -- HENRY V: The astonishing rise of England’s greatest warrior king / Dan Jones.

Patrick Wilken. A tale of two Brazils: Lula vs Bolsonaro in the shadow of the military dictatorship. Review of: LULA: A biography / Fernando Morais; translated by Brian Mier -- BOLSONARISMO: The global origins and future of Brazil’s far right / Fernando Brancoli.

Anna Temkin. Voyage around his father: A memoir of modern Brazil from the testimony of a truck driver. Review of: WHAT IS MINE / José Henrique Bortoluci; translated by Rahul Bery.

Regina Rini. Not food for thought: The costs of political dishonesty. (Essay)

In Brief Review of: BRAINJACKING: The science of influence and manipulation / Brian Clegg.

In Brief Review of: BETWEEN BRITAIN: Walking the history of England and Scotland / Alistair Moffat.

Dwight Garner. NYT, 10/02/2024: Where Literary Ghosts Linger: A Book Critic Goes to Dublin. "The Irish city, once home to the likes of James Joyce and Oscar Wilde, is known for its bookstores, libraries and pubs, where writers found inspiration over pints of Guinness."

Bekah Walkes. Atlantic, 10/03/2024: The Enlightenment Is Just One Side of the Story. Review of: The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story / Olga Tokarczuk; Antonia Lloyd-Jones.

Charlotte E. Rosen. Public Books, 10/03/2024: The Porous Prison. Review of: A Wall Is Just a Wall: The Permeability of the Prison in the Twentieth-Century United States / Reiko Hillyer.

Recent reviews in LARB:

Tom Zoellner. 10/04/2024: American Mythology. Review of: A Great Disorder: National Myth and the Battle for America / Richard Slotkin.

Michael McGhee. 10/04/2024: Refuge as a Way of Life. Review of: Pessimism, Quietism and Nature as Refuge / David E. Cooper.

From the Oct. 2024 issue of Literary Review (UK):

Richard Vinen. Croquet & Conspiracy. Review of: Churchill’s Citadel: Chartwell and the Gatherings Before the Storm / Katherine Carter.

Ritchie Robertson. All for the Thrill of the Chase. Review of: Augustus the Strong: A Study in Artistic Greatness and Political Fiasco / Tim Blanning. ("Frederick Augustus (1670–1733), elector of Saxony and king of Poland, owed his sobriquet ‘the Strong’ to such feats as crushing a tin plate in his hand (mentioned by Rilke in the ‘Fifth Duino Elegy’) and to his vigorous sex life. ... This biography is concerned not with court gossip, however, but with Augustus’s political career and cultural achievements.")

Wendy Moore. Atomic Achievements. Review of: The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science / Dava Sobel.

Robin Simon. The Wright Stuff. Review of: The Invention of British Art / Bendor Grosvenor.

Tom Lamont. Author & Aviator. Review of: James Salter: Pilot, Screenwriter, Novelist / Jeffrey Meyers.

John Adamson. Love Island with Ruffs. Review of: The Scapegoat: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham / Lucy Hughes-Hallett.

Sam Freedman. The Kids Aren’t Alright. Review of: Seven Children: Inequality and Britain’s Next Generation / Danny Dorling -- Exam Nation: Why Our Obsession with Grades Fails Everyone – and a Better Way to Think About School / Sammy Wright.

Megan Kamalei Kakimoto. NYT, 10/02/2024: Read Your Way Around Hawaii. A Hawaii for the descendants of the indigenous reading list. Temporarily unlocked.

Missed this when it came out in late Sept:

Elizabeth Kolbert. New Yorker, 09/30/2024: The Rat Studies that Foretold a Nightmarish Human Future. Review of: Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B. Calhoun / Jon Adams & Edmund Ramsden -- Dr. Calhoun's Mousery: The Strange Tale of a Celebrated Scientist, a Rodent Dystopia, and the Future of Humanity / Lee Alan Dugatkin.

Jacob Brogan, Nora Krug, Stephanie Merry and Sophia Nguyen. WaPo, 10/05/2024: How does Bridget Jones hold up? "Book World staffers discuss the relevance of Bridget Jones’s Diary more than 25 years after its release." (BJD author: Helen Fielding)

Kanishk Tharoor. WaPo, 10/05/2024: A collection of ancient Indian stories given new life. "Douglas J. Penick’s English ‘The Oceans of Cruelty’ is an English-language retelling of a collection of Sanskrit stories that date back thousands of years." Sounds fascinating. Temporarily unlocked.

Full citation: The Oceans of Cruelty: Twenty-Five Tales of a Corpse Spirit / Retold by Douglas J. Penick.

Addendum:

Douglas J. Penick. LitHub, 10/07/2024: Translating the Ancient Language of The Vetala Tales. "Douglas J. Penick on Capturing the Essence of South Asian Mythology For a Contemporary Western Audience."

Will add to the Jameson posting in the previous thread when I get a chance, but since this came out in October:

Caleb Smith. Yale Review, 10/03/2024: Fredric Jameson: The Marxist critic who remained open to mystery.

John Hutchison, interviewer Cal Flyn. fivebooks.com, 10/04/2024: The Best Popular Science Books of 2024. The shortlist for the Royal Society Science Book Prize:

Everything Is Predictable: How Bayesian Statistics Explain Our World / Tom Chivers -- Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution / Cat Bohannon -- Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup's Quest to End Privacy as We Know It / Kashmir Hill -- The Last of Its Kind: The Search for the Great Auk and the Discovery of Extinction / Gísli Pálsson -- Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality / Venki Ramakrishnan -- A City on Mars: Can we settle space, should we settle space, and have we really thought this through? / Kelly Weinersmith, Zach Weinersmith.

Rhoda Feng. American Prospect, 10/04/2024: Cascading Shame: Arlie Russell Hochschild returns to study the motivations of the left-behind right. Review of: Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right / Arlie Russell Hochschild.

Recent New Yorker book reviews:

Ben Tarnoff. New Yorker, 10/05/2024: What Is Privacy For? Review of: The Right to Oblivion: Privacy and the Good Life / Lowry Pressly.

Leftovers from Sept:

Rebecca Mead. 09/30/2024: The Unrivalled Omnipresence of Queen Elizabeth II. Review of: Q: A Voyage Around the Queen / Craig Brown.

Robert Coover, 1932-2024

John Williams. NYT, 10/06/2024: Robert Coover, Inventive Novelist in Iconoclastic Era, Dies at 92.

Author of, among others: The Public Burning & Pricksongs and Descants

His LT page: https://www.librarything.com/author/cooverrobert

Andrew Van Dam. WaPo, 10/04/2024: Who uses libraries? Even in the stacks, there’s a political divide. Temporarily unlocked

Hope Corrigan. WaPo, 10/07/2024: A mapmaker transports readers back into their favorite books. "Herb Lester, a London-based small press, lets readers follow in the footsteps of their favorite book characters and writers."

Sam Worley. Vulture/New York, 10/07/2024: Alan Hollinghurst Tries to Atone. Review of: Our Evenings / A.an Hollinghurst.

Recent LARB fiction reviews:

Emmeline Clein. 10/06/2024: A Trapdoor of Her Own. Review of: Intermezzo / Sally Rooney.

Zachary Gillan. 10/07/2024. A Moment of Doubt, or Nearly So. Review of: Good Night, Sleep Tight / Brian Evenson.

Sam Buntz. The Critic (UK), 10/07/2024: The fables of Davos Man: Yuval Noah Harari has written another long book with little wisdom. The Critic hates the book so much it doesn't even provide a proper bibliographic citation. Review of: Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI / Yuval Noah Harari.

Books discussion from The Millions:

Maria Siciliano. 10/07/2024: Revisiting ‘Citizen,’ 10 Years Later. Regarding Citizen: An American Lyric / Claudia Rankine.

Donna Vatnick. 10/01/2024: Ariane Koch’s Unforgettable Tale of Arrested Development. Review of: Overstaying / Ariane Koch; translated by Damion Searls.

Nicole Graev Lipson. 10/03/2024: For Jamie Quatro, There’s ‘Something Mystical’ About Writing. Review of: Two-Step Devil / Jamie Quatro.*

*Footnote: Jamie Quatro. LitHub, 10/07/2024: Satanic Sympathies: On the Demon Depictions That Helped Jamie Quarto Write Two-Step Devil. "Featuring Work by William Blake, Rabih Alammedine, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and More."

Guardian. 10/07/2024: A Virginia Woolf Barbie? Is this really the most inappropriate doll of all time?

Lore Segal, 1928-2024

Penelope Green. NYT, 10/07/2024: Lore Segal, Mordant Novelist of Émigré Life, Dies at 96.

"“Other People’s Houses,” Ms. Segal’s memoir-disguised-as-a-novel, first appeared in serial form in The New Yorker before it was published as a book in 1964. (She became a regular contributor to the magazine.) One of its early, artful scenes describes the fallout from a knackwurst rotting in Ms. Segal’s luggage while aboard the Kindertransport. It was a last-minute treat from her doting parents that she forgets is there. Its pungent smell becomes a proxy for Ms. Segal’s sense of herself as human contraband, and also an opportunity for some humor: When the offending package is finally discovered, flooding young Lore with shame, she hears another child exclaim, “And it isn’t even kosher!”"

Her LT page: https://www.librarything.com/author/segallore

Matthew Shaer. NYT Magazine, 10/06/2024: A Master Storyteller, at the End of Her Story.

James Marcus. Atlantic, 10/10/2024: How Lore Segal Saw the World in a Nutshell.

Cressida Layshon. New Yorker, 10/13/2024: Lore Segal Will Keep Talking Through Her Stories.

Elizabeth A. Harris. NYT, 10/08/2024: Removing Books From Libraries Often Takes Debate. But There’s a Quieter Way. "Weeding, or culling old, damaged or outdated books, is standard practice in libraries. But in some cases it is being used to remove books because of the viewpoint they express."

Wyatt Mason. NYT, 10/08/2024: Why France’s Most Controversial Novelist Is Also Its Most Celebrated. "Reviled as much as he is lauded, Michel Houellebecq holds up a mirror to a world we would rather not see."

Reviews of political books via The Guardian:

Peter Conrad. 10/08/2024: A head of state lost without a script. Review of: Reagan: His Life and Legend / Max Boot.

John Crace. 10/07/2024: ‘If I have a fault, it’s that I’m too honest.’ Regarding Unleashed / Boris Johnson. "The former prime minister has given us a thrilling insight into his own narcissism. Can’t face reading it? All the parties, scandals and incompetence are broken down here."

Alice Blackhurst et al. Public Books, 10/08/2024: "The Lover” @40: A Roundtable. Regarding The Lover / Marguerite Duras.

Recent LARB round-up:

Gary K.Wolfe. 10/08/2024: Jonathan Carroll’s Impossible Realism. "the career of American fabulist Jonathan Carroll, whose backlist is currently being re-released by JABberwocky eBooks."

Ed Simon, interviewer Gregory Laski. 10/08/2024: America Is Faustian. On Devil’s Contract: The History of the Faustian Bargain / Ed Simon.

Michael David-Fox. 10/07/2024: Russia’s Media-Ideological Complex. Review of: Putinism—Post-Soviet Russian Regime Ideology / Mikhail Suslov.

New Yorker books:

Joshua Rothman. 10/08/2024: Should You Just Give Up?: Sisyphus couldn’t stop pushing his boulder—but you can. Review of: Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts / Oliver Burkeman.

Jay Kaspian Kang. 10/04/2024: Why Ta-Nehisi Coates Writes. Review of: The Message / Ta Nehisi-Coates.

TLS October 11, 2024|No. 6341

Featured

Lucy Roeber. The sex files: A collection of women’s erotic fantasies. Review of: WANT: Sexual fantasies by Anonymous / edited by Gillian Anderson.

Seamus Perry. Picnics in the sun: How W. H. Auden was shaped by the idea of England. Review of: THE ISLAND: W. H. Auden and the last of Englishness / Nicholas Jenkins -- CONTRAFLOW: Lines of Englishness 1922–2022 / John Greening and Kevin Gardner, editors.

Marie Darrieussecq. The rock and the axe: Two centuries of pain and plunder in New Caledonia. Review of: FRAPPER L'ÉPOPÉE / Alice Zeniter.

Toby Lichtig. Principle, pride and prejudice: A new play looking back at Roald Dahl’s antisemitism. Review of Mark Rosenblatt's play GIANT, Royal Court Theatre, London, until November 16.

Literature

Tim Parks. British values: What makes a national literature? (Essay)

Juliette Bretan. Serving up a treat: European influence on English literature and culture Review of: EUROPE IN BRITISH LITERATURE AND CULTURE / Petra Rau and William T. Rossiter, editors.

Lara Pawson. Hearing spirits speak: A Portuguese diarist listens to humans and animals, the living and the dead. Review of: A THOUSAND THOUGHTS IN FLIGHT: The diaries of Maria Gabriela Llansol / translated by Audrey Young.

Rüdiger Görner. Deep remembering: A Proustian novelist caught up in the age of extremes. Review of AUSGEWÄHLTE WERKE / Manès Sperber: VOLUME 1: ALL DAS VERGANGENE / edited by Mirjana Stančić -- VOLUME 2: WIE EINE TRÄNE IM OZEAN / edited by Rudolf Isler -- VOLUME 3: ZUR ANALYSE DER TYRANNIS / edited by Wolfgang Müller-Funk.

Matthew Welton. Between magic and miracle: A contemporary approach to metaphysical poetry. Review of: AFTER YOU WERE, I AM / Camille Ralphs.

Bryan Karetnyk. Extremes of a militant soul: Cryptic, carnal works by an uncompromising Russian poet. Review of: THREE BY TSVETAEVA / Marina Tsvetaeva; translated by Andrew Davis (NYRB Poets).

In Brief Review of: THE MODERSOHN-BECKER/RILKE CORRESPONDENCE / Rainer Stamm, editor; translated by Ulrich Baer, with an introduction by Jill Lloyd.

Clare Pettit. Don’t tell anyone!: A missing teacher is discovered in an abandoned cabin. Review of: UNTOLD LESSONS / Maddalena Vaglio Tanet ; translated by Jill Foulston.

Arin Keeble. Lone Ranger: A Black cop tries to stay sober in a racially divided America. Review of: GUIDE ME HOME / Attica Locke.

In Brief Review of: THE PLAINS / Federico Falco; translated by Jennifer Croft.

Arts

Anna Picard. Misters and sisters: Tchaikovsky’s ordinary life and extraordinary work. Review of: TCHAIKOVSKY’S EMPIRE: A new life of Russia’s greatest composer / Simon Morrison, and a performance of Tchaikovsky's opera EUGENE ONEGIN, Royal Opera House, London, until October 14.

Sarah Hill. Both sides of Joni: A songwriter who fulfils ‘the goddess need in American rock.’ Review of: TRAVELLING: On the path of Joni Mitchell / Ann Powers.

Philosophy

Philip Schofield. Taking the acid test: Politicians seldom implement the insights of philosophers. Review of: THE HISTORY OF IDEAS: Equality, justice and revolution / David Runciman.

History, Politics, & Society

Arnold Hunt. We are not all guilty: Denial of original sin united friends of the Enlightenment. Review of: THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND ORIGINAL SIN / Matthew Kadane.

Ophelia Field. Favourite’s fortunes: How George Villiers made himself indispensable to two kings. Review of: THE SCAPEGOAT: The brilliant brief life of the Duke of Buckingham / Lucy Hughes-Hallett.

Sarah Baxter. The televangelists and Trump: The theological underpinnings of a charismatic cult. Review of: THE VIOLENT TAKE IT BY FORCE: The Christian movement that is threatening our democracy / Matthew D. Taylor -- THE KINGDOM, THE POWER, AND THE GLORY: American evangelicals in an age of extremism / Tim Alberta -- GOD, GUNS, AND SEDITION: Far-right terrorism in America / Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware -- CHAOS COMES CALLING: The battle against the far-right takeover of small-town America / Sasha Abramsky (US subtitle: Two small counties and the epic battle for America's soul)

Eric Rauchway. Not even a nearly man: Vice President Rockefeller’s doomed appeasement of the right. Review of: NELSON ROCKEFELLER’S DILEMMA: The fight to save moderate Republicanism / Marsha E. Barrett.

Lisa Hilton. Room at the top: An aristocrat who became a status symbol for wealthy men. Review of: KINGMAKER: Pamela Churchill Harriman’s astonishing life of seduction, intrigue and power / Sonia Purnell.

Jerry White. Teeming theatre of life: Dealing justice to the working class in Victorian London. Review of: NETHER WORLD: Crime and the police courts in Victorian London / Drew D. Gray.

Thomas J. Sojka. It’s all a bit rich: The British elite’s quest to be viewed as ‘ordinary.’ Review of: BORN TO RULE: The making and remaking of the British elite / Aaron Reeves and Sam Friedman.

Joanna Bourke. Carnival of crime: John Christie’s murders shine a harsh light on postwar London. Review of: THE PEEPSHOW: The murders at 10 Rillington Place / Kate Summerscale.

In Brief Review of: HOW TO FIT ALL OF ANCIENT GREECE INTO AN ELEVATOR / Theodore Papakostas; translated by Patricia Felisa Barbeito.

In Brief Review of: THE MALLEUS MALEFICARUM / Translated and edited by Peter Maxwell-Stuart.

In Brief Review of: THE BUSY NARROW SEA: A social history of the English Channel / Robin Laurance.

In Brief Review of: SOVIET FACTOGRAPHY: Reality without realism / Devin Fore.

In Brief Review of: OOTLIN / Jenni Fagan.

Alex Marshall and Alexandra Alter. NYT, 10/10/2024: Han Kang Is Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature. "The South Korean author, best known for “The Vegetarian,” is the first writer from her country to receive the prestigious award."

Han Kang's LT page: https://www.librarything.com/author/kanghan

Han Kang and translated by Jasmine Jeemin Lee. NYT, 09/06/2023; updated 10/18/2023: Read Your Way Through Seoul. "Han Kang grew up in Seoul, a city that embraces “thousands of years of turbulence.” She recommends reading that draws from the various eras that have made up her hometown."

Sophia Nguyen. WaPo, 10/10/2024: Nobel Prize in literature awarded to Han Kang. "The South Korean writer, best known internationally for her novel “The Vegetarian,” was honored for her “intense” prose and historical focus."

Ella Creamer. Guardian, 10/10/2024: South Korean author Han Kang wins the 2024 Nobel prize in literature. "Han, whose works include The Vegetarian, was praised for her ‘intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life’"

Jiayang Fang. New Yorker, 01/08/2018: Han Kang and the Complexity of Translation. "The English-language versions of Han’s work have won wide acclaim. Are they faithful to the original?"

Motoko Rich and Choe Sang-Hun. NYT, 10/11/2024: A Woman Won South Korea’s First Literature Nobel. That Says a Lot. "While Han Kang’s victory was celebrated as a crowning cultural achievement for her country, her work also represents a form of rebellion against its culture."

Mark Krotov, Alex Shephard. TNR, 10/10/2024: Can The Nobel Prize Save Publishing From Itself? "The Swedish Academy's decision to award Korean novelist Han Kang is a minor victory in a world of consolidation."

Ed Park. Atlantic, 10/12/2024: Han Kang’s Transgressive Art. "The author, who has never shied away from criticizing Korean culture, has also given South Korea its first Nobel Prize in Literature."

Yung In Chae. Yale Review, 10/10/2024: Why Han Kang’s Nobel Matters: My mother’s generation experienced unspeakable violence. Han found the words for it.

Terry Eagleton. Unherd, 10/02/2024: Wuthering Heights isn’t a love story: Heathcliff is a sado-masochistic wretch.

