January 2014

Dead Man’s Time

Peter James (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_James_(writer) and http://www.peterjames.com/) offers us the ninth book in the Detective Superintendent Roy Grace series. The summary is as follows. A vicious robbery at a secluded Brighton mansion leaves its elderly occupant dying, and millions taken in valuables. But Detective Grace rapidly learns that there is one item, of priceless sentimental value, that her […]

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Entry Island

Peter May (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_May_(writer)) was a Scottish journalist who wrote for The Scotsman and The Glasgow Evening Times. He has gone on to become a highly successful novelist, penning among other works The Lewis Trilogy and The China Thrillers. Well into his stride now as a practised crime author, his latest is Entry Island (2014). The summary is as

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Boredom: A lively history by Peter Toohey

It’s hard to imagine a cockroach being bored. It simply gets on with what a cockroach does and then dies. Boredom seems only to be a possibility for organisms capable of reflective consciousness. Schopenhauer treated boredom as worthy of philosophical consideration. He thought it was lethal and that it proved the vanity of human existence. Heidegger,

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Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson

In this widely acclaimed work from 1983, Benedict Anderson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedict_Anderson and http://postcolonialstudies.emory.edu/benedict-anderson/) examines the creation and global spread of the ‘imagined communities’ of nationality. He explores the processes that created these communities: the territorialization of religious faiths, the decline of antique kingship, the interaction between capitalism and print, the development of vernacular languages-of-state, and changing conceptions of time.

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Travels in Siberia

Ian Frazier (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Frazier and http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111023952) trains his perceptive, generous eye on Siberia, the expanse of Asiatic Russia with a grim renown. In Travels in Siberia (2010), Frazier reveals Siberia’s role in history – its science, economics, and politics – with great passion and enthusiasm, ensuring that we’ll never think about it in the same way again. He tells the stories

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Essays of E. B. White

E. B. White (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._B._White and http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4155/the-art-of-the-essay-no-1-e-b-white ) conjures up clear and beautiful images in this collection of essays (1977). With detailed descriptions of sights, sounds, and transitory moments he brings his experiences vividly to life. You will find yourself immersed in technicolour New England, New York, or Florida. His crystalline depictions of all the moods and colours of

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The Way of Ignorance by Wendell Berry

The war in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, the political sniping engendered by the Supreme Court nominations, and so on. Contemporary American society is characterized by divisive anger, profound loss, and danger. Wendell Berry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendell_Berry and http://www.wendellberrybooks.com/), one of the America’s foremost cultural critics, addresses the menace, responding with hope and intelligence in a series of essays that tackle

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Religion and the Rise of Capitalism by R.H. Tawney

Required reading for anyone interested in the sociology of religion. In one of the true classics of twentieth-century political economy, R. H. Tawney (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._H._Tawney and http://infed.org/mobi/richard-henry-tawney-fellowship-and-adult-education/) addresses the question of how religion has affected social and economic practices. The author tracks the influence of religious thought on capitalist economy and ideology since the Middle Ages, shedding light

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The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn

This book is a highly influential work in philosophy of science. More broadly, in intellectual history it has attracted attention far beyond its own field. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) is written with a combination of depth and clarity that make it an almost unbroken series of aphorisms. Thomas Kuhn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Samuel_Kuhn and http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/vl/notes/weinberg.html) does not permit

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The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama

Ever since its first publication in 1992, The End of History and the Last Man has provoked controversy and debate. Francis Fukuyama’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Fukuyama and http://legacy2.sais-jhu.edu/faculty/fukuyama) prescient analysis of religious fundamentalism, politics, scientific progress, ethical codes, and war is as essential for a world fighting fundamentalist terrorists as it was for the end of the Cold War. The

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Mythologies by Roland Barthes

Mythologies (1957) shows Roland Barthes’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Barthes) interest in the meaning of practically everything around him, not only the books and paintings of high art, but also the slogans, trivia, toys, food, and popular rituals (cruises, striptease, eating, wrestling matches) of contemporary life. For Barthes, words and objects have in common the organized capacity to say something; at

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Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter

By looking at the brilliant minds of mathematician Kurt Godel, graphic artist M. C. Escher, and composer Johann Sebastian Bach, computer-science and cognitive-science professor Douglas Hofstadter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_hofstadter) ties together the aesthetic gift of pattern recognition and manipulation with theories on artificial intelligence, human intelligence, and the essence of self-awareness. Godel, Escher, Bach (1979) is not a

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Selected Essays by T.S. Eliot

In this highly impressive volume, first published in 1932, T.S. Eliot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._S._Eliot and http://www.eliotsociety.org.uk/) gathered his choice of the miscellaneous reviews and literary essays he had written since 1917 when he became assistant editor of The Egoist. In his preface to the third edition in 1951 he wrote: ‘For myself this book is a kind of historical record of

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The Life of Samuel Johnson

Poet, lexicographer, critic, moralist, Dr. Samuel Johnson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Johnson) had in his friend James Boswell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_boswell and http://www.jamesboswell.info/) the ideal biographer. Notoriously and self-confessedly intemperate (he availed himself of massive quantities of drink and prostitutes galore), Boswell shared with Johnson a huge appetite for life and threw equal energy into recording its every aspect in minute but telling detail.

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Animal Liberation by Peter Singer

Since its original publication in 1975, this groundbreaking work has awakened millions of concerned men and women to the shocking abuse of animals everywhere – inspiring a worldwide movement to eliminate much of the cruel and unnecessary laboratory animal experimentation of years past. In a newly revised and expanded edition of 1995, author Peter Singer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer) exposes

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