Literary Review of Canada – December 2022:
California Burning
Katherine Blunt Portfolio/Penguin (2022)
California is having more and more wildfires because of climate change, poor tree management creating fire hazards, and antiquated power lines. In 2018, the failure of a 100-year-old rusted electrical hook sparked the Camp Fire, the world’s most expensive natural disaster that year. The blaze forced Pacific Gas and Electric into temporary bankruptcy. Journalist Katherine Blunt’s disturbing history of California’s environmental calamity ends in 2021, with the company’s new chief executive announcing costly underground power lines.
The Biggest Ideas in the Universe
Sean Carroll Oneworld (2022)
Theoretical physicist and philosopher Sean Carroll specializes in quantum mechanics, gravity and cosmology. He aims to create a world in which “most people have informed views and passionate opinions” about modern physics. His skilful book, the first of a planned trilogy, covers space, time and motion. Unlike most introductory physics books for the interested amateur, it includes mathematical equations, cogently explained but not solved, as well as the expected metaphorical language.
Cancer Virus Hunters
Gregory J. Morgan Johns Hopkins Univ. Press (2022)
One-fifth of cancers in people worldwide are caused by tumour viruses such as hepatitis B. Work stemming from these pathogens won seven Nobel prizes between 1966 and 2020, notes historian Gregory Morgan in his authoritative but accessible chronicle. Yet tumour virology is rarely mentioned in discussions of how molecular biology opened our understanding of cancer. As Morgan observes in his path-breaking history, this inhibits a complete understanding of this field as a technoscientific force.
Planta Sapiens
Paco Calvo with Natalie Lawrence Bridge Street (2022)
Humans are so focused on “brain-centric consciousness”, says philosopher of science Paco Calvo, “that we find it difficult to imagine other kinds of internal experience”. Might plants be intelligent (‘sapiens’)? His challenging book is aimed at both believers in this possibility and non-believers. His experiments, such as putting the touch-sensitive plant Mimosa pudica to ‘sleep’ with anaesthetic, provoke thought, as does his note that Charles Darwin requested burial under an ancient village yew, rather than in Westminster Abbey.
Ritual
Dimitris Xygalatas Profile (2022)
Just before anthropologist Dimitris Xygalatas’s university went into COVID-19 lockdown, his students had one main concern: would there be a graduation ceremony? We care deeply about rituals, he notes in his wide-ranging and well-written survey, because they help us to “cope with many of life’s challenges”, even if we do not understand how — the “ritual paradox”. Scientific investigation has been tricky, because rituals do not flourish in a laboratory, but wearable sensors and brain-imaging technology help.
New York Times Book Review – November 20, 2022:
“Mr. B,” by Jennifer Homans, explores the life of the Russian-born choreographer, as well as the beauty and pains of his art.
“The books I try not to pick up, and don’t want to read, are ones I wrote myself and published in the past,” says the Japanese writer, whose new book is “Novelist as a Vocation.” “Though it does make me want to do better with my next work.”
Jacob Soll’s ambitious history takes us from Cicero to Milton Friedman, but is hobbled by questionable assertions.
“CBS Saturday Morning” co-host Jeff Glor takes a trip to Texas to try recipes featured within “The Big Texas Cookbook.”
The editors of Texas Monthly celebrate the ever-evolving culinary landscape of the Lone Star State in this stunning cookbook, featuring more than 100 recipes, gorgeous color photos, and insightful essays.
When it comes to food, Texas may be best known for its beloved barbecue and tacos. But at more than 29 million people, the state is one of the most culturally diverse in America—and so is its culinary scene. From the kolaches introduced by Czechs settlers to the Hill Country in the 1800s to the Viet-Cajun crawfish that Vietnamese immigrants blessed Houston with in the early 2000s, the tastes on offer here are as vast and varied as the 268,596 square miles of earth they spring from.
In The Big Texas Cookbook, the editors of the award-winning magazine Texas Monthly have gathered an expansive collection of recipes that reflects the state’s food traditions, eclectically grouped by how Texans like to start and end the day (Rise and Shine, There Stands the Glass), how they revere their native-born ingredients (Made in Texas), and how they love the people, places, and rituals that surround their favorite meals (On Holiday, Home Plates). Getting their very own chapters—no surprise—are the behemoths mentioned above, barbecue and Tex-Mex (Smoke Signals, Con Todo). With recipes for über-regional specialties like venison parisa, home cooking favorites like King Ranch casserole, and contemporary riffs like a remarkable Lao beef chili, The Big Texas Cookbook pays homage to the cooks who long ago shaped the state’s food culture and the ones who are building on those traditions in surprising and delightful ways.
Packed with atmospheric photos, illustrations, and essays, The Big Texas Cookbook is a vivid culinary portrait of the land, its people, and its past, present, and future.
The New Review – November 20, 2022 issue: Carey Mulligan and @zoeinthecities speak to @carmitstead about She Said, The winners of our graphic short story prize 2022, @Aiannucci Q&A by @michaelhogan, On my radar: @Talldarkfriend And our critics on the week’s arts highlights.
Like most hauntings, Fleur Jaeggy’s books are often quite baroque, but they cast a strange spell that causes everyone to remember them as nothing but austere.
Sweet Days of Discipline by Fleur Jaeggy, translated from the Italian by Tim Parks
The Water Statues by Fleur Jaeggy, translated from the Italian by Gini Alhadeff
I Am the Brother of XX by Fleur Jaeggy, translated from the Italian by Gini Alhadeff
The Philosophy of Modern Song can be read as a tour journal, refracted through one lonely song after another.
The Philosophy of Modern Song by Bob Dylan
We must find new ways to act toward animals in a world dominated everywhere by human power and activity.
Alexis de Tocqueville left France to study the American prison system and returned with the material that would become “Democracy in America.”
The Man Who Understood Democracy: The Life of Alexis de Tocqueville by Olivier Zunz
Times Literary Supplement – November 18, 2022 issue of the @TheTLS, featuring Books of the Year; Ferdinand Mount on a second Trump term; @guydammann on opera funding in England; @KieranSetiya on beauty; and Javier Marías’s last column on translation (tr., Margaret Jull Costa) – and more.
A CARIBBEAN HEIRESS IN PARIS BY ADRIANA HERRERA
NIGHT OF THE LIVING REZ BY MORGAN TALTY
Ranging from grim to tender, these stories reveal the hardships facing a young Native American in contemporary America.
At a time of mutual hatred and bitter division, Daniel Webster argued for the primacy of a unifying political idea. Review by Fergus M. Bordewich
Indivisible : Daniel Webster and the Birth of American Nationalism
In plays like ‘Death of a Salesman’ and ‘The Crucible,’ Miller gave voice to the anxieties behind the optimism of mid-20th-century America. Review by Willard Spielgelman
Arthur Miller : American Witness
by John Lahr
Plus ‘Toad’ by Katherine Dunn and ‘Now Is Not the Time to Panic’ by Kevin Wilson. Review by Sam Sacks
(Hardcover)
Selected by Joshua Landy, the author of ‘The World According to Proust.’
Inside the December 2022 issue:
Art a special section
Memories of Clement Greenberg by Pat Lipsky
A library by the book by James Panero
Tudors at the Met by Marco Grassi
Collecting misery by Anthony Daniels
David Smith: a sculptor in full by Eric Gibson
The Spanish Sargent by Karen Wilkin
Pergolesi: a very sharp & mechanical man by Benjamin Riley
New poems by Bruce Bond & John Poch
Boomers Daily 