LARB recently:

Jordan S. Carroll. 10/09/2024: The Definitive History of Neo-Nazi Edgelords. Review of: Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism: The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason’s Siege / Spencer Sunshine, on Siege : The Collected Writings of James Mason / James Mason.

Charlie Tyson. 10/10/2024: A Chaos of Privilege and Prejudice. Review of: Our Evenings / Alan Hollinghurst.

Mark Athitakis. Atlantic, 10/10/2024: The Woman Who Would Be Steinbeck. "John Steinbeck beat Sanora Babb to the great American Dust Bowl novel—using her field notes. What do we owe her today."

New Yorker books recently:

Merve Emre. 10/08/2024: The Bard of Turkish Alienation. Review of the short story collection Waiting for the Fear / Oguz Atay, Ralph Hubbell (Translator), Merve Emre (Introduction -- the New Yorker review is taken from the intro); NYRB Classics, scheduled for publ. 10/22 per Amazon.

Alexandra Schwartz. 10/07/2024: Rachel Kushner’s Covert Op Against Realism. Review of: Creation Lake: A Novel / Rachel Kushner.

Sarah Smarsh. 10/09/2024: Sarah Smarsh on Capturing the Richness of Working-Class America. "The author of “Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth,” a memoir about growing up on a farm in Kansas, talks about the books that have influenced her career-long exploration of the country’s poor."

Recently on Public Books:

Jonathan Foiles. 10/10/2024: She Really Wanted Nothing to Do with It”: Gabriel Brownstein on the Ongoing Question of “Hysteria.” Review of: The Secret Mind of Bertha Pappenheim: The Woman Who Invented Freud’s Talking Cure / Gabriel Brownstein.

Alex Streim. 10/09/2024: Atomic Achilles. Review of: The Maniac / Benjamín Labatut.

Judith Levine. Boston Review, 10/09/2024: Abortion’s Future. Review of: The Fall of Roe: The Rise of a New America / Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer -- Undue Burden: Life and Death Decisions in Post-Roe America / Shefali Luthra -- Abortion Beyond the Law: Building a Global Feminist Movement for Self-Managed Abortion / Naomi Braine.

Nancy Reddy. The Millions, 10/09/2024: Emily Van Duyne Is Rewriting the Myth of Sylvia Plath. Review of: Loving Sylvia Plath: A Reclamation / Emily Van Duyne.

Recent LitHub:

Michael Lynn Crews. 10/10/2024: From Beowulf to Foucault: On the Literary Influences of Cormac McCarthy. Excerpt from: Books Are Made Out of Books: A Guide to Cormac McCarthy’s Literary Influences / Michael Lynn Crews.

Ben Edge. 10/09/2024: Fascinating Landscape of European Folklore. By the author of Folklore Rising: An Artist's Journey Through the British Ritual Year.

>37 featherbear:

A.O. Scott. NYT, 10/09/2024: What Good Is Great Literature? "As the Nobel Committee gets ready to admit a new writer into the pantheon, our critic asks: Is greatness overrated?"

Gary Saul Morson. Jewish Review of Books, Fall 2024: Atlas Schlepped. Review of: Ayn Rand: Writing a Gospel of Success / Alexandra Popoff.

Not sure why The Critic is reviewing this twice (previously in September by Simon Evans).

Neil Armstrong. The Critic (UK), 10/11/2024: Much more than mere child’s play. "Children’s literature is the platform on which everything else is built." (A 2nd) Review of: The Haunted Wood: A History of Childhood Reading / Sam Leith.

Maris Kreizman. LitHub, 10/10/2024: Which One of You Sent Me Lonesome Dove in the Mail? Or: Tackling the Great American Western. Review of: Lonesome Dove / Larry McMurtry.

Recent history & politics round-up:

Kelefah Sanneh. New Yorker, 10/07/2024: How John Lewis Put a Legacy of Heroism to Use. Review of: John Lewis: A Life / David Greenberg.

Jordan Weissmann. WaPo, 10/11/2024: A tour of the very weird places where the global elite hide wealth. Review of: The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World / Atossa Araxia Abrahamian.

Franklin Foer. Atlantic, 10/11/2024: This Time, Bob Woodward Gets It Right. A favorable review of: War / Bob Woodward. Publication date 10/15 per Amazon. "behind-the-scenes story of three wars—Ukraine, the Middle East and the struggle for the American Presidency."

A.O. Scott. NYT, 10/09/2024: Inside Biden’s ‘War’ Room: Heads of State and Heads of Hair. Another review of the Woodward book: "Bob Woodward doesn’t know which story he wants to tell in his latest presidential chronicle."

Explaining US politics to the British:

Jane Ciabattari. BBC Culture, 10/12/2024: Six books to help understand the US and its politics:

These Truths – A History of the United States / Jill Lepore (2018) -- Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980 / Rick Perlstein (2020) -- Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of America's Political Crisis / James Davison Hunter (2024) -- Liberty and Sexuality / David J Garrow (1998) -- Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic / Sam Quinones (2015) -- Life After Capitalism / George Gilder (2023).

Geraldo Cadava. New Yorker, 10/09/2024: The Challenge of Mapping the Latino Right. Review of: Defectors: The Rise of the Latino Far Right and What It Means for America / Paola Ramos, with reference also to her Finding Latinx: In Search of the Voices Redefining Latino Identity.

Naomi Fry. New Yorker, 10/12/2024: Even in Her Memoir, Melania Trump Remains a Mystery. Review of Melania / Melania Trump.

David Kirby. WaPo, 10/11/2024. Why Fleetwood Mac is forever. Review of: Dreams: The Many Lives of Fleetwood Mac / Mark Blake.

Leslie Camhi. New Yorker, 10/11/2024: The Mordant Intimacy of Cécile Desprairies’s “The Propagandist.” Review of: The Propagandist / Cécile Desprairies; translated by Natasha Lehrer.

Michelle Willens. LARB, 10/13/2024: The Story of a Generation. Review of: Connie: a memoir / Connie Chung

Andrew Orlowski. The Critic (UK), 10/15/2024: The Bezos behemoth. Review of: The Everything War: Amazon’s Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power / Dana Mattioli.

TLS October 18, 2024|No. 6342

Featured

Katie Stallard. Sliding towards autocracy: How ageing, paranoid dictators are looking to undermine the West. Review of: AUTOCRACY, INC.: The dictators who want to run the world / Anne Applebaum -- HOW TYRANTS FALL: And how nations survive / Marcel Dirsus -- THE ORIGINS OF ELECTED STRONGMEN: How personalist parties destroy democracy from within / Erica Frantz, Andrea Kendall-Talyor, Joseph Wright -- THE REACTIONARY SPIRIT: How America’s most insidious political tradition swept the world / Zack Beauchamp -- THE WANNABE FASCISTS: A guide to understanding the greatest threat to democracy / Federico Finchelstein.

Yoojin Grace Wuertz. A hunger for truth: Why the Nobel laureate Han Kang makes uncomfortable reading for the Korean authorities. (Essay)

Heather Clark. Good vile words: Sylvia Plath’s unpublished short stories reveal her passionate dedication to her craft. Review of: THE COLLECTED PROSE OF SYLVIA PLATH / editor Peter K. Steinberg.

Reece Sheersmith. Hauntings from the mist: Letters by a ‘ghost story’ writer whose fictions transcend genre. Review of: ROBERT AICKMAN: Selected letters to Kirby McCauley / Robert Aickman.

Literature

Lucy Fleming. For children of all ages: Why we love the books we read in youth. Review of: THE HAUNTED WOOD: A history of childhood reading / Sam Leith.

Eileen M. Hunt. Property rights and wrongs: The exclusion of women through male inheritance and rank. Review of: MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT AND POLITICAL ECONOMY / Catherine Packham.

J.J. Long. Lost histories, forgotten lives: Images that illuminate W. G. Sebald’s novels. Review of: SHADOWS OF REALITY: A catalogue of W. G. Sebald’s photographic materials / Clive Scott and Nick Warr, editors.

Alice Blackhurst. The pursuit of maman: Finding literary kinship in Colette’s family ties. Review of: COLETTE: My literary mother / Michèle Roberts.

Claire Lowden. Shadow play: An actor’s life, from benefaction and boarding school to Brexit. Review of: OUR EVENINGS / Alan Hollinghurst.

Lorna Scott Fox. Parodies and puzzles: Absurdist versions of epic quests. Review of: THE THINKING-ABOUT-GLADYS MACHINE / Mario Levrero; translated by Annie McDermott and Kit Schluter.

Jonathan Gibbs. Best job in the world: The latest addition to the growing canon of ‘good dad’ literature. Review of: CHILDISH LITERATURE / Alejandro Zambra; translated by Megan McDowell.

C.K. Stead. All in the same canoe: The Māori renaissance in eco-poetry. Review of: KOE: An Aotearoa ecopoetry anthology / Janet Newman and Robert Sullivan, editors.

In Brief Review of: L'ORDINAIRE DE LA LITTÉRATURE: Que peut (encore) la théorie littéraire / Florent Coste.

In Brief Review of: THERE'S A MONSTER BEHIND THE DOOR / Gaëlle Bélem; translated by Karen Fleetwood and Laëtitia Saint-Loubert.

In Brief Review of: UNDISCOVERED / Gabriela Wiener; translated by Julia Sanches.

Arts

Amber Massie Blomfield. Estragon’s trousers: A new production featuring Samuel Beckett’s timeless odd couple. Review of Samuel Beckett's WAITING FOR GODOT, Theatre Royal Haymarket, London, until December 21.

Boyd Tonkin. Weird and wonderful: The Warburg Institute’s £14.5 million makeover. Review of the exhibition MEMORY AND MIGRATION: The Warburg Institute 1926–2024, Warburg Institute, London, until December 20.

Ben Street. Parallel lines: Art histories that celebrate the process of making. Review of: THE STORY OF DRAWING: An alternative history of art / Susan Owens -- HOW PAINTING HAPPENS: (and why it matters) / Martin Gayford.

In Brief Review of: STRANGE THINGS ARE HAPPENING: Adventures in music / Richard Norris. ("Musical encounters with Sun Ra, Joe Strummer and ‘the lysergic’")

Science & Technology

Emily Jones. Digging for victory?: The trade-offs between rare earth mining and green objectives. Review of: THE WAR BELOW: Lithium, copper, and the global battle to power our lives / Ernest Scheyder.

Sports

In Brief Review of: TESTAMENT OF A TROUT FISHER / Laurence Catlow.

In Brief Review of: EXTRA TIME BECKONS, PENALTIES LOOM: How to use (and abuse) the language of football / Adam Hurrey.

History, Politics, & Society

Seb Falk. Money and capital: The sustainable medieval economy. Review of: THE GREEN AGES: Medieval innovations in sustainability / Annette Kehnel; translated by Gesche Ipsen.

Sofia Cumming. Great escape: The rescue of the intelligentsia from wartime Marseille. Review of: MARSEILLE 1940: Die große Flucht der Literatur / Uwe Wittstock.

June Purvis. A woman’s place: The long view of feminist struggles and achievements. Review of: SEXED: A history of British feminism / Susanna Rustin.

Alexander Lefebvre. Mind your own damn business!: The dangers of positive liberty. Review of: ON FREEDOM / Timothy Snyder.

In Brief Review of: LIVING THE ASIAN CENTURY: An undiplomatic memoir / Kishore Mahbubani.

Karl Ove Knausgård. Guardian, 10/18/2024: Karl Ove Knausgård: ‘The book that changed me as a teenager? The History of Bestiality.’

NYRB Nov 7 2024

Literature

Christine Smallwood. As I Lay Dying. Review of: The Morning Star / Karl Ove Knausgaard, translated from the Norwegian by Martin Aitken -- The Wolves of Eternity / Karl Ove Knausgaard, translated from the Norwegian by Martin Aitken -- The Third Realm / Karl Ove Knausgaard, translated from the Norwegian by Martin Aiken.

Nicole Rudick. ‘A Woman Who Wins.’ "In her series of historical novels about the life of Saint Hilda of Whitby, Nicola Griffith explores how a woman of modest means became one of the most influential people in seventh-century Britain." Review of: Hild & Menewood / Nicola Griffith.

Fintan O'Toole. Playing for Time. Review of: Glorious Exploits / Ferdia Lennon.

Arts

Jed Perl. Ralph Ellison’s Alchemical Camera. Review of: Ralph Ellison: Photographer / edited by Michal Raz-Russo and John F. Callahan.

Science & Technology

Sue Halpern. The Coming Tech Autocracy. Review of: AI Needs You: How We Can Change AI’s Future and Save Our Own / Verity Harding -- Taming Silicon Valley: How We Can Ensure That AI Works for Us / Gary Marcus -- The Mind’s Mirror: Risk and Reward in the Age of AI / Daniela Rus and Gregory Mone -- Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI / Madhumita Murgia.

History, Politics, & Society

Christopher R. Browning. Hitler’s Enablers. Review of: Takeover: Hitler’s Final Rise to Power / Timothy W. Ryback --- Hitler’s First Hundred Days: When Germans Embraced the Third Reich / Peter Fritzsche -- The Death of Democracy: Hitler’s Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic / Benjamin Carter Hett.

Mark Danner. Getting Out the Fear Vote. Review of: Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass / Ramin Setoodeh.

Adam Gaffney, David U. Himmelstein, and Steffie Woolhandler. The Only Way to Fix US Health Care. Review of: We’ve Got You Covered: Rebooting American Health Care / Liran Einav and Amy Finkelstein.

Christine Henneberg. Calculated Risks. Review of: We Choose To: A Memoir of Providing Abortion Care Before, During, and After Roe / Curtis Boyd and Glenna Halvorson-Boyd -- Abortion in the Age of Unreason: A Doctor’s Account of Caring for Women Before and After Roe v. Wade / Warren M. Hern.

Plus many reflections on the upcoming election.

Garth Risk Hallberg. Granta online edition, 10/10/2024: Silas Lucas. "Where do novelists get their ideas?" A writing memoir.

Randy Boyagoda. Atlantic, 10/17/2024: I Hate Didactic Novels. Here’s Why This One Works. Review of: Playground / Richard Powers.

Daniel Wu. WaPo, 10/18/2024: The world’s largest internet archive is under siege — and fighting back. "Hackers breached the Internet Archive, whose outsize cultural importance belies a small budget and lean infrastructure." (Temporarily unlocked)

Weekend books in the Washington Post:

Geoffrey Kabaservice. WaPo, 10/18/2024: An immersive account of America’s fierce debate about joining World War II. Review of: America First: Roosevelt vs. Lindbergh in the Shadow of War / H.W. Brands.

Anna Schechtman. WaPo, 10/18/2024: ‘Linguaphile’ explores why we delight in words and meaning-making. Review of: Linguaphile: A Life of Language Love / Julie Sedivy.

Adam Szetela. WaPo, 10/14/2024: Finally, a fresh argument against ‘wokeness.’ Review of: We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite / Musa al-Gharbi.

Mariana Alfaro. WaPo, 10/14/2024: McConnell called Trump ‘stupid,’ a ‘despicable human being,’ new book says. Reporting on The Price of Power: How Mitch McConnell Mastered the Senate, Changed America, and Lost His Party / Michael Tackett (scheduled for publication 1 week before the election)

Recent New Yorker book talk:

Joshua Rothman. New Yorker, 10/14/2024: Do They Really Believe That Stuff?. Review of: Good Reasonable People: The Psychology Behind America's Dangerous Divide / Keith Payne.

Jennifer Doudna. New Yorker, 10/16/2024: Jennifer Doudna on the Brave New World Being Ushered In by Gene Editing. "A few weeks ago, Doudna, who works at the University of California, Berkeley, talked to us about a few books that she thinks best equip one to understand the promise and potential peril of the gene-editing revolution. Her remarks have been edited and condensed." The list:

CRISPR People: the science and ethics of editing humans / Henry T. Greely
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race / Walter Isaacson.
Editing Humanity: The CRISPR Revolution and the New Era of Genome Editing / Kevin Davies.
"Bonus picks":
The Gene: An Intimate History / Siddhartha Mukherjee.
Breaking Through: My Life in Science / Katalin Karikó.
The Worlds I See: curiosity, exploration, and discovery at the dawn of AI / Fei-Fei Li.

Recent recommendations from fivebooks.com (pt 1):

Henry Oliver, interviewer Cal Flyn. 10/16/2024: The Best Intellectual Biographies. " We might think it means closely-written books that examine the evolution of a thinker’s ideas, but it can also mean a biography of a thinker in which the ideas and the life are carefully related. ... I have tried to choose books that are compelling, and which do a good job of linking personality and thinking." Oliver's list:

John Stuart Mill: A Biography / Nicolas Capaldi.
The Marriage Question: George Eliot's Double Life / Clare Carlisle.
Froude's Life of Carlyle / James Anthony Froude.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X / with Alex Haley.
Parfit: A Philosopher and His Mission to Save Morality / David Edmonds.

Oliver regrets that he had to leave out: Karl Marx: A Life / Francis Wheen -- Cataloging the World: Paul Otlet and the Birth of the Information Age / Alex Wright -- The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA / James D. Watson -- How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer / Sarah Bakewell -- Diaries of Virginia Woolf

Recent recommendations from fivebooks.com (pt. 2):

Charles Tripp, interviewer Sophie Roell. 10/11/2024: The 2024 British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding. The shortlist:

Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization / Ed Conway.
Smoke and Ashes: Opium's Hidden Histories / Amitav Ghosh.
The Secret Lives of Numbers: A Hidden History of Math's Unsung Trailblazers / Kate Kitagawa & Timothy Revell.
Divided: Racism, Medicine and Why We Need to Decolonise Healthcare / Annabel Sowemimo.
Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York / Ross Perlin.
The Tame and the Wild: People and Animals after 1492 / Marcy Norton.

Also worth noting, fivebooks.com's omnium gatherum of recent historical fiction lists:

Last updated 10/07/2024: Historical Fiction: recommended by novelists and historians:

Best historical fiction of 2024 recommended by Katharine Grant -- Historical novels set in Italy recommended by Tracy Chevalier -- Five of the best literary historical novels recommended by Paul Carlucci -- Five of the best feminist historical novels recommended by Flora Carr -- Historical fiction recommended by Historians on Five Books -- Historical fiction set around the world recommended by Jane Johnson -- The best historical fiction set in England recommended by Lesley Thompson -- Classic novels of the American Civil War recommended by Craig A. Warren ... & so on. Running out of steam! The list goes on.

Phil Klay. Commonweal, 10/18/2024: ‘And You a Catholic!’: Faith beyond the culture wars. On bad boy Evelyn Waugh.

Books in The New Yorker from their money issue:

Tad Friend. 10/21/2024: A Controversial Rare-Book Dealer Tries to Rewrite His Own Ending. "Glenn Horowitz built a fortune selling the archives of writers such as Vladimir Nabokov and Alice Walker. Then a rock star pressed charges."

Hua Hsu. 10/21/2024: The Decline of the Working Musician. Review of: Band People: Life and Work in Popular Music / Franz Nicolay.

Nathan Wolff. WaPo, 10/21/2024: In this history of American horror, nothing is scarier than our past. Review of: American Scary: A History of Horror, from Salem to Stephen King and Beyond / Jeremy Dauber.

Amy Davidson Sorkin. New Yorker, 10/21/2024: What Can Memoirs by Supreme Court Justices Teach Us? Review of: Lovely One: A Memoir / Ketanji Brown Jackson.

TLS October 25, 2024|No. 6343

Featured

Ana Alicia Garza. In the know: Hard truths in the essays and fiction of Charles Dickens. Review of two new Oxford University Press editions: THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER / Charles Dickens; edited by J. H. Alexander -- THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF NICHOLAS NICKLEBY / Charles Dickens; edited by Elizabeth James and Joel J. Brattin, with J. H. Alexander.

