Category Archives: Books

Awards: The Top Science + Literature Books Of 2025

Announcing the 2025 Science + Literature Titles - National Book Foundation

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 AusubelThe Last Animal

The Last Animal: A Novel

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 WahmanholmMeltwater

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 YongAn Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us

An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us:  Yong, Ed: 9780593133231: Amazon.com: Books

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 24, 2025 Issue

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TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT (January 22, 2025): The latest issue features ‘An Individual Talent’ – T.S. Eliot’s Collected Prose…

Something to be said

Eliot’s prose writings in one chronological sweep

By Stephen Romer

Bridging the divide

Why we should listen to those with opposing views

By Carol Tavris

Out of our league

How foreign money has transformed English football

By Mike Jakeman

You can’t stay at the Y-M-C-A

The loss of civic space

By Ian Sansom

The New York Times Book Review – January 19, 2025

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THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (January 19, 2025): The latest issue features ‘The Hipster Grifter’…

The Hipster Grifter Tells All

In “You’ll Never Believe Me,” Kari Ferrell details going from internet notoriety to self-knowledge in a captivating, sharp and very funny memoir.

Publishers and Authors Wonder: Can Anything Replace BookTok?

With a ban looming, publishers are hoping to pivot to new platforms, but readers fear their community of book lovers will never be the same.

Want to Get Sucked Into a Black Hole? Try This Book.

Marcus Chown’s “A Crack in Everything” is a journey through space and time with the people studying one of the most enigmatic objects in the universe.

Books on Drug Trafficking, and Kant, Line Adam Haslett’s Shelves

His new novel is titled after Turgenev’s “Fathers and Sons,” he says, “given the theme of incomprehension between generations in that book.”

London Review Of Books – January 23, 2025 Preview

LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS (Janaury 15, 2025): The latest issue features ‘Reagan’s Make-Believe’….

Reagan’s Make Believe

Reagan: His Life and Legend 
by Max Boot.

That Shape Am I

Patricia Lockwood

On Mysticism: The Experience of Ecstasy 
by Simon Critchley.

T.J. Clark: A Brief Guide to Trump and the Spectacle

Matt Foot: Short Cuts

Jackson Lears: Reagan’s Make-Believe

Nicole Flattery: Candy Says

Brian Dillon: At the Whitechapel

Jonathan Parry: Snobs, Swots and Hacks

Stefan Collini: Karl Polanyi’s Predictions

Times Literary Supplement – January 17, 2025 Preview

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TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT (January 15, 2025): The latest issue features ‘Bloomsbury treasures’ – Newly discovered poems and photographs…

Nature Magazine: Top New Science Books Of 2025

SCIENCE MAGAZINE (January 13, 2025): Pictograms, comics and other illustrations: Andrew Robinson reviews five of the best science picks.

What the Body Knows

John Trowsdale Yale Univ. Press (2024)

To understand the body, “we might picture the heart as a pump, the brain as a kind of computer, the lungs as bellows, the kidney as filters”. But what about the immune system — asks immunologist John Trowsdale in his engaging analysis. It has no straightforward analogy, operating simultaneously as an antiviral software, a surveillance camera, a weapons system and a way to share resources. The system is “unobtrusive yet extensive, nowhere and everywhere, redundant yet essential, powerful yet remote”.

Wild Chocolate

Rowan Jacobsen Bloomsbury (2024)

When residue inside decorative pots from ancient Mexico was analysed, it yielded traces of cacao — early evidence of cocoa consumption. The Spanish word chocolate might have been influenced by the Nahuatl (Aztec) cacahuatl, or cacao water. Journalist Rowan Jacobsen’s appealing book explores wild chocolate’s history as he travels through Central and South America, meeting chocolate makers, activists and Indigenous leaders who revive the bean’s variety in taste and prestige, lost during its modern industrial manufacture.

Talking Images

Eds Silvia Ferrara et alRoutledge (2024)

The logo of the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games was a figure with a red dot ‘head’, blue ‘body’ and single, straight green ‘leg’ — adapted from the Chinese character zhi, meaning ‘birth, life’, ‘arrival’ and ‘achievement’. It is one of a huge variety of “talking images” in a collection edited by three scholars interested in writing. Images range from Palaeolithic symbols and ancient Mesopotamian pictograms to modern Chinese calligraphy and Indian comics. The book traces links between images, marks, language and writing.

Do Plants Know Math?

Stéphane Douady et al. Princeton Univ. Press (2024)

The New York Times Book Review – January 12, 2025

The New York Times Book Review - 01.12.2025 » Download PDF magazines -  Magazines Commumity!

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (January 12, 2025): The latest issue features ‘A Deal With The Devil’ – A.N. Wilson’s new biography of Goethe approaches its subject through his masterpiece and life’s work, the verse drama “Faust”.

3 New Thrillers Fueled by Obsession and Blackmail

Our columnist on the month’s most exciting releases.

A Sex Tape, a Senate Race and a Centuries-Old Family Curse

The scion siblings at the center of Sara Sligar’s Gothic thriller “Vantage Point” try desperately to outrun the calamity that is their inheritance.

In a Dystopian Nepal, an Earthquake’s Aftershocks Are Mostly Political

Samrat Upadhyay’s new novel, “Darkmotherland,” is a sprawling epic in which a natural disaster gives way to an authoritarian takeover.

Times Literary Supplement – January 10, 2025 Preview

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TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT (January 8, 2025): The latest issue features ‘The good, the bad and the ugly’ – The evolution of morality.

The New York Times Book Review – December 29, 2024

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (December 29, 2024): The latest issue features…

The Novel About U.S. Politics So Outrageous It Nearly Wasn’t Published

Robert Coover’s “The Public Burning” was met with bafflement and awe when it appeared in 1977. Reality has finally caught up to his masterpiece.

The Hottest Trend in Publishing: Books You Can Judge by Their Cover

Elaborately designed books with patterned edges and other effects started as a trend in romance and fantasy, and have now spread throughout the publishing industry.

Marvel Comics as Penguin Classics? Elda Rotor Heard a ‘Hell Yeah’

“I get real geek joy out of learning something new,” says the imprint’s vice president and publisher. She’s proud to have broadened the definition of a classic during her tenure.

The New York Review Of Books – January 16, 2025

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THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS (December 26, 2024): The latest issue features…

Rebels Without a Cause

In Sam Gold’s Romeo + Juliet, the lovers’ headlong rush into marriage is in tension throughout with the surprising regression to childhood that characterizes so much of the production.

Romeo + Juliet – a play by William Shakespeare, directed by Sam Gold, at Circle in the Square, New York City, October 24, 2024–February 16, 2025

Joy and Apprehension in Syria

There is widespread relief after Assad’s fall, though no one is more aware than Syrians themselves of the dangers and challenges that await them.

Evolution in the Dock

In her new book, Brenda Wineapple brings to life one of the most inflamed chapters in the history of America’s culture wars: the Scopes trial of 1925.

Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation by Brenda Wineapple