Successful American novelist John Irving (http://john-irving.com/and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Irving) has published 19 works since his first – Setting Free the Bears in 1968. The one I’ve enjoyed most was his fifth, The Hotel New Hampshire (1981). This is a wildly eccentric family saga. John Berry is the son of a hapless dreamer, and brother to a cadre of crazy siblings. He […]
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Sy Montgomery (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sy_Montgomery) is a naturalist, author of 15 books, who specialises in conveying the wonder of the natural world to a wide audience. Since the first dawning realisation with Darwin in 1859 that humans are co-terminus with the natural world, every advance in our understanding of other creatures underscores the fact there is no
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Chris Carter (http://www.chriscarterbooks.com/books.htm) was born in Brasilia where he spent his childhood. After graduating from high school, he moved to the USA where he studied psychology with a specialization in criminal behaviour. His sixth crime novel in as many years, An Evil Mind, came out in 2014. The summary is as follows. A freak accident in rural Wyoming leads the Sheriff’s Department to arrest
Steven Cahn (http://www.gc.cuny.edu/Page-Elements/Academics-Research-Centers-Initiatives/Doctoral-Programs/Philosophy/Faculty-Bios/Steven-M-Cahn) of The City University of New York has put together an introductory reader in philosophy for the present day. It offers standard Western historical and analytic materials alongside writings from Chinese, Indian, Native-American, African American, continental, and other sources. Approximately 25% of the contemporary readings are by women, including leading feminist theorists.
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Steven Weinberg (born May 3, 1933, https://web2.ph.utexas.edu/~weintech/weinberg.html and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_weinberg) is an American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate in Physics for his contributions with Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow to the unification of the weak force and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles. He holds the Josey Regental Chair in Science at the University of Texas at Austin,
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David Deutsch (http://www.daviddeutsch.org.uk/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Deutsch) is Visiting Professor in the Department of Atomic and Laser Physics at the Centre for Quantum Computation (CQC) in the Clarendon Laboratory of the University of Oxford. He pioneered the field of quantum computation by formulating a description for a quantum Turing machine, as well as specifying an algorithm designed to
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In promoting this title by Robert P. Waxler (http://www.umassd.edu/cas/english/faculty/robertpwaxler/) the risk is that I’m preaching to the converted. After all, this is a book review page. Its readers are presumably already convinced of the value of the written word. We should never, though, tire of the assertion that long and deep reading leads to a quality
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Belinda Bauer (http://www.belindabauer.co.uk/)grew) grew up in England and South Africa. She has worked as a journalist and screenwriter and her script The Locker Room earned her the Carl Foreman/Bafta Award for Young British Screenwriters. She lives in Wales. Her sixth novel The Shut Eye was published this year (2015). The summary is as follows. Ever since
Frank M. Turner (1944–2010) was John Hay Whitney Professor of History, Director of the Beinecke Library, and University Librarian, all at Yale University. Turner delivered a landmark lecture course on European intellectual history that drew hundreds of students over many years. His lectures were lucid, accessible, and beautifully written. With a notable lack of jargon they distilled
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In the period 2013-2015 The European Union has been desperately trying to prevent Greece from crashing out of the Euro. Bailout follows bailout. Why? It is a basket case of an economy saddled with a 320 billion Euro debt, a society mired in corruption from top to bottom, and with a hopelessly divided political class. For every
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In this funny, hard-edged memoir, Mary Karr (http://www.marykarr.com/bio.php), a prize-winning poet and critic, looks back at her upbringing. The setting is a swampy East Texas refinery town in a volatile, defiantly loving family. She recalls her painter mother, seven times married, whose outlaw spirit could tip into psychosis. There is her violent father who spins tales with his
Sarah Ward (http://crimepieces.com/about/) has followed the oft heard advice for budding authors which is to ‘write what you know’. She has set her debut novel in the Derbyshire Peak District where she lives. The summary is as follows. The scene is a small town in the idyllic English countryside of Derbyshire in 1978. Local people have been traumatized
Bettany Hughes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bettany_Hughes) has been gracing our TV screens since 2012 presenting the history of the classical world. Her programme ‘Genius of the Ancient World – Socrates‘ (http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/proginfo/2015/32/socrates-genius-of-the-ancient-world) was broadcast on 12 August 2015 on BBC 4. Whether to follow up the programme or in preparation for a second viewing I would recommend her 2010 book The
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It was in 1980 that I first plunged into the ‘science versus religion’ debate. The standard text of the day was still Ian G. Barbour’s 1966 book ‘Issues in Science and Religion’. Interest in the subject area has shown no sign of abating since that time. A recent contribution is Faith versus Fact (2015) by University of
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Karin Slaughter (http://www.karinslaughter.com/, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karin_Slaughter) is a pretty useful name to have for a girl who writes crime fiction. She has sold 30 million copies of her gripping psychological crime fiction and is published in 32 languages. Slaughter is a passionate defender of public libraries against the philistines who are ignoring them and running them down