Peter Thonemann. Bright lights, big cities: An ‘extraordinary scholar’ argues that the Greek polis reached its peak after Alexander the Great. Review of: POLIS: A new history of the ancient Greek city-state from the early Iron Age to the End of Antiquity / John Ma.

Oonagh Devitt Tremblay. Winning the hunger game: A woman’s unhealthy relationship with food. Review of: MY GOOD BRIGHT WOLF: A memoir / Sarah Moss.

Lily Herd. Retired from the disco floor: Illness and creativity in a singer-songwriter’s formative years. Review of: NOBODY’S EMPIRE / Stuart Murdoch (fiction).

Literature & Bibliography

Simon Horobin. In the script: Book production before Gutenberg. Review of: THE MEDIEVAL SCRIPTORIUM: Making books in the Middle Ages / Sara J. Charles.

Joshua Rice. Book burning: The loss of medieval manuscripts and one famous great escape. Review of: HISTORY IN FLAMES: The destruction and survival of medieval manuscripts / Robert Bartlett.

Ian Sansom. Manual labour: The golden age of instruction books. (Essay)

Tim Whitmarsh. Libertine leading the people: Why Luigi Settembrini favoured revolutionary love and politics. Review of: CLASSICS, LOVE, REVOLUTION: The legacies of Luigi Settembrini / Andrea Capra and Barbara Graziosi.

Marcel Lepper. Blood and flames: Goethe’s public and private views about the Jews were at variance. Review of: GOETHE UND DIE JUDEN / W. Daniel Wilson.

Daniel Johnson. A hanging judge: The flawed greatness of the author of Faust. Review of: GOETHE: His Faustian life / A.N. Wilson.

Elizabeth Brogden. Murder, he wrote and wrote: A sensationalist novel from colonial India. Review of: CONFESSIONS OF A THUG / Philip Meadows Taylor; edited by Kim A. Wagner (Oxford World's Classics).

Piotr Gwiazda. Betrayed by man: A Polish critique of industrial-era capitalism. Review of: THE HOMELESS / Stefan Żeromski; translated by Stephanie Kraft.

Nicholas Royle. A face but no head: Uncanny stories of not-telling. Review of: PANICS / Barbara Molinard; translated by Emma Ramadan.

Miranda France. The flowering of his secret: Stories and vignettes from a celebrated film-maker. Review of: THE LAST DREAM / Pedro Almodóvar; translated by Frank Wynne.

Christopher Shrimpton. Blame the men: Surrealist tales of war and sin, nature and cruelty. Review of: JOURNEYS AND FLOWERS / Mercè Rodoreda; translated by Nick Caistor and Gala Sicart Olavide.

In Brief Review of: SEATED WOMAN / Guillaume Apollinaire; translated by Timothy Mathews.

In Brief Review of: KALMANN AND THE SLEEPING MOUNTAIN / Joachim B. Schmidt; translated by Jamie Lee Searle (Icelandic crime fiction)

In Brief Review of: MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY YORKSHIRE POETRY: Cultural identities, political crises / Kyra Piperides.

In Brief Review of: DUELO SIN BRÚJULA / Carme López Mercader (" describes the feelings of constant despair that she has experienced since the death in 2022 of Marías, her late husband.")

In Brief Review of: NIGHTSHADE MOTHER: A disentangling / Gwyneth Lewis (memoir by "the national poet of Wales")

Arts

Graham Daseler. Sound and vision: A Broadway director who became an innovator in the talkies era. Review of: PEERLESS: Rouben Mamoulian, Hollywood, and Broadway / Kurt Jensen.

Philippa Snow. Nouveau shaman: The actor Nicolas Cage, ‘a freaky master of his craft.’ Review of: HOW COPPOLA BECAME CAGE / Zach Schonfeld.

Flora Willson. Music across millennia: A one-volume, far from comprehensive guide. Review of: THE SHORTEST HISTORY OF MUSIC / Andrew Ford.

J.E. Smyth. Sherlock’s home: A newly restored silent incarnation of Conan Doyle’s protean sleuth. Review of: SILENT SHERLOCK: Three classic cases, London Film Festival, BFI Southbank.

Rod Mengham. Bodies on beds: Tracey Emin’s defiance in the face of vulnerability. Review of the exhibition TRACEY EMIN: I Will Follow You to the End, White Cube Bermondsey, until November 10.

In Brief Review of: JOHN BERGER: Ways of learning / Iona Heath.

Science & Technology

Keith Frankish. The ape that made up its mind: Human intelligence must guide technological evolution. Review of: AN ARTIFICIAL HISTORY OF NATURAL INTELLIGENCE: Thinking with machines from Descartes to the digital age / David W. Bates.

Johnjoe McFadden. A scientist of the future: Richard Dawkins predicts the evolution of evolution. Review of: THE GENETIC BOOK OF THE DEAD: A Darwinian reverie / Richard Dawkins; illustrated by Jana Lenzová.

Sports

In Brief Review of: BLACK ARSENAL: Club, culture, identity / Clive Chijioke Nwonka and Matthew Harle, editors.

History, Politics, & Society

Keith M. Brown. A Union of crowns: The smooth transition from Elizabeth I to James I. Review of: FROM TUDOR TO STUART: The regime change from Elizabeth I to James I / Susan Doran.

Lawrence Douglas. Minority report: The defects of the antiquated US Constitution. Review of: NO DEMOCRACY LASTS FOREVER: How the Constitution threatens the United States / Erwin Chemerin.

Paula Marantz Cohen. Still a rich boys’ club: Women’s long struggle to break into the Wall Street network. Review of: SHE-WOLVES: The untold history of women on Wall Street / Paulina Bren.

Recent reviews from LARB:

Peter Kazaras. 10/23/2024: Can Opera Be Reborn? Review of: A New Philosophy of Opera / Yuval Sharon.

Peter B. Kaufman. 10/23/2024: A Venerable and Time-Tested Guide. Review of: The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th Edition.

Tim Riley. 10/22/2024: You’ve Got to Let This Razor Blade into Your Life. Review of: A Few Words in Defense of Our Country: The Biography of Randy Newman / Robert Hilburn.

Jonathan Conlin. 10/26/2024: Eastern Moonbeams. Review of: Empire's Son, Empire's Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah / Nile Green.

Miguel Salazar. NYT, 10/23/2024: 5 Books to Help You Understand the Immigration Debate. "Journalists and scholars explore the issue at every level, from the legacy of Cold War coups to the vulnerable lives caught up in a tangled system." (Temporarily unlocked) The books are:

One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924-1965 / Jia Lynn Yang.

Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis / Jonathan Blitzer.

The Border Within: The Economics of Immigration in an Age of Fear / Tara Watson and Kalee Thompson.

The Undocumented Americans / Karla Cornejo Villavicencio.

Empire of Borders: The Expansion of the US Border around the World / Todd Miller.

I noticed there are links to 2 other interesting reading lists for the super-conscientious voter:

Jason Furman. 10/21/2024: 5 Books to Help You Understand the Economy Before Voting.

Mattie Kahn. 10/22/2024: 6 Books to Help You Understand the Reproductive Rights Debate.

Casey Cep. New Yorker, 10/23/2024: The Megachurch That Tried to Confront Racism. Review of: Undivided: The Quest for Racial Solidarity in an American Church / Hahrie Han.

Daniel Johnson. The Critic (UK), 10/24/2024: The age of reason, sliced and diced. Review of: The Enlightenment: An Idea and its History / J.C.D. Clark.

Judith Shulevitz. Atlantic, 10/24/2024: Michel Houellebecq Has Some Fresh Predictions. Be Afraid. Review of: Annihilation / Michel Houellebecq; translator Shaun Whiteside.

WaPo weekend books:

Colin Dickey. 10/23/2024: A history of Opus Dei — and the conspiracy theories around it. Review of: Opus: The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking, and Right-Wing Conspiracy inside the Catholic Church / Gareth Gore.

Nora Krug. 10/25/2024: For ‘Perfect Couple’ author Elin Hilderbrand, book organization is optional. An "interactive" tour.

Drew Broussard. LitHub, 10/24/2024: Have you purchased a weirdly low-quality paperback book lately? This may be why.

Jonathan Malesic. NYT, 10/25/2024: There’s a Very Good Reason College Students Don’t Read Anymore. It's the vibes.

I still find affecting the Judy Collins rendition of Woody Guthrie's Deportee; this book is about the story behind the song:

Tom Zoellner. LARB, 10/25/2024: 32 Strips of Paper. Review of: They Call You Back: A Lost History, A Search, A Memoir / Tim Z. Hernandez.

Gary Indiana, 1950-2024

Penelope Green. NYT, 10/24/2024: Gary Indiana, Acerbic Cultural Critic and Novelist, Dies at 74.

His LT page: https://www.librarything.com/author/indianagary

Author of the novel Depraved Indifference, a novel based on the mother/son murderers Sante & Kenneth Kimes, & the true crime book Three-Month Fever: The Andrew Cunanan Story, though I know him best as the Village Voice art critic.

Daniel Felsenthal. Atlantic, 10/29/2024: The Writer Who Understood the True Nature of Obsession. "The late Gary Indiana kept the culture of his time close to his chest because it fueled his indignation—and his fixations."

Antoine Guironnet. Public Books, 10/23/2024: Asset Managers (Against) Society. Review of: Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Own the World / Brett Christophers.

George Scialabba. Commonweal, 10/16/2024: Charles Taylor’s exploration of Romantic poetry.

Catherine Habgood. LitHub, 10/25/2024: 10 Best Books on Guns in America.

Yiyun Li. Harper's, Nov. 2024: The Seventy Percent: On minor characters and human possibility.

"People have thoughts and ideas all the time, many of them preliminary. Sometimes people mistake their feelings for thoughts and ideas, which are in turn mistaken for absolute truths. The point of writing and reading fiction is not to stay with the first thought or idea, nor the third or the fourth, but to push further until one says to oneself, Even though I haven’t thought through everything, I have brought myself as far as I can within my limited capacity. Without thinking through, thoughts are no more than slogans.

"If conviction—instead of clarity, the kind of clarity that arrives via muddled thinking, repeated questioning, and a tolerance for not knowing and not understanding—is the goal of reading and writing, then much is already lost.

"... I would like to argue that most of us in life are in positions close to those occupied by the minor characters in War and Peace (and there are nearly six hundred of them).

"My father also taught me something else, which I later recognized in a Song-dynasty poem. He estimated that we find life—people, situations, conditions—below our expectations 80 percent of the time.

"If, in every class I teach, one out of ten students leaves with a habit of asking themselves, Can I live with the fact that 80 percent of the time life will not meet my expectations? Can I tolerate this ambiguity, both in literature and in life?, I shall say to myself, I have done my job. "

Kathryn Schulz. New Yorker, 10/28/2024: What Do Animals Understand About Death? Review of: Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Death / Susana Monsó.

Recent postings from LitHub:

Damion Searls. 10/29/2024: Why Close Reading is An Essential Part of Literary Translation. Excerpt from The Philosophy of Translation / Damion Searls.

Ben Woolard. 10/29/2024: Our Burning Era: Reading George Stewart’s Fire in Fire Season. Anchor to: Fire / George R. Stewart.

Dan Sheehan. 10/29/2024: Hundreds of Authors Pledge to Boycott Israeli Cultural Institutions.

TLS November 1, 2024|No. 6344

Featured

Mark Storey. Fiction for geeks and freaks: The decades before horror became respectable. (Essay)

Tom Seymour Evans. Green terror: An Australian vision of the eco-apocalypse. Review of: JUICE / Tim Winton.

Rory Waterman. . Married to amazement: How Mary Oliver ‘encourages us to believe.’ Review of: DEVOTIONS: The selected poems / Mary Oliver.

Jonathan Fitzgibbons. Dynamic, not doomed: Taking the British Revolution out of the Restoration’s shadow. Review of: REPUBLIC: Britain’s revolutionary decade, 1649-1660 / Alice Hunt -- THE FALL: Last days of the English republic / Henry Reece -- OLIVER CROMWELL: Commander in chief / Ronald Hutton.

Literature

Eric Naiman. Anna Karenina in the making: An ‘unparalleled’ account of the novel’s composition. Review of: ZHIZN’ TVORIMOGO ROMANA: Ot avanteksta k kontekstu “Anny Kareninoi” / Mikhail Dolbilov.

Barbara Heldt. Revenge, rage and laughter: An autobiographical Russian novel and misery memoir. Review of: THE TALNIKOV FAMILY / Avdotya Panaeva; translated by Fiona Bell.

Miranda France. Visible cracks: A Dutch contender for the Booker prize, in broken English. Review of: THE SAFEKEEP / Yael van der Wouden.

Costica Bradatan. Blood on the tracks: A life caught in the wheels of twentieth-century history. Review of: TOO GREAT A SKY / Liliana Corobca; translated by Monica Cure.

Elizabeth Dearnley. Modern monsters: Gothic goes mainstream in contemporary literature. Review of: 21ST-CENTURY BRITISH GOTHIC: The monstrous, spectral, and uncanny in contemporary fiction / Emily Horton -- THE FICTION OF DREAD: Dystopia, monstrosity, and apocalypse / Robert T. Tally Jr.

Philippa Conlon. Small delights and horror: Michael Longley is more than a poet of the Troubles. Review of: ASH KEYS: New selected poems / Michael Longley.

In Brief Review of: EDITH HOLLER / Edward Carey.

In Brief Review of: BAMBINO A ROMA / Chico Buarque.

Arts

Edward Allen. Insistence and resistance: Giacomo Puccini’s Il trittico in a trio of productions. (Essay)

Anna Aslanyan. The story of a storyteller: A death-row drama retold on the stage. Review of Lindsey Ferrentino's play THE FEAR OF 13, Donmar Warehouse, London, until November 30.

Michael Saler. Something wicked: How the horror genre reflects real American nightmares. Review of: AMERICAN SCARY: A history of horror, from Salem to Stephen King and beyond / Jeremy Dauber -- FEEDING THE MONSTER: Why horror has a hold on us / Anna Bogutskaya.

In Brief Review of: MELANCHOLY UNDERCOVER: The book of ABBA / Jan Gradvall; translated by Sarah Clyne Sundberg.

Science & Technology

Richard Lea. The truth is out there, maybe: UFOs and the men and women who claim to have seen them. Review of: AFTER THE FLYING SAUCERS CAME: The global history of the UFO phenomenon / Greg Eghigian -- IMMINENT: Inside the Pentagon’s hunt for UFOs / Luis Elizondo.

Kate Brown. Bad housekeeping: The slow drip of methane and other gases into the atmosphere. Review of: INTO THE CLEAR BLUE SKY: The path to restoring our atmosphere / Rob Jackson.

History, Politics, & Society

Larry Wolff. Not so strong: The troubled reign of the ‘Saxon Hercules’ who became king of Poland. Review of: AUGUSTUS THE STRONG: A study in artistic greatness and political fiasco / Tim Blanning.

Jacob Mikanowski. Privileged and patriotic: A Polish princess who agitated for her country’s independence. Review of: IZABELA THE VALIANT: The story of an indomitable Polish princess / Adam Zamoyski.

James Robins. Soiled muck-raker: A journalist who exposed the appeasers, but took Moscow’s line. Review of: BELIEVE NOTHING UNTIL IT IS OFFICIALLY DENIED: Claud Cockburn and the invention of guerrilla journalism / Patrick Cockburn.

Regina Rini. Some momentary discomfort: How metaphysics relieves anxiety (Essay)

In Brief Review of: GEMEINSINN: Der sechste, soziale Sinn / Aleida and Jan Assmann.

In Brief Review of: PRIVATE REVOLUTIONS: Coming of age in a new China / Yuan Yang.

In Brief Review of: HOW NOT TO BE A SUPERMODEL: A noughties memoir / Ruth Crilly.

In Brief Review of: SOVIET ADVENTURES IN THE LAND OF THE CAPITALISTS: Ilf and Petrov’s American road trip / Lisa A. Kirschenbaum.

Christina Caron. NYT, 10/31/2024: Librarians Face a Crisis of Violence and Abuse. Temporarily unlocked.

NYRB Online November 21, 2024

Literature & Bibliography

Tim Parks. Hawthorne’s Mood Swings. Review of: The Life of the Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne / Dale Salwak.

Elain Blair. Toward a New Realism. Review of: Parade / Rachel Cusk.

Andrew Raftery. Rescuing the People’s Parchment. Review of: The Declaration in Script and Print: A Visual History of America’s Founding Document / John Bidwell.

Clair Wills. A Mind Cast Out. Review of: The Edge of the Alphabet / Janet Frame.

Langdon Hammer. ‘The Kingdom of Ends.’ Review of: The Selected Shepherd / Reginald Shepherd, selected and with an introduction by Jericho Brown.

Arts

Ruth Bernard Yeazell. Friend of the Family. Review of: Family Romance: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers / Jean Strouse. (NYRB omits a bibliographic citation perhaps because the publisher is not yet known; publ. date Nov 19 per Amazon)

A.S. Hamrah. You’re Brutal, I’m Brutal. Review of The Apprentice, a film directed by Ali Abbasi.

Science & Technology

Michelle Nijhuis. Life in the Ruins. Review of: The Burning Earth: A History / Sunil Amrith -- A Natural History of Empty Lots: Field Notes from Urban Edgelands, Back Alleys, and Other Wild Places / Christopher Brown.

Carl Elliott. The Horrors of Hepatitis Research. Review of: Dangerous Medicine: The Story Behind Human Experiments with Hepatitis / Sydney A. Halpern.

Religion

Rozina Ali. God’s Directive. Review of: Soul by Soul: The Evangelical Mission to Spread the Gospel to Muslims / Adriana Carranca.

History, Politics, & Society

Jenny Uglow. The Legacy of Red Vienna. Review of: Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World / Richard Cockett.

Coco Fusco. The Crime of Human Movement. Review of: Welcome the Wretched: In Defense of the “Criminal Alien” / César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández -- In the Shadow of Liberty: The Invisible History of Immigrant Detention in the United States / Ana Raquel Minian.

Timothy Garton Ash. Homage to Kharkiv. (Essay: "In the besieged city, the cost of the remorseless Russian assault is painfully visible despite the Ukrainians’ courage and innovation.")

Christopher de Bellaigue. Iran Exposed. (Essay: "The Islamic Republic’s sordid proxy war with the West may now be leaving it open to an all-out attack as Israel attempts to eliminate its enemies throughout the region.")

Fintan O'Toole. The Protection Racket. (Article originally publ 10/27/2024 online: "For his supporters, Donald Trump’s misogynist attacks against Kamala Harris turn his own history as a predator into an asset.")

Aaron Bady. Boston Review, 10/30/2024: The Parenting Panic. 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 -- Without Children: The Long History of Not Being a Mother / Peggy O’Donnell Heffington -- Father Time: A Natural History of Men and Babies / Sarah Blaffer Hrdy.

Two recent review articles from The New Yorker:

Alexis Okeowo. 10/30/2024: How Binyavanga Wainaina Wrote About Africa. "The Kenyan author, who died in 2019, ruthlessly took down the clichés of writing about the continent. His work is as relevant as ever."

Joshua Rothman. 10/29/2024: Could Steampunk Save Us?. "A goofy-seeming sci-fi subgenre holds useful lessons about managing technology in an accelerating age."

Alexandra Alter. NYT, 11/01/2024: Books by Jodi Picoult, John Green and Stephen King Among the Most Banned in Schools. Temporarily unlocked.

Recent books reviews & book reviewing from The New Yorker:

Adam Gopnick. 10/28/2024: Does the Enlightenment’s Great Female Intellect Need Rescuing? Review of: The Enlightenment's Most Dangerous Woman: Émilie du Châtelet and the Making of Modern Philosophy / Andrew Janiak.

