This week’s @TheTLS, featuring Ben Hutchinson on the Jena Set; @misbehavingmonk on his father’s Alzheimer’s; John Lloyd on liberalism; @RohanMaitzen on Maggie O’Farrell; @TomCook24 on Bishop and Heaney; M. C. on Salman Rushdie – and more.
Arianne Shahvisi – ‘Sex in the Brain’
Jon Day on Hoardiculture
Colin Burrow: Quote Me!
Helen Thaventhiran: T.S. Eliot’s Alibis
Stefan Collini on the Huxley Inheritance
The summer double issue of The Times Literary Supplement @TheTLS , featuring @YsendaMG on the British abroad; @questingvole on Roald Dahl; poems by John Fuller and Simon Armitage (both titled ‘The Repair Shop’); @RebeccaSpang on cryptocurrencies; @Skye_Cleary on love – and much more
Angelo Codevilla’s final critique of our ruling class’s corruption… by Carnes Lord
America’s Rise and Fall among Nations: Lessons in Statecraft from John Quincy Adams is an extraordinary book by an extraordinary man. Angelo Codevilla, a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute, died in an automobile accident last year near his northern California vineyard. He was a first-generation immigrant, born in Italy, who shared with so many from a similar background a fierce love for his adopted homeland. A political scientist with far-ranging interests in comparative politics, international relations and strategic studies, and political philosophy, Codevilla also served in the United States government as a diplomat, naval officer, and congressional staffer.
On the Cover
From The Book Eaters, by Sunyi Dean, featured in Top 10 SF/Fantasy & Horror Debuts. Art by Su Blackwell, photographed by Jaron James, art direction and design by Jamie Stafford-Hill. Used by permission of Tor Books.
Spotlight on SF/Fantasy & Horror
Top 10 SF/Fantasy & Horror: 2022
The Essentials: SF/Fantasy & Horror Cli-Fi
Top 10 SF/Fantasy & Horror Debuts: 2022
Top 10 SF/Fantasy & Horror for Youth: 2022
Trend Alert: Microtrend Roundup
Navigating Newbery: The Plight of High Fantasy
Top 10 SF/Fantasy & Horror Audiobooks for Youth
Features
Read-alikes: Fictional Scientists
The book “If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal,” by Justin Gregg, contrasts human thought with animal intelligence. The people come up short.
Our new issue is now online, featuring @_jamesmeek in southern Ukraine, @GeoffPMann on economic degrowth, @jonathancoe on esoteric 70s TV, @KasiaBoddy on Donald Barthelme, @KathleenJamie on bird flu and a cover by Helen Napper.
Read more: http://lrb.co.uk
Rarely have I heard of a book with a weirder title, but Grant explains this book about how animals think is actually as useful as it is interesting. “A dazzling, delightful read on what animal cognition can teach us about our own mental shortcomings,” he writes. “I tore through his book in one sitting. I dare you to read it without rethinking some of your basic ideas about intelligence.” (It’s out August 9th.)
“Move over, outer space–this book is a stunning tour through inner space. This neuroscientist has a rare, remarkable gift for making neurons sing and dendrites dance. She’s written the smartest, clearest, and funniest book I’ve ever read about the brain,” Grant enthuses about The Neuroscience of You. (Out August 2nd.)
Grant isn’t the only public thinker raving about this book by an Oxford philosopher about our “moral responsibility to do right by our grandchildren’s grandchildren.” “This book will change your sense of how grand the sweep of human history could be, where you fit into it, and how much you could do to change it for the better. It’s as simple, and as ambitious, as that,” says Ezra Klein. (Out August 16th.)
Next on the list is another book about long-term thinking (apparently a preoccupation of Grant’s at the moment). He explains his second pick on the topic this way: “This book is an antidote to nearsightedness. A futurist offers an actionable guide for planning multiple generations in the future.” (Also out August 16th.)
This book by a pair of business school professors is specifically aimed at leaders trying to navigate uncertain times. “Life is full of paradoxes, and too often we ignore them or try to erase them when we should be learning how to manage them. Two top scholars of paradox examine how to embrace tensions and overcome tradeoffs,” says Grant. Fellow business writer Tom Peters is more succinct: “This book is, pure and simple, a masterpiece.” (Out August 9th)
Read more at Inc. Magazine
This week’s @TheTLS , featuring Marjorie Perloff on Robert Lowell’s Memoirs; A. N. Wilson on Lord Northcliffe; @funesdamemorius on Aleister Crowley; @MarenMeinhardt on Manon Gropius; @JuliaBell on Lillian Fishman; @chrismullinexmp on political lives – and more.
The New York Review of Books – August 18, 2022
At a time when the threat of authoritarianism is rising, Democrats have a duty to make crystal clear to voters what is at stake in the November elections.
In Andrew Holleran’s novels, the inescapable narrowness of his world is transcended and given poetic resonance by his close and steady attention to pain and loneliness.
The Kingdom of Sand by by Andrew Holleran
An unfinished novel about his African great-grandfather provides the best sense of how Pushkin considered his own Blackness.
by Alexander Pushkin, translated from the Russian by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler and Boris Dralyuk, edited by Robert Chandler
Boomers Daily 