TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT: The latest issue features ‘The writer as thinker’ – On the novel of ideas; The age of misgovernment; Keeping up with the Camerons; Chaucer’s ambitions for English and Samuel Beckett and me…
Rosolino A. Candela, Caleb S. Fuller
Douglas J. Den Uyl
By Suri Ratnapala
Reviewed by Paul Dragos Aligica
By James M. Bradley
Reviewed by Garion Frankel
By Michael Sonenscher
Reviewed by Richard M. Salsman
WORLD LITERATURE TODAY (June 26, 2025): The latest issue features Writing with Light – The 2025 Puterbaugh Lecture, by Guadalupe Nettel
THE PARIS REVIEW (June 24, 2025):
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW: The latest issue features ‘Which One of These is the Real Sam Alman?
In “Everything Is Now,” J. Hoberman recreates the theater, film and music scenes that helped fuel the cultural storm of the ’60s.
Take a genteel painting, maybe featuring a swooning woman. Add iridescent neon type for a shock to the system. And thank (or blame) Ottessa Moshfegh for getting there early.
A new book of photographs captures the landscapes, buildings and faces along the route that once conveyed untold wealth between Europe and China.
The Infrastructure Book
Sybil Derrible Prometheus (2025)
In 1995, a massive heatwave in Chicago, Illinois, took at least 739 lives. The city authorities assumed that a lack of air conditioning was responsible for most deaths, but an investigation attributed them mainly to social isolation. As Chicago-based engineer Sybil Derrible notes in his penetrating analysis of urban infrastructure: “Technology comes and goes, but infrastructure stays because infrastructure is all about people.” Surveying 16 large cities globally, he investigates water, transport, energy and telecommunications networks.
Free Creations of the Human Mind
Diana Kormos Buchwald & Michael D. Gordin Oxford Univ. Press (2025)
Of the physics Nobel prizes awarded since 2000, “no fewer than seven … stem directly from Einstein’s work in 1905 and 1915”, point out historians of science Diana Buchwald and Michael Gordin. Their brief, appealing book discusses the general theory of relativity and quantum theory, but is preoccupied mainly with Albert Einstein’s life, personality and philosophy, especially his complex relationship with war — including the design of the atomic bomb — and pacifism.
Amazing Worlds of Science Fiction and Science Fact
Keith Cooper Reaktion (2025)
Astronomers observed the first confirmed exoplanet in 1992. Some 5,900 are now known, in about 4,500 planetary systems, with around 1,000 containing several planets, according to NASA. No life has been detected yet, showing just “how rare our planet Earth still is” and how “the imagination imbued within science fiction can only carry us so far”, notes science journalist Keith Cooper. His engaging book, based on interviews with writers and researchers, examines what science fiction has got right and wrong, and what science can learn from it.
Yearning for Immortality
Rune Nyord Univ. Chicago Press (2025)
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT (June 18, 2025): In this week’s TLS, Mary Beard and Margaret Drabble are not quite getting away from it all this summer. For our summer books selection, they have picked a brace of biographies of Labour prime ministers past and present. Along with Daniel Mendelsohn’s recent translation of the Odyssey, our Classics editor chooses Alan Johnson’s biography of Harold Wilson, her mother’s favourite politician. By Martin Ivens
Twenty-four TLS writers share their summer reading
Three teen-centric novels arrive at a time of national soul-searching
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT: The latest issue features ‘Who won the war?’ We did, say the Americans, the British and the Russians. Each nation has a long history of claiming a unique role in defeating the Axis powers and diminishing the contribution of its allies. By Martin Ivens
The wartime alliances that could not survive the peace By Omer Bartov
Capers and wallpaper: a new film from Wes Anderson By Keith Miller
What Americans understand by greatness By Andrew Stark
A practical and literary guide to modern magic By Russell Williams
THE WALRUS MAGAZINE (June 10, 2025): The latest issue features ‘Summer Reading’…
by Soraya Amiri
Afghans worry their children are doomed under new curriculum enforced at gunpoint
The culture war’s favourite prophet can’t finish a straight thoughtby Luke Savage
Boomers Daily 