Sloane Crossley. 11/01/2024: Dorothy Parker and the Art of the Literary Takedown. On one of The New Yorker critics from back in the day: "Her reviews are not contemptuous, a common pitfall for her imitators. They are simply unbridled in their dislike."

From Literary Review (UK), Nov 2024 Issue 535:

Freya Johnston. Oratorio of Oratorios. Review of: Every Valley: The Story of Handel’s Messiah / Charles King.

Fiona Sampson. Changed in a Minute. Review of: The Collected Prose of Sylvia Plath / Peter K Steinberg (ed).

Howard Davies. Bumps in the Autobahn. Review of: Kaput: The End of the German Miracle / Wolfgang Münchau.

David Abulafia. Legends of the Phantom Rider. Review of: El Cid: The Life and Afterlife of a Medieval Mercenary / Nora Berend.

Nicholas McDowell. Awake, Arise, or Be Forever Fallen. Review of: What in Me is Dark: The Revolutionary Life of Paradise Lost / Orlando Reade.

D D Guttenplan. Smiley Redux. Review of: Karla’s Choice / Nick Harkaway.

Nicholas Rankin. We Shall Fight in the Buttery. Review of: Oxford’s War 1939–1945 / Ashley Jackson.

Agence France-Presse. 11/01/2024: Universe would die before monkey with keyboard writes Shakespeare, study finds.

Jonathan Rosenbaum. LitHub, 11/05/2024: Visions of Apocalypse: How Gravity’s Rainbow Embodied America’s Post-War Fears. Revisiting Gravity's Rainbow / Thomas Pynchon.

Recent reviews from The Critic (UK):

George Woudhuysen. 11/05/2024: The monumental cradles of democracy. Review of: Polis: A New History of the Ancient Greek City-State from the Early Iron Age to the End of Antiquity / John Ma.

Jean Hatchet. 11/05/2024: How Roman women were victimised twice. Review of: Unfortunately, She was a Nymphomaniac / Joan Smith.

George Packer. Atlantic, 11/05/2024: The Magic Mountain Saved My Life. "When I was young and adrift, Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain gave me a sense of purpose. Today, its vision is startlingly relevant."

Dean Rader. LARB, 11/05/2024: The World Needed More Lorca. Review of: The Dream of Apples: Selected Poems of Federico García Lorca / Federico García Lorca. Translated by Rebecca Seiferle.

Greta Rainbow. The Walrus, 11/01/2024: IYKYK: When Novels Speak a Language Only Part of the Internet Gets. "Every time the names of products or microcelebrities appear in a book, they prick us like a targeted ad."

From The New Yorker some years back, but with some relevance today:

Elizabeth Kolbert. 02/19/2017: Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds. Review of: The Enigma of Reason / Hugo Mercier & Dan Sperber -- The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone / Steven Sloman & Philip Fernbach -- Denying to the Grave: Why We Ignore the Science That Will Save Us / Sara E. Gorman & Jack Gorman.

"Published in the print edition of the February 27, 2017, issue, with the headline “That’s What You Think.”

TLS November 8, 2024|No. 6345

Featured

Alan Jenkins. For the unquiet heart: Songs of loss and lament across two and a half millennia. Review of: THE PENGUIN BOOK OF ELEGY: Poems of memory, mourning and consolation / Andrew Motion and Stephen Regan, editors.

Wendy Slater. A better Russia: The life and death of the country’s most prominent dissident. Review of: PATRIOT: a memoir / Alexei Navalny; translated by Arch Tait with Stephen Dalziel.

Charles Darwent. Playful, mercurial, fugitive: A neglected alumnus of the Bauhaus. Review of the exhibition XANTI SCHAWINSKY: Play, life, illusion: A retrospective, Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg, until January 5, 2025.

Irina Dumitrescu. Language of love: How to pick up a foreign tongue. (Essay)

Literature & Letters

Megan Marz. My Proust, your Proust: Keeping faith with literary classics. Review of the essay collection: ANY PERSON IS THE ONLY SELF / Elisa Gabbert.

Declan Ryan. Literature as life: The correspondence of two citizens of the world. Review of: EXPATRIATES OF NO COUNTRY: The letters of Shirley Hazzard and Donald Keene / Brigitta Olubas, editor.

Norma Clarke. The lovely Perdita: A professional woman writer who conquered society. Review of the exhibition MARY ROBINSON: Actress, mistress, writer, radical, Chawton House, Chawton, Hampshire, until April 21, 2025.

Michael Hughes. Gentle modernity: Returning to rural Irish ‘sentimental whimsy.’ Review of: TIME OF THE CHILD / Niall Williams.

Jude Cook. Freezing point: Social change meets conservative values in the 1960s. Review of: THE LAND IN WINTER / Andrew Miller.

Hal Jensen. Clear the pipes!: Modern life is rubbish for two disaffected narrators. Review of: ALL MY PRECIOUS MADNESS / Mark Bowles -- LESSER RUINS / Mark Haber.

Lamorna Ash. Write about love: Blurring the lines between novelist and protagonist. Review of: STAY WITH ME / Hanne Ørstavik; translated by Martin Aitken.

Daniel Clarke. Homeward bound: The consequences of a South African writer’s ‘footloose existence.’ Review of: FATHERS AND FUGITIVES / S. J. Naudé; translated by Michiel Heyns.

In Brief Review of: OFFICE POLITICS / Wilfrid Sheed.

In Brief Review of: AN IMAGE OF MY NAME ENTERS AMERICA: Essays / Lucy Ives.

In Brief Review of: IF ONLY / Vigdis Hjorth; translated by Charlotte Barslund.

Arts

Kathryn Hughes. ‘I must be seen whole’: The great painter of modern life at home. Review of: MANET: A model family / Diana Seave Greenwald, editor.

Adam Mars-Jones. Songs and soap bubbles: A new musical film from Jacques Audiard. Review of the film EMILIA PÉREZ.

Sports

Devooney Looser. Keeping score: A professional footballer’s literary debt to Virginia Woolf. Review of: THE STRIKER AND THE CLOCK: A beautiful game / Georgia Cloepfil.

Philosophy

Jonathan Egid. Bending the arc of history: Progress towards human freedom in Hegel’s thought. Review of: HEGEL'S WORLD REVOLUTIONS / Richard Bourke.

Richard Whatmore. Making up modernity: Antagonism to religion and the idea of Enlightenment. Review of: THE ENLIGHTENMENT: An idea and its history / J.C.D. Clark.

Science & Technology

Catriona Kelly. By their fruits: Why a botanical treasure trove was denied to the starving population of Leningrad. Review of: THE FORBIDDEN GARDEN OF LENINGRAD: A true story of science and sacrifice in a city under siege / Simon Parkin.

Tom Simpson. Polished bead planet: Taking the long view of the global environment. Review of: THE BURNING EARTH: An environmental history of the last 500 years / Sunil Amrith.

History, Politics, Society & Culture

Daniel Susskind. Culture deficit: An investigation into the deeper causes of inequality. Review of: NATURE, CULTURE, AND INEQUALITY / Thomas Piketty; translated by Willard Wood.

Stephen Lovell. Children of the revolution: How a radical civil obedience movement challenged Soviet power. Review of: TO THE SUCCESS OF OUR HOPELESS CAUSE: The many lives of the Soviet dissident movement / Benjamin Nathans.

Charles Glass. The expendables: The terrorist operation to seize the Iranian embassy in 1980 was never meant to succeed. Review of: THE SIEGE: The remarkable story of the greatest SAS hostage drama / Ben Macintyre.

In Brief Review of: AIRPLANE MODE: An irreverent history of travel / Shahnaz Habib.

In Brief Review of: KINGMAKER: Secrets, lies and the truth about five prime ministers / Graham Brady.

In Brief Review of: GAMBLING MAN: The wild ride of Japan’s Masayoshi Son / Lionel Barber.

In Brief Review of: UNDER COVER OF DARKNESS: Murders in blackout London / Amy Helen Bell.

Joseph Rykwert, 1926-2024

Clay Risen. NYT, 11/07/2024: Joseph Rykwert, 98, Dies; Historian of Architecture Challenged Modernism.

"Joseph Rykwert, an architectural historian who challenged Modernism’s blank-slate approach to architecture and urban design, insisting that healthy communities grew out of deeply felt traditions and values — a position that helped fuel later efforts to make cities more livable and humane — died on Oct. 7 at his home in London.

"Much of his scholarship revolved around the way the past, especially Greco-Roman architecture, filtered down into later eras, and he praised architects who he felt tapped into that heritage — among them, Frank Lloyd Wright, Alvar Aalto and Louis Kahn — even if they identified as Modernists.

"All architecture is metaphor, he liked to say: The Greeks, for example, saw columns as analogous to the human body, a concept he examined in one of his best-known books, “The Dancing Column” (1996)."

His other books include: The Seduction of Place: The History and Future of Cities -- The necessity of artifice: Ideas in architecture -- The Idea of a Town: The Anthropology of Urban Form in Rome, Italy, and The Ancient World -- On Adam's House in Paradise: The Idea of the Primitive Hut in Architectural History

His LT page: https://www.librarything.com/author/rykwertjoseph

Dorothy Allison, 1949-2024

Penelope Green. NYT, 11/08/2024: Dorothy Allison, Author of ‘Bastard Out of Carolina,’ Dies at 75.

"The novel’s heroine is Bone Boatwright, a flinty pre-teenager from a family of charismatic no-hopers — that would be the men — and exhausted, sharp-tongued women, whose children often go hungry despite their hard work. Bone’s secret is an unspeakable horror: Her stepfather has been raping her since she was 5 years old.

“Bastard” was Ms. Allison’s story, too, but rendered as fiction.

"Ms. Allison became a hero to incest survivors, young lesbians and runaways. She was mobbed at readings. Her editor at the time called her “the Lourdes of writers.”

But there was blowback, too. The book was pilloried by some school boards as pornography, and banned at high schools in Maine and California, Ms. Allison’s adopted state. And there were subtler digs. In “Two or Three Things I Know for Sure,” her 1995 memoir, adapted from a monologue she had been performing, she recalled a lesbian therapist friend who cautioned her about speaking frankly of her abuse.

"“People might imagine that sexual abuse makes lesbians,” her friend told her.

“Oh I doubt it,” Ms. Allison retorted, furious. “If it did, there would be so many more.”

"Dorothy’s birth, as she told it, was as violent as her childhood. Ruth was eight months pregnant and asleep in the back seat when her drunken brother plowed his Chevy into another car. Ruth was thrown through the windshield, and Dorothy arrived soon after.

"Decades later, when she was a famous author, she explained in an oral history for Smith College how she was able to escape the fate of most of her female relatives — teenage pregnancy. Her stepfather had given her syphilis when she was 12, and she was sterile. It also helped that she was a lesbian. She wasn’t drawn to the young men who would woo her, and hold her back."

Dorothy Allison's LT page: https://www.librarything.com/author/allisondorothy-1

Lily Burana. Atlantic, 11/12/2024: The Queer Author Who Spoke the Plain Truth.

Brian Murphy. WaPo, 11/12/2024: Dorothy Allison, author of unsparing ‘Bastard Out of Carolina,’ dies at 75.

Recent books & literature in The New Yorker:

Jennifer Wilson. 11/04/2024: The Brothers Grimm Were Dark for a Reason. Primarily on The Brothers Grimm: A Biography / Ann Schmiesing, but references also to Paths through the forest: A biography of the brothers Grimm / Murray B. Peppard (1971).

Victoria Baena. 11/09/2024: The Feminist Critic Who Kept Flaubert on His Toes. "For years, the writer flirted and exchanged ideas with Amélie Bosquet—until her ideas threatened his work."

James Stevens Curl. The Critic (UK), 11/10/2024: A wealth of glorious objects and images. Review of: The Legacy of Vesuvius: Bourbon Discoveries on the Bay of Naples / edited by Michael L. Thomas.

Erik Loomis. LARB, 11/11/2024: Chronicles of Collapse. Review of: The Burning Earth: A History / Sunil Amrith.

Patrick Parks. The Millions, 11/12/2024: The Radical Gaze of ‘The Braille Encyclopedia.’ Review of: The Brail Encyclopedia: brief essays on altered sight / Naomi Cohn. (memoir)

James Wood. New Yorker, 11/11/2024: A Début Novel Captures the Start of India’s Modi Era. Review of: Quarterlife: A Novel / Devika Rege.

Recent Atlantic book reviews:

Lynn Steger Strong. Atlantic, 11/12/2024: Why Gossip Is Fatal to Good Writing. Review of: Didion and Babitz / Lili Anolik.

Tyler Austin Harper. Atlantic, 11/12/2024: Richard Price’s Radical, Retrograde Novel. Review of: Lazarus Man: A Novel / Richard Price.

More reviews of a book you should ignore because the book is just (meretricious) gossip:

Katie Kadue. LARB, 11/12/2024: Fitful Glimpses and Spurts. Review of: Didion & Babitz by Lili Anolik.

Merissa Meltzer. NYT, 11/20/2024: Joan Didion and Eve Babitz: Contemporaries, Peers, Rivals — and Soul Mates? Review of: DIDION and BABITZ / by Lili Anolik.

Rebecca Nicholson. Guardian, 11/13/2024: Didion & Babitz by Lili Anolik review – friendship and rivalry in LA. "The journalist and author of Hollywood’s Eve makes no pretence of impartiality as she charts the difficult relationship between two chroniclers of California."

Conor Truax. Spike, 10/28/2024: Against Autofiction: Two Paths for the Internet Novel.

Who won the Booker? Orbital / Samantha Harvey.

Alex Marshall. NYT, 11/12/2024: Samantha Harvey’s ‘Orbital’ Wins 2024 Booker Prize. "Most bets were on Percival Everett’s “James,” but the judges chose Harvey’s “beautiful, miraculous” novel, which is set aboard a space station."

Jacob Brogan. WaPo, 11/12/2024: ‘Orbital,’ by Samantha Harvey, wins the Booker Prize. "The author’s fifth novel follows a group of astronauts over the course of a day on a space station."

Sara Collins. Guardian, 11/12/2024: ‘This is a book we need now’: Sara Collins on choosing this year’s Booker winner.

Jennifer Szalai. NYT, 11/13/2024: The Needy Genius Who Understood the Cosmos (People, Not So Much). Review of: The Impossible Man: Roger Penrose and the Cost of Genius / Patchen Barss.

Helen Lewis. Atlantic, 11/13/2024: How One Woman Became the Scapegoat for America’s Reading Crisis. "Lucy Calkins was an education superstar. Now she’s cast as the reason a generation of students struggles to read. Can she reclaim her good name?"

TLS November 15, 2024|No. 6346

Featured

Books of the Year 2024: Our contributors choose their favourites.

James Cahill. Capital in the closet: The slow retreat of homophobia, told through London lives. Review of: SOME MEN IN LONDON : Volume One, Queer life 1945–1959; Volume Two, Queer life 1960–1967 / Peter Parker, Editor.

Rod Mengham. Neighbourhood watch: Frank Auerbach and his visions of north London. Review of the exhibition FRANK AUERBACH: Portraits of London, Offer Waterman and Francis Outred, London, until December 7.

Kyle Burke. Right turn: The roots of radical anti-establishment American politics. Review of: WHEN THE CLOCK BROKE: Con men, conspiracists, and how America cracked up in the early 1990s / John Ganz.

Literature & Bibliography

A.S.G. Edwards. Not in the script: The impending sale of Longleat’s medieval manuscripts. (Essay)

Jeremy Dauber. Mice and mensch: New York Jewish intellectuals’ self-conscious masculinity. Review of: WRITE LIKE A MAN: Jewish masculinity and the New York Intellectuals / Ronnie A. Grinberg.

Andrew Motion. Death comes to conference: A philosophical whodunnit about truth and right-wing extremism. Review of: THE PROOF OF MY INNOCENCE / Jonathan Coe.

Nicholas Clee. Mud, blood and booze: A remarkable crime trilogy of doublings and disappearance. Review of: A CASE OF MATRICIDE / Graeme Macrae Burnet.

Nag Segnit. Give me your answer: Two siblings fend for themselves in a totalitarian state. Review of: GLIFF / Ali Smith.

Isabella Trimboli. From sunshine to darkness: The making and unmaking of an Australian novelist. Review of: THE END OF THE MORNING / Charmian Clift; edited by Nadia Wheatley.

Tim Parks. In the fray: How to teach contemporary literature. (Essay)

In Brief Review of: The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore / Evan Friss.

In Brief Review of: Beckett and Cioran (Elements in Beckett Studies) / Steven Matthews.

In Brief Review of: Half Swimmer / Katja Oskamp (Author), Jo Heinrich (Translator).

In Brief Review of: Scale, Crisis, and the Modern Novel: Extreme Measures (Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Series Number 145) / Aaron Rosenberg.

In Brief Review of: Owed (Penguin Poets) / Joshua Bennett.

Arts

Norma Clarke. Strings of her heart: A cellist is haunted by the history of her instrument. Review of: CELLO: A journey through silence to sound / Kate Kennedy.

Paul Griffiths. Who is the real puppet?: A spectacular production of Offenbach’s opéra fantastique. Review of Jacque Offenbach's THE TALES OF HOFFMANN, Royal Opera House, London, until December 1.

Harrison Stetler. Old-school cynicism: Two interpretations of an ancien régime comedy of manners. Review of Molière's L’AVARE, Théâtre de la Tempête, on tour in France until December 16; Comédie Française, Paris, until January 1.

Libby Purves. Bohemia without rhapsody: Tales of the seedy, misogynistic London artistic milieu. Review of: QUEENS OF BOHEMIA: And other miss-fits / Darren Coffield.

Philosophy

Suki Finn. Unsung heroines: Confronting philosophy’s gender imbalance. Review of: HOW TO THINK LIKE A WOMAN: Four women philosophers who taught me how to love the life of the mind / Regan Penaluna.

Madoc Cairns. Cracks in the image: The contradictions of a ‘saint for a secular age.’ Review of: THE LITERARY AFTERLIVES OF SIMONE WEIL: Feminism, justice, and the challenge of religion / Cynthia R. Wallace.

Medicine & Science

Agnes Arnold-Foster. It’s all in your head: The culture of brain surgery within the history of medicine. Review of: GRAY MATTERS: A biography of brain surgery / Theodore H. Schwartz.

Josh Cohen. Finding their Freud: A sublime essayist or the founder of a pseudo-science? Review of: ON THE COUCH: Writers analyze Sigmund Freud / Andrew Blauner, editor.

Andrew Seaton. Britain’s brush with eugenics: How science was abused to confine the vulnerable. Review of: THE UNDESIRABLES: The law that locked away a generation / Sarah Wise.

In Brief Review of: Sea Level: A History (Oceans in Depth) / Wilko Graf von Hardenberg.

History, Society, Culture & Travel

Christina Thompson. The taste for plain sailing: A history of travel and maps that record where people have gone. Review of: TRACKS ON THE OCEAN: A history of trailblazing, maps and maritime travel / Sara Caputo.

Heather O'Donoghue. At home with the Vikings: The domestic life of the raiders of the northern world. Review of: EMBERS OF THE HANDS: Hidden histories of the Viking age / Eleanor Barraclough.

Andrew Lambert. Water world: The Navy’s vital role in Britain’s past and future. Review of: THE PRICE OF VICTORY: A naval history of Britain, 1815-1945 / N.A.M. Rodger.

In Brief Review of: Nights Out At Home: Recipes and Stories from 25 years as a Restaurant Critic / Jay Rayner.

Saved from the landing page

Mary Beard. Busting the myths of Pompeii.

Among the stacks: Explore the best of the TLS: Libraries past, present and future.

Kate McLoughlin. 12/23/2023: Language of waves and light: Our review of Orbital by Samantha Harvey, the winner of this year’s Booker Prize.

