Times Literary Supplement, May 20, 2022 – This week’s @TheTLS, featuring @wmarybeard on Roman souvenirs; @EdwardDocx on Boris Johnson and contempt; @pwilcken on Operation Car Wash; @AdamSJFoulds on music and conflict; @_Poots_ on Leslie Thomas QC – and more
Tag Archives: Book Reviews
Book Reviews: Booklist Magazine – May 15, 2022
Booklist Magazine, May 15, 2022 – From a barrier-leaping African American woman in the Gilded Age to a military coup in Guatemala and the woman bookseller who first published James Joyce’s Ulysses a century ago, the most radiant historical novels of the past 12 months illuminate many lives and times.
History Books: ‘The Castle’ By John Goodall (2022)
John Goodall’s The Castle: A history is the much slimmer companion to his magisterial The English Castle, (2011). Partly an attempt to bring the fruits of his research to a wider audience, Goodall’s new book uses extracts and quotations as the foundation of a historical account: each short chapter features an excerpt from a primary source that seeks to illustrate a particular moment. Rather than offering an architectural or conventional narrative history, Goodall explores the concept of the castle as it has been imagined, remade and contested over time. Important castles such as the Tower of London, Kenilworth and Windsor feature throughout.
Preview: Times Literary Supplement – May 13, 2022
Times Literary Supplement May 13, 2022 – Raphael: worn out by love, or work? | James Hall [reviews] Antonio Forcellino’s newly translated biography of the “most rounded, efficient and consistently accomplished of Renaissance artists”
Previews: The New York Review Of Books – May 26
Geoffrey O’Brien – Schemes Gone Awry
Richard Wilbur’s translations of Molière, now in the Library of America, have a fluency that goes beyond meter and rhyme to encompass textures of speech and movements of thought.
Molière: The Complete Richard Wilbur Translations
Fintan O’Toole – Our Hypocrisy on War Crimes
The US’s history of moral evasiveness around wartime atrocities undermines the very institution that might eventually bring Putin and his subordinates to justice: the International Criminal Court.
Preview: Times Literary Supplement – May 6, 2022
Times Literary Supplement, May 6, 2022 – This week’s @TheTLS, featuring James Fenton on Volume IV of John Richardson’s Picasso biography; @joemoransblog on the “Premonitions Bureau”; @JuliusKrein on the American Right; @MElizabethLowry on William Kentridge; @AnaAliciaGarza on James Agee – and more
Reviews: New Books On Food Science – May 2022
May 2, 2022 – Our food system is a rich, complex blend of biology and culture. From the biodiversity in forests, oceans, and farms to the living weave of long-standing traditions and emerging trends, food touches every aspect of life on Earth. This diversity hasn’t always carried through to agricultural and culinary literatures, but fortunately this is changing. Fresh perspectives are emerging in the literary discussions of food, addressing a range of topics and cuisines. In 2022, Science will share this tapestry in a limited podcast series on science and food. Hosted by journalist Angela Saini, the series will highlight books from around the world that intersect with this theme. A different book and its author will appear monthly on the Science podcast, beginning on 26 May 2022.
Together, the books discussed in these segments expose an entanglement of biology, culinary science, and culture. In Eating to Extinction: The World’s Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them, Dan Saladino addresses biodiversity loss and the future of food. Saladino covers vast swaths of time and space, taking us from wild honey gatherers in Africa to rare Orkney barley as he demonstrates that species loss is linked to cultural loss.
Food literatures also demand that we confront ourselves and our blind spots. T. Colin Campbell’s The Future of Nutrition: An Insider’s Look at the Science, Why We Keep Getting It Wrong, and How to Start Getting It Right explores the evidence of the health benefits of plant-based diets. Crucially, this book exposes the cultural and political inertia protecting animal protein from scrutiny, reminding us that scientific research is never detached from society.
Previews: New York Times Book Review – May 1, 2022
- Abandoned, Trafficked, Living as a Man: A Chinese-American Coming of Age A debut novel takes a new spin on the 19th-century western. April 18, 2022 By JENNIFER EGAN
- ESSAY At 100, the ‘Just William’ Books Are an Icon of British Childhood Richmal Crompton’s prototypical schoolboy has survived war, upheaval, changing tastes and a new world. He’s still just 11. April 22, 2022 By SASKIA SOLOMON
Science: Dark Matter Quantum Sensors, Rabies Risks, New Book Reviews
On this week’s show: How physicists are using quantum sensors to suss out dark matter, how rabies thwarts canine vaccination campaigns, and a kickoff for our new series with authors of books on food, land management, and nutrition science
Dark matter hunters have turned to quantum sensors to find elusive subatomic particles that may exist outside physicists’ standard model. Adrian Cho, a staff writer for Science, joins host Sarah Crespi to give a tour of the latest dark matter particle candidates—and the traps that physicists are setting for them.
Next, we hear from Katie Hampson, a professor in the Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health & Comparative Medicine at the University of Glasgow, about her work contact tracing rabies in Tanzania. Her group was able to track rabies in a population of 50,000 dogs over 14 years. The massive study gives new insight into how to stop a virus that circulates at superlow levels but keeps popping up, despite vaccine campaigns.
Finally, we launch our 2022 books series on food and agriculture. In six interviews, which will be released monthly for the rest of the year, host and science journalist Angela Saini will speak to authors of recent books on topics from Indigenous land management to foods that are going extinct. This month, Angela talks with Lenore Newman, director of the Food and Agriculture Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley, who helped select the books for the series.
Previews: Times Literary Supplement – April 29, 2022
This week’s Times Literary Supplement for April 29, 2022 @TheTLS, featuring Carol Tavris on Darwinian feminism; @TomFStevenson on geopolitics; @TobyLichtig on Compartment No. 6; Edmund Gordon on the new Jennifer Egan; @hjccochrane on Primo Levi; @rinireg on borders – and more.
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