Tom Stevenson: Hamas: The Quest for Power by Beverley Milton-Edwards and Stephen Farrell
Jessie Childs: The Forbidden Garden of Leningrad: A True Story of Science and Sacrifice in a City under Siege by Simon Parkin
Michael Wood: At the Movies: ‘The Brutalist’
Alex de Waal: How to Measure Famine
Michael Dobson:
White People in Shakespeare: Essays in Race, Culture and the Elite edited by Arthur LittleShakespeare’s White Others by David Sterling BrownThe Great White Bard: How to Love Shakespeare while Talking about Race by Farah Karim-Cooper
An exhibition of Franz Kafka’s postcards, letters, and manuscript pages rekindles our sense of him as a writer deeply connected to his own time and place.
Franz Kafka – an exhibition at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, May 30–October 27, 2024, and the Morgan Library and Museum, New York City, November 22, 2024–April 13, 2025
Bernardo Arévalo’s inauguration last year as president of Guatemala symbolized the revival of democracy in a notoriously corrupt country. A concerted effort by obstructionist elites now threatens to oust him on specious grounds—and bring repression back.
Bruce Ragsdale’s Washington at the Plow examines the connections between the first president’s commitment to agricultural innovation and his evolving attitudes toward his enslaved laborers at Mount Vernon.
Washington at the Plow: The Founding Farmer and the Question of Slavery by Bruce A. Ragsdale
NATIONAL BOOK FOUNDATION (January 22, 2025): The National Book Foundation (NBF) and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation today announced selected titles for the fourth year of the Science + Literature program.
Ramona Ausubel, The Last Animal
Riverhead Books / Penguin Random House
“…follows two teenage sisters who join their mother—a paleontology graduate student—on scientific expeditions near and far. Ausubel’s novel captures the wonder of scientific discovery as Jane and her daughters navigate grief, sexism, and a journey to find a wooly mammoth and themselves.“
Claire Wahmanholm, Meltwater
Milkweed Editions
“…dissects the vulnerability of parenthood and our natural world, with embedded erasure poems of Lacy M. Johnson’s “How to Mourn a Glacier” throughout the collection. Meltwater simultaneously mourns the disastrous effects of the climate crisis while finding moments of joy in the everyday through the eyes of a new mother.“
Ed Yong, An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us
Random House / Penguin Random House
“…invites readers into the remarkable sensory worlds of birds, bugs, crocodiles, dogs, and many other animals to show us how these creatures experience the world. Yong argues that all creatures, humans included, have their own unique way of perceiving their surroundings, making the case for why we must collectively protect our biologically diverse planet.”
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT (January 15, 2025): The latest issue features ‘Bloomsbury treasures’ – Newly discovered poems and photographs…
This week’s @TheTLS featuring Jonathan Rée on a new translation of Kapital; @knott_sarah on motherhood; @sophieolive on two newly discovered Woolf poems; Estelle Shirbon on Baalu Girma; Emma Greensmith on hybrid creatures; @bjkingape on cats – and more pic.twitter.com/4EfVcWxJQR
Boomers Daily 