NYRB Online Dec 5 2024

Literature

Adam Kirsch. In Search of Fullness. Review of: Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment / Charles Taylor.

Anne Enright. Alice Munro’s Retreat. (Essay)

Arts

Patricia J. Williams. Torn Apart. Review of Separated, a documentary film directed by Errol Morris.

Natural History

Tim Flannery. The Sense of an Endling. Review of: The Last of Its Kind: The Search for the Great Auk and the Discovery of Extinction / Gísli Pálsson.

History, Politics, Law, Society

Erin Maglaque. Soundscapes of the Silenced. Review of: A Veil of Silence: Women and Sound in Renaissance Italy / Julia Rombough.

Magda Teter. Jewish Middlemen, Archival Myopia. Review of: The Kings of Algiers: How Two Jewish Families Shaped the Mediterranean World During the Napoleonic Wars and Beyond / Julie Kalman.

John Banville. Enigmatic Roger Casement. Review of: Broken Archangel: The Tempestuous Lives of Roger Casement / Roland Philipps.

Jed S. Rakoff. FDR’s Compliant Justices. Review of: The Court at War: FDR, His Justices, and the World They Made / Cliff Sloan.

Zadie Smith. The Dream of the Raised Arm. Review of: The Third Reich of Dreams: The Nightmares of a Nation / Charlotte Beradt, translated from the German by Damion Searls, with a foreword by Dunya Mikhail.

Jonathan Freedland. A Feigned Reluctance. Review of: How Not to Be a Politician / Rory Stewart (UK title: Politics on the Edge)

Tim Judah. Ukraine Divided. (Article: "Almost three years after the beginning of Russia’s invasion, Ukraine is not defeated, but Russia is not victorious, either.")

Fintan O'Toole. The Second Coming. (Article: "Disinhibition will be the order of the day in Donald Trump’s America.")

Jess Maginty. LARB, 11/12/204: Whose Future Is It Anyway?> Review of: Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right / Jordan S. Carroll.

Jiselle Lee. WaPo, 11/13/2024: From Angelou to Vonnegut, Florida schools pulled hundreds of books last year. Temporarily unlocked.

Melissa Holbrook Pierson. WaPo, 11/17/2024: This writer perfected an unusual literary form: Amazon reviews. Review of a collection, in Library of America format: Selected Amazon Reviews / Kevin Killian. Temporarily unlocked.

"Yes, these really are product reviews posted to the website of the commercial behemoth (founded by Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos) — and though the book clocks in at nearly 700 pages, these are only some, selected by editors Hedi El Kholti and Robert Dewhurst, of the more than 1 million words covering almost 2,400 items that the avant-garde San Francisco poet, playwright and literary provocateur wrote between 2004 and his death in 2019."

The Critic (UK) round-up:

John Self. 11/18/2024: An actor’s story is a late career marvel. Review of the novels: Our Evenings / Alan Hollinghurst -- The Proof of My Innocence / Jonathan Coe -- Barrowbeck / Andrew Michael Hurley/

Daniel Johnson. 11/17/2024: Vorsprung durch Technik R.I.P. Review (in English) of: Kaput: The End of the German Miracle / Wolfgang Münchau.

Ian MacGregor. 11/16/2024: Life amid the ruins. Review of: Naples 1944: And The Making of Post-War Italy / Keith Lowe.

Charlie Bentley-Astor. 11/15/2024: Sometimes it’s best to shoot the messenger. Review of: You Can’t Teach That! The Battle Over University Classrooms / Keith E. Whittington.

Hilary Spurling. Hudson Review, Autumn 2024: At Lady Violet’s. On the literary effects of the marriage of Violet Pakenham & Anthony Powell.

Louis Menand. New Yorker, 11/11/2024: Is the Twentieth-Century Novel a Genre? Review of: Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel / Edwin Frank.

Tasha Sandoval. Public Books, 11/19/2024: Toward a New Abuelita Canon. About: Catalina: A Novel / Karla Cornejo Villavicencio -- Oye: A Novel / Melissa Mogollon -- Candelaria: A Novel / Melissa Lozada-Oliva.

Arthur Frommer, 1929-2024

Paul Vitello. NYT, 11/18, 19/2024: Arthur Frommer, 95, Dies; His Guidebooks Opened Travel to the Masses. "After publishing “Europe on 5 Dollars a Day” in 1957, he went on to build an empire of guidebooks, package tours, hotels and other services."

His LT page: https://www.librarything.com/author/frommerarthur

Jenny Comita, Jessica Battilana, Tanya Bush, Martha Cheng, Jonathan Kauffman, Michael Snyder, Amiel Stanek, and Korsha Wilson. NYT, 11/15, 18, 2024: The 25 Most Influential Cookbooks From the Last 100 Years. "Chefs, writers, editors and a bookseller gathered to debate — and decide — which titles have most changed the way we cook and eat." Temporarily unlocked.

TLS November 22, 2024|No. 6347

Featured

Sophie Oliver. What we want from her books: Virginia Woolf as reader, writer and literary inspiration. Review of: VIRGINIA WOOLF AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY WOMEN WRITERS: Victorian legacies and literary afterlives / Anne Reus -- ODD AFFINITIES: Virginia Woolf’s shadow genealogies / Elizabeth Abel -- READING MODERNISM’S READERS: Virginia Woolf, psychoanalysis and the bestseller / Helen Tyson.

Vanessa Curtis. A star is torn: The unravelling of Vivien Leigh’s marriage amid her mental health breakdown. Review of: WHERE MADNESS LIES: The double life of Vivien Leigh / Lyndsy Spence.

Niall Ferguson. Ignorant armies: History as an ideological battleground. Review of: THE WAR AGAINST THE PAST: Why the West must fight for its history / Frank Furedi -- HISTORY FOR TOMORROW: Inspiration from the past for the future of humanity / Roman Krznaric.

Mark Sinclair. Bergson’s boom and bust: How the world’s most famous thinker fell out of fashion. Review of: HERALD OF A RESTLESS WORLD: How Henri Bergson brought philosophy to the people / Emily Herring.

Literature & Language

Patrick Graney. Lost for words: How languages die. Review of: THIS MOUTH IS MINE / Yásnaya Elena A. Gil; translated by Ellen Jones.

Judith Flanders. Parlez vous?: The English language’s debt to French. Review of: ‘LA LANGUE ANGLAISE N'EXISTE PAS’: C’est du français mal prononcé / Bernard Cerquiglini.

Craig Raine. ‘Description is revelation’: Capturing physical process in words. (Essay)

Suzy Feay. Strange waters: Legends of a haunted, marshy place. Review of: BARROWBECK / Andrew Michael Hurley.

Catherine Taylor. God, son and void: Psychosis and doublings in an uhyggelig Norway. Review of: THE THIRD REALM / Karl Ove Knausgaard; translated by Martin Aitken.

Michael LaPointe. Dreamless sleeps: Pursuing a life without friction, fear or contradiction. Review of: THE CITY AND ITS UNCERTAIN WALLS / Haruki Murakami; translated by Philip Gabriel.

Alison Kelly. All the kingdoms: Danger and exhilaration in postwar Britain. Review of: THE PARTY / Tessa Hadley.

Andrew Neilson. Pedalo with Satan: The spirited work of the British Pakistani poet Shereen Akhtar. Review of: RABBI/ROBIN / Shereen Akhtar.

In Brief Review of: AMBUSH AT STILL LAKE (poems) / Caroline Bird.

In Brief Review of: THE VIADUCT / David Wheldon.

In Brief Review of: FORMS OF FREEDOM: Marxist essays in New Zealand and Australian literature / Dougal McNeill.

In Brief Review of: STORIES FOR SUMMER: And days by the pool / Simon Thomas, editor.

Arts

Peter Hainsworth. The man who could do all things: A Renaissance master of aesthetics, science and practical knowledge. Review of: LEON BATTISTA ALBERTI: Writer and humanist / Martin McLaughlin.

Lauren Elkin. Love and death: An intimate photographic record. Review of: THE USE OF PHOTOGRAPHY / Annie Ernaux and Marc Marie; translated by Alison L. Strayer.

Aaron Peck. Everything everywhere: The contradictory and global nature of surrealism. Review of the exhibition SURRÉALISME, Centre Pompidou, Paris, until January 13.

Emily May. A space between: Margaret Atwood’s dystopian trilogy – in dance. Review of: MADDADDAM, Royal Ballet, Royal Opera House, London, until November 30; choreographer, Wayne McGregor.

In Brief Review of: POOR ARTISTS: (aka The White Pube) / Zarina Muhammad and Gabrielle de la Puente.

In Brief Review of: THE ENDLESS REFRAIN: Memory, nostalgia, and the threat to new music / David Rowell (nostalgia in popular music)

Science & Technology

In Brief Review of: LETTERS FOR THE AGES: GREAT SCIENTISTS: Private letters from the greatest minds in science / Edited by James Drake and Hugh Aldersey-Williams.

History, Politics, & Travel

Catherine Steel. Precarious eminence: The lives of imperial women were often cut short by misogynistic violence. Review of: UNFORTUNATELY, SHE WAS A NYMPHOMANIAC: A new history of Rome’s imperial women / Joan Smith.

Bronwen Everill. Captive markets: The role of slavery in American manufacturing. Review of: PLANTATION GOODS: A material history of American slavery / Seth Rockman.

Stephanie McCurry. Unfinished business: The short triumph and long death of Reconstruction. Review of: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE SECOND AMERICAN REPUBLIC: Reconstruction, 1860–1920 / Manisha Sinha.

Richard Toye. Riders on the storm: Six British politicians who changed the temper of the times. Review of: MAKING THE WEATHER: Six politicians who changed modern Britain / Vernon Bogdanor -- BLUE JERUSALEM: British conservatism, Winston Churchill, and the Second World War / Kit Kowol.

Duncan Wheeler. Better than Barcelona?: A love letter to a once disregarded city. Review of: MADRID: A new biography / Luke Stegemann.

Jonathan Buckley. Seductive melancholy: Savouring a city in decline. Review of: SYRACUSE: Sicily’s city of stories / Joachim Sartorius; translated by Stephen Brown.

Ben Rogers. Holding heads high: An egalitarian perspective on urban economics. Review of: CITY OF EQUALS / Jonathan Wolff and Avner de-Shalit.

Robert Poole. Greater than the sum: Manchester at the forefront of commercial and political change. Review of: MADE IN MANCHESTER: A people’s history of the city that shaped the modern world / Brian Groom.

From the landing page

Mary Beard. Walking to work.

Isabel Hilton, interviewer Sophie Roell. fivebooks.com, 11/15/2024: The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2024 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist.

The shortlist:
Nuclear War: A Scenario / Annie Jacobsen.
Question 7 / Richard Flanagan. (the eventual winner)
The Story of a Heart: Two Families, One Heart, and the Medical Miracle that Saved a Child's Life / Rachel Clarke.
A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial / Viet Thanh Nguyen.
Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin / Sue Prideaux.
Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World / David Van Reybrouck.

Interesting sidenote:

James Folta. LitHub, 11/19/2024: Richard Flanagan wins the Baillie Gifford Prize, but won’t accept money without a plan to divest.

>125 featherbear: If the most influential cookbooks are of interest, you might want to follow up with Slate's list of the 25 most important recipes of the past 100 years. Their package includes several different articles, including Dan Kois's report on his attempt to cook all 25.

https://slate.com/tag/25-recipes

Jeffrey Fleishman. LA Times, 11/21/2024: Trump’s promises to conservatives raise fears of more book bans in U.S.

Ryan Ruby. LitHub, 11/22/2024: “Make it New… Again.” Why We Need Alexander Pope’s Wild, Weird Poetry Today.

Dan Reiter. The Millions, 11/20/2024: The Patron Saint of Surf Lit Gets His Due. Review of: Flow Violento: A Scott Hulet Omnibus, The Surfer's Journal / Scott Hulet.

Erdağ Göknar. LARB, 11/21/2024: Itineraries of Affect. Review of: Memories of Distant Mountains: Illustrated Notebooks, 2009–2022 / Orhan Pamuk; translated by Ekin Oklap.

Adam Rutherford. Guardian, 11/15/2024: A wonderful but thoroughly conventional celebration of the science of evolution. "The Genetic Book of the Dead by Richard Dawkins review – the great biologist’s swansong.

Alexander Lee. The Critic (UK), 11/21/2024: The restless life of a very bourgeois rebel. Review of: Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin / Sue Prideaux.

Barbara Taylor Bradford, 1933-2024

Robert D. McFadden. NYT, 11/25/2024: Barbara Taylor Bradford, Best-Selling Romance Novelist, Dies at 91. Temporarily unlocked.

"Her own rags-to-riches story mirrored those of many of her heroines, and her dozens of books helped her amass a fortune of $300 million."

Ian Youngs. BBC Culture, 11/25/2024: Best-selling novelist Barbara Taylor Bradford dies.

Olesia Plokhii. WaPo, 11/25/2024: Barbara Taylor Bradford, novelist of bold heroines, dies at 91. "Mrs. Bradford amassed an enormous following and fortune with books that championed women who were strong, ambitious, resilient — and fabulously rich and beautiful. She wrote more than 30 bestsellers."

Jenny Colgan. Guardian, 11/25/2024: Barbara Taylor Bradford: she wrote books about sexy, scrappy, hard-working women like her. "A towering goddess of late 20th-century fiction, the novelist sold a different way of living to women who did not have choices – and she made all of her own dreams come true."

Bruce Krajewski. LARB, 11/24/2024: Tales Wagging Translators. Review of: The Philosophy of Translation / Damion Searls.

Edith Hall. Aeon, 11/25/2024: Who can claim Aristotle?

Jeremy Black. The Critic (UK), 11/25/2024: The big picture. Review of: Rogues and Scholars: Boom and Bust in the London Art Market 1945-2000 / James Stourton.

Ed Simon. LitHub, 11/25/2024: In Praise of Print: Why Reading Remains Essential in an Era of Epistemological Collapse.

Allegra Rosenberg. Atlantic, 11/23/2024: The Fairy Tale We’ve Been Retelling for 125 Years. "Every generation has an Oz story, but one retelling best captures what makes L. Frank Baum’s world sing."

Becca Rothfeld. WaPo, 11/01/2024: Nostalgia was once a disease. Now we’re all infected. Review of: Nostalgia: A History of a Dangerous Emotion / Agnes Arnold-Foster -- Yesterday: A New History of Nostalgia / Tobias Becker -- The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins / Stefanos Geroulanos.

Recent books in The New Yorker:

Margaret Talbot. 11/18/2024: The Frenemies Who Fought to Bring Birth Control to the U.S. Review of: The Icon and the Idealist: Margaret Sanger, Mary Ware Dennett, and the Rivalry That Brought Birth Control to America / Stephanie Gorton.

Jackson Arn. 11/21/2024: The Art Dealer Who Wanted to Be Art. Review of: Family Romance: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers / Jean Strouse.

Katy Waldman. 11/21/2024: A Novelist’s Unnerving Memoir of Disordered Eating. Review of: My Good Bright Wolf: A Memoir / Sarah Moss.

Thomas Meaney. 11/25/2024: The Surprisingly Sunny Origins of the Frankfurt School. Review of: Naples 1925: Adorno, Benjamin, and the Summer That Made Critical Theory / Martin Mittelmeier, translator Shelley Frisch.

Alexandra Alter & Elizabeth Egan. NYT, 11/23/2024: A Long-Held Secret Is Now Public. Will It Alter Cormac McCarthy’s Legacy? "Revelations about a relationship between the author and a girl who was 16 when they met shocked readers, but not scholars of his work. Now there’s a debate about how much she influenced his writing." Temporarily unlocked.

Talya Zax. Atlantic, 11/24/2024: The Sense That Most Defines a Culture. "Yáng Shuāng-zǐ’s Taiwan Travelogue shows how colonization shapes a country’s culinary landscape."

"Translated from Mandarin by Lin King, the novel about love, colonialism, war, and food—which this week won the National Book Award for translated literature—is intentionally constructed to make its soul difficult to locate."

Kevin M. Kearney. Slate, 11/23/2024: Read Between the Lines. "Forget drop-shipping—America’s new favorite side hustle is … republishing classic literature?"

John Banville. Guardian, 11/24/2024: The enduring power of stupidity. "A New York scholar’s study of our long history of acclaiming the fool and ignoring the facts is timely and terrifically witty." Review of: Ignorance and Bliss: On Wanting Not to Know / Mark Lilla.

Tajja Isen. Walrus, 11/26/2024: Memoirs Are Almost Impossible to Sell. "Publishers are turning away from personal stories. Have readers stopped caring about each other’s lives?"

Hannah Felt Garner. The Millions, 11/26/2024: Let’s State the Obvious: On Mona Chollet and the Limits of Comparative Feminism. Review of: Reinventing Love: How the Patriarchy Sabotages Heterosexual Relations / Mona Chollet, translator Susan Emanuel.

Recent (reissued) book promotion discussion on LitHub:

Alexander Durie. 11/25/2024: On the Enduring Importance of Edward Said’s The Question of Palestine. (Regarding the Fitzcarraldo reissue)

11/27/2024: In Praise of the Literary and Social Subversions of George Gissing’s The Odd Women. "Merve Emre and Adam Dalva in Conversation About a New Edition of a Victorian Classic." Reissued by Unnamed Press/Smith & Taylor Classicsc.

TLS November 29, 2024|No. 6348

Featured

Karolina Watroba. Mann and the main man: The Magic Mountain at 100: a century of literary rivalries. (Essay on The Magic Mountain / Thomas Mann)

Mary Beard. Fantasies of Rome: Blood and guts and a touch of Virgil: Ridley Scott’s second Gladiator film. Review of Scott's Gladiator II film.

Elizabeth Lowry. A hungry wolf without a collar: How Gauguin’s religious instinct informed his artistic vision. Review of: WILD THING: A Life of Paul Gauguin / Sue Prideaux.

Timothy Garton Ash. Eastern leader of the West: The disputed legacy of Angela Merkel. Review of: FREEDOM: Memoirs, 1954–2021 / Angela Merkel; translated by Alice Tetley-Paul et al.

From the Landing Page

Mary Beard. Giving Thanksgiving a miss.

Literature & Bibliography

Alison Shell. Barmier about Narnia: A social geography and gazetteer of C. S. Lewis’s city. Review of: C. S. LEWIS’S OXFORD / Simon Horobin -- Paths in the Snow: A Literary Journey through The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe / Jem Bloomfield.

Andrea Brady. Disobedient reading: Milton’s epic as a touchstone for radical change. Review of: WHAT IN ME IS DARK: The revolutionary life of Paradise Lost / Orlando Reade.

Karen Leeder. The statue and her makers: A posthumous tale of art and nationhood by a German master. Review of: THE LIVING STATUE: A legend / Günter Grass; translated by Michael Hofmann.

Kate McLoughlin. Shrinking violets: A town in eastern Austria reckons with its past. Review of: DARKENBLOOM / Eva Menasse; translated by Charlotte Collins.

Dinah Birch. Allow the text to touch you!: A bereaved husband searches for a lost daughter in a changing nation. Review of: THE GRANDDAUGHTER / Bernhard Schlink; translated by Charlotte Collins.

Alexander Leissle. Going cashless: A rich elderly Frau and her beleaguered middle-aged son embark on an exorcizing road trip. Review of: EUROTRASH / Christian Kracht; translated by Daniel Bowles.

Amir-Hussein Radjy. Sick with images: An Egyptian surrealist who wrote radical verse in French. Review of: EMERALD WOUNDS: Selected poems / Joyce Mansour; edited and translated by Emilie Moorhouse -- IN THE GLITTERING MAW: Selected poems / Joyce Mansour; translated by C. Francis Fisher.

Mark Glanville. Made from words: Two modern Greek poets working within an ancient tradition. Review of: BIRD SHADOWS: Selected poetry and poetic prose 1967–2020 / Veroniki Dalakoura; translated by John Taylor -- THE SLOW HORIZON THAT BREATHES / Dimitra Kotoula; translated by Maria Nazos.

In Brief Review of: I DON'T CARE / Ágota Kristóf; translated by Chris Andrews. (Stories)

In Brief Review of: BOOK CURSES / Eleanor Baker (Bodleian Library).

In Brief Review of: MEMORIES OF DISTANT MOUNTAINS: Illustrated notebooks / Orhan Pamuk; translated by Ekin Oklap.

Arts

Oluwaseun Olayiwola. Creative tensions: High-energy styles and titans of contemporary dance. On the choreography of dance performed at Sadler's Wells, London: RADIOACTIVE PRACTICE / Abby Zbikowski -- COMMON GROUND(S) / Germaine Acogny and Malou Airaudo -- THE RITE OF SPRING / Pina Bausch.

Religion

Miriam Dobson. Church and state: The Russian Orthodox Church’s embrace of aggressive conservatism. Review of: THE BATON AND THE CROSS: Russia’s church from pagans to Putin / Lucy Ash.

Recreation

Michael Taylor. An island united by rugby: The all-Ireland sport survived partition and the Troubles. Review of: BLOOD AND THUNDER: Rugby and Irish life: a history / Liam O’Callaghan.

In Brief Review of: FRENCH COOKING FOR ONE / Written and Illustrated by Michèle Roberts.

In Brief Review of: MY BEAUTIFUL SISTERS: A story of courage, hope and the Afghan women’s football team / Khalida Popal.

History, Politics, Society, & Travel

Richard J. Evans. Laboratory of modernity: An upbeat assessment of the Weimar Republic. Review of: VERTIGO: The rise and fall of Weimar Germany 1918–1933 / Harald Jähner; translated by Shaun Whiteside.

Max Harris. Russian hide and seek: Assessing the impact of western sanctions on Vladimir Putin’s regime. Review of: The Russia Sanctions: The economic response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine / Christine Abely -- Punishing Putin: Inside the global economic war to bring down Russia / Stephanie Baker -- The Trial of Vladimir Putin / Geoffrey Robertson.

Regina Rini. The wisdom of crowds?: The democratic right to choose badly. (Essay)

Alice Albinia. Sin, selkies and witches: A colourful history of early modern Orkney. Review of: STORM'S EDGE: Life, death and magic in the islands of Orkney / Peter Marshall.

Aliv Adil. Rondo alla Turca: Stories that ‘feed and frustrate’ orientalist prejudices. Review of: THE ENDLESS COUNTRY: A personal journey through Turkey’s first hundred years / Sami Kent.

In Brief Review of: SOVEREIGNTY AND EXTORTION: A new state form in Mexico / Claudio Lomnitz.

In Brief Review of:A EUROPEAN ELIZABETHAN: The life of Robert Beale, Esquire / David Scott Gehring.

The N.B. Column

M.C. Invested interests: Dissent in the prize-winning ranks, Science fiction at Christie’s, The TLS in Literature.

Mitchell Abidor. LARB, 11/26/2024: A World Literature Begins to Take Shape. Review of: Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel / Edwin Frank.

Daniel Kodsi & John Maier. The Philosophers' Magazine, n.d., Imperfect Parfit. Review of: Parfit: A Philosopher and His Mission to Save Morality / David Edmonds. ("written on the assumption that its subject met with success in the mission alluded to in the subtitle" -- having read the book, I don't agree that the assumption is valid)

NYT, 11/26/2024: 100 Notable Books of 2024. "Here is the standout fiction and nonfiction of the year, selected by the staff of The New York Times Book Review." Temporarily unlocked.

I prefer reading e-books, esp the Kindle app on a tablet -- also use a Kindle for novels, but it has a glitch that locks it up & is harder to navigate, but in the interest of fairness, some alternatives:

Shira Ovide. WaPo, 11/29/2024: The best alternatives to Amazon for e-books and audiobooks. Temporarily unlocked.

Oscar Schwartz. New Yorker, 11/27/2024: A Portrait of the Artist as an Amazon Reviewer. "Between 2003 and 2019, Kevin Killian published almost twenty-four hundred reviews on the site. Can they be considered literature?" Review of: Selected Amazon Reviews / Kevin Killian.

Maneetpaul Singh, interviewer Sophie Roell. fivebooks.com, 11/24/2024: The Best Kindles in 2024.

LARB round-up:

Will DeGravio. 12/02/2024: An Act of Transgression. Review of: The Biggest Thing in Show Business: Living It Up with Martin & Lewis / Murray Pomerance and Matthew Solomon.

Scott Spilman. 12/02/2024: Review of: Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery / Seth Rockman.

Maura Elizabeth Cunningham. 12/01/2024: The Character of Chinese Computing. Review of: The Chinese Computer: A Global History of the Information Age / Thomas S. Mullaney.

Michael Ledger-Lomas. 12/01/2024: The Gospel According to Jordan. Review of: We Who Wrestle with God: Perceptions of the Divine / Jordan B. Peterson. (576 pages!)

Selections from UK's Literary Review Dec. issue:

Howard Davies. Will Someone Think of the Barristers?. Review of: Man-Devil: The Mind and Times of Bernard Mandeville, the Wickedest Man in Europe / John Callanan.

Claire Harman. Postmark Amherst. Review of: The Letters of Emily Dickinson / Cristanne Miller & Domhnall Mitchell (edd) (Belknap Press).

Stephen Smith. Lines of Insight. Review of: Mondrian: His Life, His Art, His Quest for the Absolute / Nicholas Fox Weber.

Thomas Blaikie. You Mean There’s No Billiard Room? Review of: London’s Lost Interiors / Steven Brindle. (Atlantic Publishing)

Thomas W. Hodgkinson. There Was No Sorcerer. Review of: Box Office Poison: Hollywood’s Story in a Century of Flops / Tim Robey.

David Goodheart. Generation Pocket Money. Review of: Inheritocracy: It’s Time to Talk About the Bank of Mum and Dad / Eliza Filby.

Colin Jones. Jesters’ Paradise. Review of the exhibition Figures of the Fool: From the Middle Ages to the Romantics, Louvre, Paris, until 3 February 2025.

James Stevens Curl. The Critic (UK), 12/01/2024: Butterfield’s glorious vindication. Review of: The Master Builder: William Butterfield and his times / Nicholas Olsberg; with photographs by James Morris (London, Lund Humphries).

Herb Scribner. WaPo, 12/02/2024: ‘Brain rot’ is Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year. Temporarily unlocked.

NYRB Online Dec. 19 2024

Literature & Language

Ian Tattersall. Look Who’s Talking. Review of: The Language Puzzle: Piecing Together the Six-Million-Year Story of How Words Evolved / Steven Mithen.

Alexander Leggatt. You Only Live Twice. Review of: Second Chances: Shakespeare and Freud / Stephen Greenblatt and Adam Phillips -- Shakespeare in Bloomsbury / Marjorie Garber.

Frances Wilson. Irresistible Iris. "Iris Murdoch’s readers return to her to understand the relationship between high intelligence, erotic extremism, and moral virtue." (Essay)

Regina Maler. The Cuttlefish’s Play. Review of: Playground / Richard Powers.

Joanna Biggs. A Very Quiet Symphony. Review of: The Hearing Test / Eliza Barry Callahan.

Angie Mlinko. The Shoals of Prose. Review of: My Poetics / Maureen N. McLane -- Watch Your Language: Visual and Literary Reflections on a Century of American Poetry / Terrance Hayes.

Francesca Wade. ‘Insouciant Pagan Journal.’ Review of: Making No Compromise: Margaret Anderson, Jane Heap, and the Little Review / Holly A. Baggett.

Arts

Susan Tallman. The Occupation of Looking. Review of: Is Art History? / Svetlana Alpers. "The discipline of art history today is far more inclusive, more cognizant of social history, and less prone to normative aesthetic judgments—changes Svetlana Alpers helped bring about."

Michael Chabon. The Midnight World. ("This essay will appear, in somewhat different form, as the foreword to a new edition of Glenn Fleishman’s How Comics Were Made, to be published by Andrews McMeel in June)

Jenny Uglow. Hallelujah! Review of: Every Valley: The Desperate Lives and Troubled Times That Made Handel’s Messiah / Charles King.

Gabriel Winslow-Yost. As You Like It. Review of: Choose Love / a film written by Josann McGibbon and directed by Stuart McDonald -- Her Story / a video game written and directed by Sam Barlow -- Telling Lies / a video game written and directed by Sam Barlow and cowritten by Amelia Gray -- Immortality / a video game written and directed by Sam Barlow and cowritten by Barry Gifford, Amelia Gray, and Allan Scott.

Martin Filler. The Architect Who Unified America. Review of: Henry Hobson Richardson: Drawings from the Collection of Houghton Library, Harvard University / Jay Wickersham, Chris Milford, and Hope Mayo.

Carolina A. Miranda. Intimate Theatricality. Review of: Mickalene Thomas: All About Love,
an exhibition at the Broad, Los Angeles, May 25–September 29, 2024; the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, October 20, 2024–January 12, 2025; Hayward Gallery, London, February 11–May 5, 2025; and Les Abattoirs, Musée–Frac Occitanie Toulouse, June 13–November 9, 2025. Catalog of the exhibition edited by the Hayward Gallery.

History, Politics, Society, Law

Joshua Hammer. Making Germany Hate Again. Review of: Look Away: A True Story of Murders, Bombings, and a Far-Right Campaign to Rid Germany of Immigrants / Jacob Kushner.

R.J.W. Evans. Centers on the Margins. Review of: Tales from the Borderlands: Making and Unmaking the Galician Past / Omer Bartov. ("The dark history of Buczacz, an ordinary town in western Ukraine, exemplifies the fate of Jews in the vast marginal territories of East-Central Europe.")

Martha C. Nussbaum. Reports from the Slaughterhouse. Review of: Fear Factories: Arguments About Innocent Creatures and Merciless People / Matthew Scully -- Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight / Timothy Pachirat -- Truth and Transparency: Undercover Investigations in the Twenty-First Century / Alan K. Chen and Justin Marceau.

John Washington. Hopping Across the Line. Review of: Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling / Jason De León.

John J. Lennon. Tangled Justice. Review of: Seventy Times Seven: A True Story of Murder and Mercy / Alex Mar.

David Cole. Gender-Affirming Care & the Courts.

Robert Kuttner. The Import of Exports. Review of: No Trade Is Free: Changing Course, Taking on China, and Helping America’s Workers / Robert Lighthizer -- Chaos Under Heaven: America, China, and the Battle for the Twenty-First Century / Josh Rogin -- Homecoming: The Path to Prosperity in a Post-Global World / Rana Foroohar.

Charles Glass. Lebanon’s Year of Living Ambiguously.

Mark O'Connell, interviewer. Israel’s Revenge: An Interview with Rashid Khalidi.

Articles on the US Election

Andrew O'Hagan. The Darkroom of Propaganda.

Linda Greenhouse. Trump at the Supreme Court.

Ben Tarnoff. Antisystemic Times.

Christine Henneberg. On Abortion Rights.

Aryeh Neier. The Rise of Authoritarianism.

Wesley Lowery. The Task of the Journalist.

Susan Neiman. Nemesis.

Michael Hofmann. Words Without Consequences.

TLS December 6, 2024|No. 6349

Featured

Fred D'Aguiar. Knowing his name: Celebrating the centenary of James Baldwin’s birth. Review of: NO NAME IN THE STREET / James Baldwin -- ON JAMES BALDWIN / Colm Tóibín -- WALKING IN THE DARK: James Baldwin, my father, and me / Douglas Field -- JAMES BALDWIN’S ‘SONNY‘S BLUES’ / Tom Jenks.

Caryl Phillips. A house is not a home: The importance of place to James Baldwin. (Essay)

Costica Bradatan. Get out of your self: A philosopher engages with the mystical tradition. Review of: ON MYSTICISM: The experience of ecstasy / Simon Critchley.

Naush Sabah. Chipping at the lode: Poetry pamphlets and the Michael Marks Awards in 2024. (Essay)

From the landing page

Mary Beard. Dying – assisted by whom?

Literature

Margaret Drabble. Exotic camp: Reprints of works by three women writers worth a second look. Review of: CHINA COURT / Rumer Godden -- A SPRING OF LOVE / Celia Dale -- TATTING AND MANDOLINATA / Faith Compton Mackenzie.

Harry Strawson. Bring back the big fish: Record-label scouts chase ‘strange compositions.’ Review of: THE CATCHERS /Xan Brooks.

Mia Levitin. No sacred cows: A video game challenges the history of Argentina. Review of: SAVAGE THEORIES / Pola Oloixarac; translated by Roy Kesey.

Christy Edwall. Never stop writing: Revisiting a send-up of ‘literary pomposity.’ Review of: THE REST IS SILENCE / Augusto Monterroso; translated by Aaron Kerner.

Alberto Manguel. Magical idealism: A detective story in which individuality is survival. Review of: THE NOVICES OF LERNA / Ángel Bonomini; translated by Jordan Landsman.

Nat Segnit. Fantastic beasts: Some of the best children’s books of 2024. Review of: THE GLORIOUS RACE OF MAGICAL BEASTS / Alex Bell -- MIDNIGHT TREASURE / Piers Torday -- SONGLIGHT / Moira Boffini -- FALLOUT / Lesley Parr -- TURTLE MOON / Hannah Gold -- COBWEB / Michael Morpurgo -- THE HOUDINI INHERITANCE / Emma Carroll -- YOURS FROM THE TOWER / Sally Nicholls.

Robert Potts. The name’s Smiley: An affectionate return to le Carré’s best-loved character. Review of: KARLA’S CHOICE / Nick Harkaway.

In Brief Review of: CODE NAME PURITAN: Norman Holmes Pearson at the nexus of poetry, espionage and American power / Greg Barnhisel.

In Brief Review of: THE HAIRDRESSER'S SON / Gerbrand Bakker; translated by David Colmer.

Arts

Adam Mars-Jones. Mellowed drama: Pedro Almodóvar’s flawed first English-language film. Review of Pedro Almodóvar's film THE ROOM NEXT DOOR.

John-Paul Stonard. An ancient feeling of life: The ‘physical presence and silent withdrawal’ of Hans Josephsohn’s sculpture. Review of the exhibition JOSEPHSOHN VU PAR ALBERT OEHLEN, Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, until February 16.

Recreations

Irina Dumitrescu. Sweet dreams: The cultural resonances of cake. (Essay)

History, Politics & Society

Jackson Lears. Empire state: Essays by a liberal historian and cultural conservative. Review of: CONJURERS, CRANKS, PROVINCIALS, AND ANTEDILUVIANS: The off-modern in American history / Jackson Lears; edited by Charlie Riggs.

James Cook. Partners in crime and best friends: The poorly paid rewards of care work. Review of: EVERY KIND OF PEOPLE: A journey into the heart of care work / Kathryn Faulke.

Bee Rowlatt. Bloomin’ marvellous: Self-help and reinvention in defiance of age. Review of: SECOND ACT: What late bloomers can tell you about reinventing your life / Henry Oliver -- MUCH MORE TO COME: Lessons on the mayhem and magnificence of midlife / Eleanor Mills.

Ann Kennedy Smith. Look back in anger and affection: The losses and gains of a revolutionary upbringing. Review of: HOME IS WHERE WE START: Growing up in the fallout of the utopian dream / Susanna Crossman.

Fredrik Logevall. A most pragmatic president: Ronald Reagan adapted his ideology to changing times. Review of: REAGAN: His life and legend / Max Boot.

Andrew Rosenheim. Robbing the rich: The life and crimes of a high-society burglar. Review of: A GENTLEMAN AND A THIEF: The daring jewel heists of a Jazz Age rogue / Dean Jobb.

Daisy Dunn. The company of a witty courtesan: A hetaera immortalized by Greek artists and writers. Review of: PHRYNE OF THESPIAE: Courtesan, muse, and myth / Laura McClure.

In Brief Review of: LAWRENCE OF ARABIA: Colonel T. E. Lawrence CB, DSO – Places and objects of interest / Paul Kendall.

In Brief Review of: VISUALIZING RUSSIA IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE / Nancy S. Kollmann.

In Brief Review of: SHATTERED: a memoir / Hanif Kureishi.

In Brief Review of: THE LAST DYNASTY: Ancient Egypt from Alexander the Great to Cleopatra / Toby Wilkinson.

In Brief Review of: ENCHANTED ISLANDS: Travels through myth and magic, love and loss / Laura Coffey.

NB

M.C. Spirits of the age: Literary anniversaries, Sherlock Holmes in the pub, Clare Quilty at the Grolier.

Phil Christman. The Plough, 12/03/2024: Does Teaching Literature and Writing Have a Future? "Learning that one’s job might soon be eliminated by the emergence of an overhyped new technology puts one in good company."

Christopher Caldwell. American Conservative, 11/26/2024: A Student of the American Character. Review of: Conjurers, Cranks, Provincials, and Antediluvians: The Off-Modern in American History / Jackson Lears.

The Millions, 12/03-. A Year in Reading: 2024. 20th installment, continuously updated this month. So far, Becca Rothfeld, Carvell Wallace, Charlotte Shane, Brianna Di Monda.

Holiday reading lists from The New Yorker. I'm a subscriber to the online version, but TNY doesn't have a share function like NYT/WaPo. However, these came off X, so maybe access is possible, at least for the time being.

Kathy Baum. 11/27/2024: What to Read This Winter, According to Tattered Cover. "Kathy Baum, who curates new books for the Denver-area bookstore, shares some of her fall and winter favorites."

New Yorker. 12/04/2024: The Best Books of 2024. "Each week, our editors and critics recommend the most captivating, notable, brilliant, thought-provoking, and talked-about books. Now, as 2024 comes to an end, we’ve chosen a dozen essential reads in nonfiction and a dozen, too, in fiction and poetry."

WaPo round-up:

Michael Dirda. 12/05/2024: These mystery novels are so clever they deserve a second read. "New editions of books by John Dickson Carr, Tom Mead and Edna Sherry remind me why I loved them the first time." Review of: The Three Coffins / John Dickson Carr -- The Will O'the Wisp Mystery / Edward D. Hoch -- Sudden Fear / Edna Sherry -- The Mysterious Mr. Badman / W.R. Harvey -- The Woman Who Feel to Earth / R.B. Russell -- Christmas Crimes at the Mysterious Bookshop / Otto Penzler, editor.

Ron Charles. 12/03/2024: ‘The Voyage Home’ gives new blood to an ancient tale. "Pat Barker’s third novel in her multi-book reevaluation of the Trojan War follows Cassandra on her ill-fated trip to Agamemnon’s court." Review of: The Voyage Home / Pat Barker.

Morten Hoi Jensen. 12/05/2024: If Samuel Beckett wrote ‘Groundhog Day,’ you might get this Danish novel. Review of the translation of v.1 & 2 of On the Calculation of Volume / Solvej Balle; translated by Barbara J. Haveland (New Directions, publisher).

Maham Javaid. 12/05/2024: Millions are reading a teen’s account of life and war. It’s from 1945. "Helaina Ferraioli found Charlotte Buchsbaum’s childhood journal in 2019. She shared snippets on TikTok, leading to Buchsbaum’s son discovering the diary."

Hal Lindsey, 1929-2024

Brian Murphy. WaPo, 12/05/2024: Hal Lindsey, prophecy weaver of ‘Late Great Planet Earth,’ dies at 95.

"Hal Lindsey, a former New Orleans tugboat captain who embraced end-of-days Christian prophecies and helped sharpen evangelical focus on the Middle East with a book that predicted apocalyptic warfare and sold tens of millions of copies, died Nov. 25 at his home in Tulsa.

"The cataclysmal scenarios in Mr. Lindsey’s “The Late Great Planet Earth,” first published in 1970, tapped into a long tradition of doomsday visions by American preachers and zealots. One movement in the 1840s led by Baptist clergyman William Miller had tens of thousands of followers awaiting the end of the world.

"His book (written with Carole C. Carlson) overlaid selected passages from scripture with Cold War-era fears — including forecasting a world war starting in the Middle East — that seemed starkly relevant to many Christian readers and others.

"Bantam Books acquired the mass-market paperback rights from the original publisher, Zondervan, a small religious imprint. “The Late Great Planet Earth” became a fixture on bestseller lists for much of the 1970s and in 1978 was made into a documentary hosted by Orson Welles."

Ben Woolard. JStor Daily, 12/04/2024: The Two Worlds of Patrick White. "In writing and life, the Australian Nobel Laureate was ever preoccupied by the search for spiritual meaning and the fraught relationship between God and blundering humanity."

David Frost. The Critic (UK), 12/05/2024: The definitive Brexit book—for now. Review of: Out: How Brexit Got Done and the Tories Were Undone / Tim Shipman (Wm Collins, publisher)

Recent New Yorker articles on books:

Casey Cep. 12/02/204: The Deep Elation of Working with Wood. Review of: Ingrained: The Making of a Craftsman / Callum Robinson.

Molly Fischer. 12/04/2024: Lucy Grealy Understood What It Meant to Be Seen. Review of the 30th anniversary edition of Autobiography of a Face / Lucy Grealy; forword by Suleika Francey Jaouad.

Benjamin Kunkel. 12/09/2024: Paul Valéry Would Prefer Not To. On the recent translation Monsieur Teste / Paul Valéry; translator Charlotte Mandell; intro Ryan Ruby (NYRB Classics).

Andrew Hui. LitHub, 12/ /2024: A Refuge for the Soul: How to Build a Library, According to Montaigne. Excerpt from Hui's The Study: The Inner Life of Renaissance Libraries (Princeton University Press)

Another end-of-year list:

The Atlantic, 12/04/2024: The books that made us think the most this year.

Atlantic is paywalled, fwiw, the titles to make you think a lot were:

Novels:
Martyr! / by Kaveh Akbar -- James / Percival Everett -- The Hypocrite / Jo Hamya -- Creation Lake / Rachel Kushner

Poems:
The Brush: poems / Eliana Hernández-Pachón, translated by Robin Myers ("a book-length poem about people trapped and menaced by forces beyond their control. It tells the story of Colombia’s February 2000 El Salado Massacre, during which paramilitary forces tortured and murdered 60 people, by following a married couple")

Non-fiction:
Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space / Adam Higginbotham (Atlantic left off the subtitle, making it almost impossible to find)* -- Patriot / Alexei Navalny -- A Wilder Shore: The Romantic Odyssey of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson / Camille Peri -- The Unclaimed: abandonment and hope in the City of Angels / Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans (again, leaving out the subtitle made it difficult to find*) -- Whiskey Tender: a memoir / Deborah Jackson Taffa

*Unless you click on the title proper, which sends you to the Atlantic's merch page where the full title is provided; but why was the sub included in the Stevenson bio?

Guardian books best-ofs 2024 all in one place:

Guardian. 12/07/2024: The best books of 2024.

Crime fiction 2024 round-up:

Jeremy Black. The Critic (UK), 12/07/2024: Murders of 2024.

See also:
Martin Edwards. crimereads.com, 12/06/2024: Martin Edwards Revisits E.C.R. Lorac's 1946 Opus. On The Theft of the Iron Dogs / E.C.R. Lorac.

New Yorker profiles of author/translators:

Max Norman. 12/07/2024: What Does a Translator Do? "Damion Searls, who has translated a Nobel laureate, believes his craft isn’t about transforming or reflecting a text. It’s about conjuring one’s experience of it."

Alice Gregory. 12/02/2024: The Philosopher L. A. Paul Wants Us to Think About Our Selves. Profile of the author of Transformative Experience / L.A. Paul.

WaPo end of year books round-up:

WaPo editors & reviewers. 11/22/2024: The 10 best books of 2024 (fiction & non-f)

WaPo editors & reviewers. 11/21/2024: 50 notable works of nonfiction from 2024. "best memoirs, biographies, history and more"

WaPo editors & reviewers. 11/21/2024: 50 notable works of fiction from 2024. "Highlights among the year’s novels, short-story collections and works in translation"

Karen MacPherson. 11/20/2024: The 10 best mystery novels of 2024.

Jacob Brogan. 11/20/2024: The 10 best graphic novels of 2024.

WaPo weekend books:

Jane Eisner. 12/07/2024: ‘A Sand County Almanac’ remains an environmental classic at 75. "Aldo Leopold’s book is a landmark of both nature writing and American philosophical thought." On Sand County Almanac / Aldo Leopold.

Kim Bellware. 12/07/2024: The internet made a stink over her ‘politics of smell’ PhD thesis. "Cambridge scholar Ally Louks overcame a wave of trolling on her way to seeing her obscure academic research find a massive new audience."

Sophia Nguyen, photos Kemka Ajokou. 12/06/2024: Karl Ove Knausgaard shows us the books he loves (and hates). Caution: "interactive."

December books from The Critic (UK):

Andreas Campomar. 12/08/2024: Land of fire and blood. Review of: Patria: Lost Countries of South America / Laurence Blair.

Samuel Rubenstein. 12/10/2024: A tumultuous decade of ingenious novelties. Review of: Republic: Britain’s Revolutionary Decade, 1649—1660 / Alice Hunt.

Patrick Porter. 12/09/2024: Getting the measure of the Russian bear. Review of: The Sources of Russian Aggression: Is Russia a Realist Power? / Sumantra Maitra.

Paul Brian. 12/14/2024: The city and its uncertain plot. Review of: The City and Its Uncertain Walls / Haruki Murakami.

Jack Nicholson. 12/14/2024: Are all Christians monks? Review of: All Christians are Monks: The Monastery, the Parish, and the Renewal of the Church / George Guiver.

Lola Salem. 12/15/2024: Too many silences in this book about music. Review of: The Shortest History of Music / Andrew Ford.

Pierre d'Alancaisez. 12/15/2024: Clickbait criticism. Review of: Poor Artists / Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad (aka The White Pube).

James Stevens Curl. 12/15/2024: Going Rogue. Review of: The Rogue Goths: R.L. Roumieu, Joseph Peacock and Bassett Keeling / Edmund Harris (""Rogue” (properly “Rogue Elephant”) architecture was a term employed by Harry Stuart Goodhart-Rendel (1887-1959) as a label to describe works by those practitioners of the 19th-century Gothic Revival who were addicted to “Go” (pejorative shorthand used by some Victorian commentators to describe architecture that was restless, too animated, “acrobatic”, and rather embarrassing)."

Helen Pluckrose. 12/16/2024: A worthy but deeply flawed attack on woke. Review of: We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite / Musa al-Gharbi.

Tista Austin. 12/21/2024: Booty contest. Review of: Plunder? How Museums Got Their Treasures / Justin Jacobs.

John Self. 12/17/2024: Libyans, Parisians and London Irish. A Best Fiction books list.

Peter Caddick-Adams. 12/22/2024: The year in military history.

Daniel Johnson. 12/22/2024: Heroes, villains and lessons in life. "Intellectual history, sneered at in Oxford 40 years ago, is all the rage there now."

Graham Elliott. 12/27/2024: The joy of old English. Review of: The Victorians and English Dialect: Philology, Fiction and Folklore / Matthew Townend.

Amelia Butler-Gallie. 12/26/2024: Eventful afterlife of a visionary genius. Review of: The Magic of Silence: Caspar David Friedrich’s Journey through Time / Florian Illies.

Temporarily unlocked

Giles Harvey. NYT, 12/08/2024: What Alice Munro Knew. "The Nobel-winning author’s husband was a pedophile who targeted her daughter and other children. Why did she stay silent?"

Nikki Giovanni, 1943-2024

Penelope Green. NYT, 12/09-10/2024: Nikki Giovanni, Poet Who Wrote of Black Joy, Dies at 81.

"Ms. Giovanni was a prolific star of the Black Arts Movement, the wave of Black nationalism that erupted during the civil rights era, propelled by her, the novelist John Oliver Killens, the playwright and poet LeRoi Jones (later known as Amiri Baraka) and the poets Audre Lorde, Ntozake Shange and Sonia Sanchez, among others. Like many women in the movement, Ms. Giovanni was confounded by the machismo that dominated it.

"Yet she was also independent of the movement as a celebrity poet and public intellectual who appeared on television and toured the country. She was a riveting performer, diminutive at 105 pounds — as reporters never failed to point out — her cadence inflected by the jazz and blues music she loved, her timing that of a comedian or a Baptist preacher. She drew crowds wherever she appeared. She said her best audiences were college students and prison inmates.

"... in her youth, a fan of Ayn Rand, that apostle of individualism. In her memoir she wrote about the contradictions and false pieties of the Black Power movement, her scrappiness as a child and her ambivalence about gender relations. She was not convinced that men and women were meant to live together.

"Ms. Giovanni held teaching positions at Rutgers University and Queens College before Ms. Virginia Fowler, then the associate head of the English department at Virginia Tech, in Blacksburg, recruited her in 1987 to be a visiting professor. She and Ms. Fowler were a couple ever since. Ms. Giovanni earned tenure a few years later, and along the way Ms. Fowler became a scholar of her work, editing her collections and writing her biography, “Nikki Giovanni” (2013). They married in 2016, and both retired in 2022.

"“I recommend old age,” she added. “There’s just nothing as wonderful as knowing you have done your job.”

Nikki Giovanni's LT page is https://www.librarything.com/author/giovanninikki

Harrison Smith. WaPo, 12/09/2024: Nikki Giovanni, who explored Black life in verse, dies at 81. "A fiery voice of Black liberation in the 1960s, she later honed a more tender, meditative style in best-selling books for children and adults."

Colin Grant. Guardian, 12/10/2024: Nikki Giovanni’s poetry was a platform for truth-telling.

Sian Cain. Guardian, 12/10/2024: Nikki Giovanni, acclaimed poet of the Black Arts Movement, dies aged 81.

Veronica Chambers. NYT, 12/10/2024: When Nikki Giovanni Was Young, Brilliant and Unafraid.

Kevin Young. New Yorker, 12/11/2024: Nikki Giovanni’s Legacy of Black Love.

Hannah Giorgis. Atlantic, 12/11/2024: Nikki Giovanni’s Wondrous Celebrations of Black Life.

Jenisha Watts. Atlantic, 12/14/2024: What Nikki Giovanni Wouldn’t Write About.

Emily Lordi. WaPo, 12/13/2024: Nikki Giovanni had the confidence to make an art out of mistakes.

Kevin B. Blackistone. WaPo, 12/14/2024: From Ali to Kaepernick, Nikki Giovanni understood the power of sport.

Matthew Walther. The Lamp, 12/06/2024: The One Hundred Pages Strategy: On how to read one hundred pages every day.

crimereads.com, 12/10/2024: The Best Crime Novels of 2024.

crimereads.com, 12/12/2024: The Best Espionage Fiction of 2024.

Molly Odintz. crimereads.com, 12/13/2024: The Best International Crime Fiction of 2024.

Caitlin Flanagan. Atlantic, 12/09/2024: Walk on Air Against Your Better Judgment: What Seamus Heaney gave me.

Aaron Schuster. MIT Press Reader, 12/09/2024: Kafka's Screwball Tragedy: Investigations of a Philosophical Dog. On Franz Kafka's short story Investigations of a Dog.

"The Latest" on LitHub:

James Folta. 12/10/2024: Luigi is Currently Reading: What Can We Really Learn About the UHC CEO’s Killer Based on the Books He’s Read? "James Folta on the Radically Normal Reading Habits of Luigi Mangione."

Tobias Carroll. 12/10/2024: China Miéville’s 2009 The City & The City Predicted the State of US Politics in 2024. For anchor purposes: The City & The City / China Miéville.

LARB December:

Trenton B. Olsen. 12/08/2024: Falling in Love with Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson. Review of: A Wilder Shore: The Romantic Odyssey of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson / Camille Peri.

Na'amit Sturm Nagel. 12/15/2024: Decimated, Then Reassembled on Arrival: Lore Segal’s Legacy.

Gregory Daddis. 12/23/2024: An Angry Book for an Angry Time. Review of: The Vietnam War: A Military History / Geoffrey Wawro.

Benajmen Walker. 12/24/2024: They’ll Still Be Carding You. Review of: Code Name Puritan: Norman Holmes Pearson at the Nexus of Poetry, Espionage, and American Power / Greg Barnhisel.

Michael S. Roth. 12/24/2024: From Woke to Solidarity. Review of: We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite / Musa al-Gharbi -- Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of America’s Political Crisis / James Davison Hunter.

TLS Dec 13 2024

Featured

Tim Parks. Kindling self-regard: What readers like most in a book. (Essay)

Daud Ali. Informal empire: The wider impact of India from the Red Sea to the Pacific. Review of: THE GOLDEN ROAD: How ancient India transformed the world / William Dalrymple.

Peter Geoghegan. Mission control: The clandestine network of a Catholic order. Review of: OPUS: Dark money, a secretive cult, and its mission to remake our world / Gareth Gore.

Stefanie Hundehege. A losing game: The peripatetic life of a modern master. Review of: IN THE FUTURE OF YESTERDAY: A Life of Stefan Zweig / Rüdiger Görner.

Catriona Seth. The myth of Marie Antoinette: An average woman forced to rise to exceptional circumstances. Review of: MARIE-ANTOINETTE / Charles-Éloi Vial.

Mary Beard. Marathon woman: A night at the museum and other classical inspirations. Review of: SHIFTING THE MOON FROM ITS ORBIT: A night at the Acropolis Museum / Andrea Marcolongo; translated by Will Schutt -- THE ART OF RUNNING: From Marathon to Athens on winged feet / Andrea Marcolongo; translated by Will Schutt.

George Berridge. Road to perdition: A graphic adaptation of Cormac McCarthy arrives in the midst of a troubling exposé. Review of: CORMAC MCCARTHY'S THE ROAD: A graphic novel adaptation / Manu Larcenet.

Mary Beard (in A Don's Life). Romans (and Greeks) in Washington.

Literature

Nina Allan. Crocodiles in Soho: The first in a new series set in a mythic ‘other’ London. Review of: THE GREAT WHEN / Alan Moore.

Lucy Scholes. Invasion of the dark fantasies: A group of friends shoot a movie about aliens, to uncanny effect. Review of: FINAL CUT / Charles Burns.

Ross Wilson. Shelley’s last bow: The final two volumes of the Longman edition of his poetry. Review of: THE POEMS OF SHELLEY: Volume Five: 1821–1822 / Percy Bysshe Shelley; edited by Carlene Adamson, Will Bowers, Jack Donovan et al -- THE POEMS OF SHELLEY
Volume Six: 1822 / Percy Bysshe Shelley; edited by Carlene Adamson, Will Bowers, Jack Donovan et al.

In Brief Review of: DIX VERSIONS DE KAFKA / Maïa Hruska ("Maïa Hruska unravels the intricate backstories of ten of the earliest translations of the work of Franz Kafka out of its original German and into other languages; and the book is an elegant reflection on how the act of translation itself brings about Kafkaesque diversions.")

In Brief Review of: LAZARUS MAN / Richard Price.

In Brief Review of: SWEET LI JIE / David Dabydeen.

In Brief Review of: VACATED LANDSCAPE / Jean Lahougue; translated by K. E. Gormley.

In Brief Review of: SOLUTIONS FOR THE PROBLEM OF BODIES IN SPACE / Catherine Barnett.

Arts & Architecture

Emily May. What moves people: A vintage Pina Bausch dance work, revisited by the original cast. Review of Bausch's KONTAKTHOF – ECHOES OF ’78, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, Opernhaus Wuppertal, Germany; on an international tour in 2025 and 2026.

Maria Margaronis. Cockiness and grace: Noel Streatfeild’s much-loved novel brought to life. Review of: BALLET SHOES, National Theatre, London, until February 22; Kendall Feaver, based on the novel by Noel Streatfeild.

Serguei Alex. Oushakine. A global artist under Stalin: The international style pioneered by a Soviet architect. Review of: WOLKENBÜGEL: El Lissitzky as architect / Richard Anderson -- EL LISSITZKY ON PAPER: Print culture, architecture, politics, 1919–1933 / Samuel Johnson.

Science & Technology

Louise Fabiani. Good natured: How terrestrial life and the environment evolve together. Review of: BECOMING EARTH: How our planet came to life / Ferris Jabr.

Frances Wood. Doctor’s orders: A Chinese encyclopedia of pharmaceutical knowledge. Review of: A CATALOG OF BENEVOLENT ITEMS: Li Shizhen’s compendium of classical knowledge: Selected entries from the ‘Ben cao gang mu’ / Li Shizhen; Paul U. Unschuld, editor and translator.

Matthew Stanley. She made Einstein add up: The self-effacing woman behind the theory of relativity. Review of: EINSTEIN’S TUTOR: The story of Emmy Noether and the invention of modern physics / Matthew Stanley.

Hunter Dukes. A mechanic among the gentlemen: Robert Hooke’s laboratory was the City of London itself. Review of: ROBERT HOOKE’S EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY / Felicity Henderson.

Annie Worsley. Mid silver mist: A literary journey through the British Isles, investigating fog. Review of: CHASING FOG: Finding enchantment in a cloud / Laura Pashby.

History, Politics, & Society

Philip Cooke. After Mussolini: The struggle to shape Italy as the war came to an end. Review of: ITALIA 1943: La guerra continua / Luca Baldissara --25 APRILE: La storia politica e civile di un giorno lungo ottant’anni / Luca Baldissara -- NAPLES 1944: War, liberation and chaos / Keith Lowe -- ITALY REBORN: From fascism to democracy / Mark Gilbert.

Norma Clarke. Truth at all costs: Tales from an oversexualized upbringing. Review of: MY FAMILY: The memoir / David Baddiel.

In Brief Review of: STREETSCAPES OF WAR AND REVOLUTION: Prague, 1914–1920 / Claire Morelon.

In Brief Review of: OUR PEOPLE’S WAR: Home Intelligence reports and the monitoring of British morale, June 1941–December 1944 / Jeremy A. Crang, editor.

Jessica Roy. NYT, 12/10/2024: It Wasn’t You. It Was Your Parents.

"A decade after it was published, the book “Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents” is surging in popularity and making people rethink their family dynamic." Proper citation: Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting or Self-Involved Parents / Lindsay Gibson.

Annie Ernaux. Paris Review, 12/09/2024: Rouen’s Municipal Library, 1959–1964 (or, The Formative Years).

The Atlantic books round-up:

Rhian Sasseen. 12/12/2024: What If Every Day Were November 18? "In Solvej Balle’s new series of novels, the concept of a time loop is more than a gimmick; it’s a way of rethinking human existence." Regarding On the Calculation of Volume (Book I-II) / Solvej Balle, translator Barbara J. Haveland.

See also WaPo review >167 featherbear:

Michael S. Roth. 12/16/2024: Oliver Sacks’s Lifelong Search for Recognition. Regarding: Letters / Oliver Sacks; Kate Edgar, editor. With a title that generic the search for recognition will continue. https://www.librarything.com/work/32842787

December Public Books:

Editorial Staff of Public Books. Public Books, 12/19/2024: Public Picks 2024. "What were the books of 2024 that dazzled, challenged, and inspired us? For this, the 12th-annual edition of Public Picks, section editors for Literary Fiction, Borderlands, Literature in Translation, and Technology; series editors for Public Thinker and B-Sides; and our managing editor and one of our editors in chief tell us about their favorites. Take a look back on 2024 with one of these Public Books Public Picks!" fyi: Nicholas Dames, editor in chief of PB, is the author of The Chapter: A Segmented History from Antiquity to the Twenty-First, reviewed in >208 featherbear:

Maria Cecilia Ulrickson. Public Books, 12/12/2024: Excavating New Archives of the Enslaved. Review of: A Secret among the Blacks: Slave Resistance before the Haitian Revolution / John D. Garrigus -- Encyclopédie noire: The Making of Moreau de Saint-Méry’s Intellectual World / Sara E. Johnson -- African Musicians in the Atlantic World: Legacies of Sound and Slavery / Mary Caton Lingold.

Nicholas Dames. Public Books, 12/13/2024: “Parallel Tracks”: Sophie Ratcliffe on Academia, Memoirs, and Motherhood. Review of: Loss, A Love Story: imagined histories and brief encounters / Sophie Ratcliffe.

Marisol LeBrón. Public Books, 12/17/2024: A Prison the Size of the State, A Police to Control the World. Review of: American Purgatory: Prison Imperialism and the Rise of Mass Incarceration / Benjamin D. Weber -- Policing Empires: Militarization, Race, and the Imperial Boomerang in Britain and the US / Julian Go.

Alexander Hartley. Boston Review, 12/10/2024: To Whom Does the World Belong? "The battle over copyright in the age of ChatGPT."

Emily Temple. LitHub, 12/12/2024: The Best (Old) Books We Read in 2024. Define "old?"

Rebecca Makkai. NYT, 12/11/2024: Read Your Way Around Chicago.

Dwight Garner, Jennifer Szalai, & Alexandra Jacobs. NYT, 12/12/2024: Our Book Critics on Their Year in Reading. Temporarily unlocked.

Tim Bayne. Aeon, 12/13/2024: The stories of Daniel Dennett.

Daniel Dennett's LT page is at: https://www.librarything.com/author/dennettdanielc-1

Yale Review call-back:

Victor Brombert. 05/19/2021: On Rereading: Remaking the world.

And recently:

Andrew Martin. 12/10/2024: The Sexual Histories of Alan Hollinghurst. "In Our Evenings, the novelist grapples with a divided Britain."

Amir Ahmadi Arian. 12/10/2024: n Search of Zabihollah Mansouri: Was Iran’s most famous translator secretly its most prolific author?

Colbert I. King. WaPo, 12/13/2024: Who’s afraid of a public library?

"... knowledge fell victim to fear at an hours-long meeting on Tuesday of the Warren County Board of Supervisors. The all-Republican board voted to grab control of Samuels Public Library, which was honored as the state’s 2024 Library of the Year.

"The supervisors said their purpose was to create a library board to oversee policy and budget. But it’s clear the takeover was not about finances and balance sheets but getting control over what is on the bookcases and available by way of library cards. The object of the consternation driving political efforts to corral Samuels — whose roots go back to 1799 — is the presence of LGBTQ-themed books. Reading materials deemed clear and present threats to the social order, as defined by the fearful."

Ed Simon. LitHub, 12/14/2024: How Walter Benjamin’s Iconic Antifascist Essay Escaped Europe. "... on the Enduring Political Relevance of Benjamin’s Theses on the Philosophy of History"

New Yorker books/books-related round-up (non-list) for December:

Rebecca Mead. 12/09/2024: When the United States Tried to Get on Top of the Sex Trade. Review of: Empire of Purity: The History of Americans' Global War on Prostitution (Politics and Society in Modern America) / Eva Payne.

Helen Shaw. 12/11/2024: Remembering Kenneth Branagh’s Shakespearean Heyday (and Forgetting His Recent Lear). "In the nineteen-eighties and nineties, the actor, writer, and director ushered in a Golden Era of Shakespeare plays on film the likes of which we haven’t seen since."

Merve Emre. 12/16/2024: Sure, “Paradise Lost” Is Radical, but Did You Know It Was Sexy? Review of: What in Me Is Dark: The Revolutionary Afterlife of Paradise Lost / Orlando Reade.

Vinson Cunningham. 12/16/2024: Up from Urkel, World-Famous Nerd. Review of: Growing Up Urkel / Jaleel White.

Jennifer Wilson. 12/16/2024: What Professional Organizers Know About Our Lives. Review of: More Than Pretty Boxes: How the Rise of Professional Organizing Shows Us the Way We Work Isn’t Working / Carrie M. Lane. With reference to: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing / Marie Kondō.

Hilton Als. 12/16/2024: The Hidden Story of J. P. Morgan’s Librarian. "Belle da Costa Greene, a brilliant archivist, buried her own history."

Manvir Singh. 12/23/2024: How Much Does Our Language Shape Our Thinking? "English continues to expand into diverse regions around the world. The question is whether humanity will be homogenized as a result."

Nikhil Krishnan. 12/23/2024: Does Morality Do Us Any Good? Review of: The Invention of Good and Evil: A World History of Morality / Hanno Sauer.

Best of 2024 lists from fivebooks.com:

Nigel Warburton, Cal Flynn interviewer. 12/12/2024: The Best Philosophy Books of 2024. Warburton's recommendations are:

Herald of a Restless World: How Henri Bergson Brought Philosophy to the People / Emily Herring -- Facing Down the Furies: Suicide, the Ancient Greeks, and Me / Edith Hall -- Marx (The Routledge Philosophers) / Jaime Edwards & Brian Leiter -- The Edge of Sentience: Risk and Precaution in Humans, Other Animals, and AI / Jonathan Birch -- We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt's Lessons in Love and Disobedience / Lyndsey Stonebridge.

Sophie Roell. 12/07/2024: Award-Winning Crime Novels of 2024:

Flags on the Bayou: A Novel / James Lee Burke -- All the Sinners Bleed: A Novel / S.A. Cosby -- Tell Me What I Am: A Novel / Una Mannion -- Everybody Knows: A Novel / Jordan Harper -- The Peacock and the Sparrow: A Novel / I.S. Berry.

Daniel Green. The Reading Experience, 12/12/2024: The Dustbin of Literary History.

Lithub, 12/16/2024: The 50 Biggest Literary Stories of 2024. "Including Alice Munro, Keanu Reeves, and Nicholas Sparks's Chicken Salad."

Book Marks. LitHub, 12/18/2024: Here Are All the Award-Winning Novels of 2024! "Read the Books That Took Home This Year’s Biggest Literary Prizes."

Charles Blu Buhs. The Public Domain Review, 11/26/2024: Strange Gods: Charles Fort’s Book of the Damned (1919).

Olivia Rutigliano. LitHub, 12/18/2024: Let’s Not Forget Charles Dickens’s Other Christmas Ghost Stories! "Six Creepy, Morality-Fueled Holiday Tales From the Master."

“The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton,” a story in The Pickwick Papers (1836) -- “The Mother’s Eyes,” a story in Master Humphrey’s Clock (1840) -- The Chimes (1844) -- The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain: A Fancy for Christmas-Time (1848) -- “The Haunted House” (1859) -- The Signalman (1866).

Arlene Croce, 1934-2024

Brian Seibert. NYT, 12/17/2024: Arlene Croce, Dance Critic With a Biting Wit, Dies at 90. "Writing for The New Yorker, she was both admired and feared, wielding a sometimes merciless pen. Her study of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers drew accolades."

Author of The Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Book. Her LT page is https://www.librarything.com/author/crocearlene

Jennifer Homans. New Yorker, 12/19/2024: The Afterimage of Arlene Croce. "With her writing for The New Yorker, Croce put dance criticism and dance itself on the cultural map."

TLS December 20 / 27, 2024|No. 6351/2

Featured

Ian Ground. Death becomes them: A philosophical inquiry into how animals perceive mortality. Review of: PLAYING POSSUM: How animals understand death / Susana Monsó.

Ian Sansom. Christmas before Ozempic: Festive feasting. (Essay)

Marie Darrieussecq. All human life is here: The ‘dangerous’ eighteenth arrondissement of Paris. Review of: PARIS, MUSÉE DU XXIÈME SIÈCLE: Le dix-huitième arrondissement / Thomas Clerc.

Patricia Storace. Those who burn books: Radwa Ashour’s epic of Castilian conquest and Moorish dispossession. Review of: GRANADA: The complete trilogy / Radwa Ashour; translated by Kay Heikkinen.

Mary Beard (in A Don's Life): Another Parthenon frieze.

Literature & Bibliography

Bharat Tandon. Taking a break: The evolution of the chapter through history. Review of: The Chapter: A Segmented History from Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century / Nicholas Dames.

Georgina Wilson. No more scribling: A very practical Renaissance reader. Review of: GABRIEL HARVEY AND THE HISTORY OF READING: Essays by Lisa Jardine and others / Anthony Grafton, Nicholas Popper and William Sherman, editors.

J.S. Barnes. Shivering under a broad sky: Supernatural stories set in the East Anglian landscape. Review of: EERIE EAST ANGLIA: Fearful tales of field and fen / Edward Parnell, editor -- FRIENDS AND SPECTRES / Robert Lloyd Parry, editor.

Phil Baker. Botanical Gothic: Putting the demonic into quirky stories. Review of: OUT OF THE PAST: Tales of haunting history / Aaron Worth, editor -- DEADLY DOLLS: Midnight tales of uncanny playthings / Elizabeth Dearnley, editor.

Patricia Craig. Eerie imaginings: The range and style of Irish otherworldly stories. Review of: UNCANNY IRELAND: Otherworldly tales of the strange and sublime / Maria Giakaniki, editor.

William Armstrong. Doomed to a life of freedom: A provocative drama of the Turkish Republic’s early years. Review of: THE PRISONER OF ANKARA / Suat Derviş; translated by Maureen Freely.

Tristram Fane Sanders. Coping strategies: The collected poems of an accomplished parodist and verse technician. Review of: COLLECTED POEMS / Wendy Cope.

In Brief Review of: A BOOK FOR CHRISTMAS / Selma Lagerlöf; translated by Peter Graves, Sarah Death and Linda Schenck.

In Brief Review of: REMEMBERING CHRISTOPHER ROBIN: Escaping Winnie-the-Pooh / Kevin J. Last.

In Brief Review of: BIRDS, BEASTS AND A WORLD MADE NEW / Guillaume Apollinaire and Velimir Khlebnikov; edited and translated by Robert Chandler.

In Brief Review of: ALICE'S FATHER: Henry Liddell, Dean of Christ Church / John Witheridge.

In Brief Review of: KILLING TIME / Alan Bennett.

In Brief Review of: WE'RE ALONE: Essays / Edwidge Danticat.

Arts & Architecture

James Cahill. The city is his: Gustave Caillebotte’s masculine nonchalance. Review of the Caillebotte exhibition PAINTING MEN, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, until January 19.

Laura O'Brien. Art from the ashes: How the impressionists responded to the Paris Commune. Review of: PARIS IN RUINS: The siege, the Commune and the birth of impressionism / Sebastian Smee.

Rod Mengham. Join the party: Phyllida Barlow’s boundary-crossing, endlessly imaginative work. Review of the exhibition PHYLLIDA BARLOW. UNSCRIPTED, Hauser and Wirth, Bruton, Somerset, until January 5.

Toby Lichtig. All about feet and sweets: Fairy tales repurposed as Christmas shows. Review of 2 Christmas shows for children based on folktales, Nancy Harris's adaptation of THE RED SHOES, Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until January 19, and Simon Armitage's adaptation of HANSEL AND GRETEL, Globe Theatre, London, until January 5.

Robert Bevan. Are we in agreement?: A survey of British architecture that dislikes the modern. Review of: A SHORT HISTORY OF BRITISH ARCHITECTURE: From Stonehenge to the Shard / Simon Jenkins.

In Brief Review of: THE YEAR THAT MADE THE MUSICAL: 1924 and the glamour of musical theatre / William A. Everett.

Philosophy

Barbara J. King. Festive rights and wrongs: A famous philosopher decries Christmas eating habits. Review of: Consider the Turkey / Peter Singer.

Simone Gubler. It’s a dog’s life?: Sad human lives measured against those of happy canines. Review of: THE HAPPINESS OF DOGS: Why the unexamined life is most worth living / Mark Rowlands -- COLLARED: How we made the modern dog / Chris Pearson.

History, Politics, & Society

Laura Kounine. Sex, lies, sabbats: France’s deadliest witch-hunt revisited. Review of: THE BASQUE WITCH-HUNT: A secret history / Jan Machielsen.

Felipe Fernández-Armesto. A hero of his time: Rescuing El Cid from the Right and Left in Spain. Review of: El Cid: The life and afterlife of a medieval mercenary / Nora Berend.

Martin Meredith. What a carve-up!: A ‘selective’ history of western intervention in Africa. Review of: AFRICONOMICS: A history of western ignorance / Bronwen Everill.

Peter Frederick Matthews. Forgotten fatherlands: Coming to terms with Germany’s colonial past. Review of: THE LONG SHADOW OF GERMAN COLONIALISM: Amnesia, denialism and revisionism / Henning Melber.

Judith Flanders. Before Miss Marple: Women ‘searchers’ in Victorian fact and fiction. Review of: THE MYSTERIOUS CASE OF THE VICTORIAN FEMALE DETECTIVE / Sara Lodge.

Declan Ryan. The national living room: On pubs and public culture. Review of: A PUB FOR ALL SEASONS: A yearlong journey in search of the perfect British local / Adrian Tierney-Jones -- CRUNCH: An ode to crisps / Natalie Whittle.

Joshua Roebke. Aeon, 12/19/2024: Laboratories of the impossible. "By testing the boundaries of reality, Spanish-language authors have created a sublime counterpart to experimental physics."

Katherine J. Chen. LitHub, 12/19/2024: On Henry James and the Enduring Lessons of Love.

Letters responding to The Atlantic November 2024 issue (regarding GenZ non-readers) in December: Falling in Love With Reading Will Change Your Life

Related:

Hanna Rosin. Atlantic, 12/19/2024: Why Reading Books in High School Matters. Transcript of a podcast (a podcast on the benefits of reading?)

Book Riot, 12/20/2024: Here are Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of 2024.

Joumana Khatib and Emma Lumeij. NYT, 12/20/2024: The Books Readers Loved in 2024. Temporarily unlocked. Based on NYT reader postings.

Rosario López. Aeon, 12/20/2024: Why history is always political. "In his work on republicanism as a living idea, J G A Pocock showed that contesting history is part of a robust civic life."

WaPo books week-end:

Isaac Butler. 12/20/2024: An absurd and profound fantasy about a search for the Holy Grail. Review of Von Bek / Michael Moorcock.

Becca Rothfeld. 12/13/2024: A study of women who leave their children raises startling questions. Review of: The Abandoners: On Mothers and Monsters / Begoña Gómez Urzaiz , translator, Lizzie Davis.

Lee Edwards, 1932-2024

Trip Gabriel. NYT, 12/21/2024: Lee Edwards, Historian of the Conservative Movement, Dies at 92. "In his books about Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater and other figures on the right, he was, one observer said, “a keeper of the flame and spreader of the gospel.”

"Mr. Edwards was the author of more than a dozen books, which he called a “canon” of modern conservative history. Among them were biographies of Mr. Goldwater and Edwin Meese III, Mr. Reagan’s attorney general.

"But he was neither a conservative thought leader nor a political adviser to conservative candidates. He was largely a promoter of others’ ideas, and his books mainly addressed the faithful."

Lee Edwards LT page: https://www.librarything.com/author/edwardslee

Patricia M. Carey. Yale Library, 12/17/2024: Yale Library announces new literary prize for American poetry.

Alexander T. Englert. Aeon, 01/02/2024 (re-posted today for some reason). We’ll meet again. "The intrepid logician Kurt Gödel believed in the afterlife. In four heartfelt letters to his mother he explained why."

Rachel Aviv. New Yorker, 12/23/2024: Alice Munro’s Passive Voice.

David K. Anderson. Hedgehog Review, fall 2024: The Way We Don’t Live Now: The Social Harmonies of Anthony Trollope.

Elizabeth Kaye Cook and Melanie Jennings. Persuasion, 12/19/2024: The Big Five Publishers Have Killed Literary Fiction. "Serious readers must expand their tastes to the small presses."

Tom Nichols. Atlantic, 12/24/2024: The Most Haunting—And Most Inspiring—Moment in A Christmas Carol.

"The graveyard scene in the 1984 production of A Christmas Carol was filmed in the town of Shrewsbury, England. The stone marker that Scott’s Scrooge discovers in the snow was left in place, and for 40 years, it’s been a tourist attraction.

"Last month, someone vandalized it, smashing it into pieces.

"For all I know, the culprits could have been local kids experiencing their first tangle with beer (and the stone has since been repaired), but I found the news dispiriting: It seemed like a perfect comment on our modern age of cynicism and avarice that someone trashed the place where Scrooge found his redemption. Learning of this vandalism was part of why I decided to write about A Christmas Carol today."

William Labov, 1927-2024

Clay Risen. NYT, 12/24/2024: William Labov, Who Studied How Society Shapes Language, Dies at 97. "He laid the foundation for sociolinguistics, and he showed that structures like class and race shaped speech as much as where someone lives."

Author of The Social Stratification of English in New York City &, with Sharon Ash & Charles Boberg, The Atlas of North American English, & many more.

His LT page: https://www.librarything.com/author/labovwilliam

Jacques Roubaud, 1932-2024

Adam Nossiter. NYT, 12/25/2024: Jacques Roubaud, Poetic Master of Form and Whimsy, Dies at 92. "He was trained as a mathematician, but he gained fame in France, and won major prizes, for his modern verse."

"His death was also signaled by the celebrated literary group of which Mr. Roubaud was an early member, the Oulipo, which announced in the newspaper Le Monde that Mr. Roubaud was “henceforth excused from its meetings, by reason of death.”

"He was an admirer of France’s great Cubist poet Pierre Reverdy, who specialized in using discordant word-pictures to suggest states of mind. He was also influenced by the medieval troubadours of Provence — himself a southerner, he became a recognized expert on the troubadours — and much of his poetry is infused with the bright sun of southern France. “The poetry of the troubadours,” he wrote, “is born penetrated by light and birds.”

His LT page: https://www.librarything.com/author/roubaudjacques

Reggie Nadelson. NYT, 12/23, upd 24/2024: The New York Bookstore That Lets You Visit France for an Afternoon. "Albertine, in a Fifth Avenue mansion, is a portal to both Gilded Age New York and the Francophone world."

"What’s arguably New York’s most enchanting bookstore opened a decade ago inside the palatial Payne Whitney House, an early 1900s landmark built by the architect Stanford White on the southeast corner of East 79th Street and Fifth Avenue that’s served as the headquarters of the French Embassy’s cultural and educational activities in the United States for the past 72 years."

From earlier in the year:

Matthew Walther. Compact, 09/06/2024: The Rise of Post-Literate History.

Two takes on We Who Wrestle With God: Perceptions of the Divine / Jordan Peterson. Clicked to the authors' creds, & they're both more political than historical/theological, it appears.

Michael Taube. The Critic (UK), 12/25/2024: Finding faith.

Matt McManus. The Jacobin, 12/18/2024: Jordan Peterson’s Take on the Bible Is as Bad as You’d Think.

Ron Charles. WaPo, 12/19/2024: A long, bookish marriage is still too short. Or, Books, a love story. Temporarily unlocked (until the end of the month).

Agnes Collard. Unherd, 12/26/2024: The torture of an unphilosophical life: The mind deserves a task worthy of its powers. Regarding The Man Without Qualities / Robert Musil.

Alexander Narazyan. NYT, 12/27/2024: The Novel About U.S. Politics So Outrageous It Nearly Wasn’t Published. Regarding The Public Burning / Robert Coover.