Marcus du Sautoy (https://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/) shows us the successes and limitations of maths and science in this book. The reader is taken to seven different ‘edges’ of knowledge and is shown why even Newton, Leibniz, and Galileo didn’t have a comprehensive grip on knowledge in their own day. From chaos theory, which ‘placed huge limits on what […]
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In 1916 Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves: miniscule ripples in the fabric of space-time generated by enormously powerful events. If such vibrations could somehow be recorded, we might ‘observe’ the universe for the first time through sound: the hissing of the Big Bang, the whale-like tunes of collapsing stars, the low tones
Not many history books offer the brilliant blend of accurate record and compelling narrative as does The Defeat of the Spanish Armada. The reader is entertainingly informed about a raft of fascinating detail – the execution of Mary, the attack on Cadiz (the famous “singeing of the beard”), the capture of Sluys, the battle of
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Ruth Ware (http://www.ruthware.com/) had a variety of jobs before happily finding her vocation as a fiction writer. Her psychological thrillers In a Dark, Dark Wood (2015) and The Woman in Cabin 10 (2016) are now followed by this year’s The Lying Game (2017). The summary is as follows. On a cool June morning, Isa Wilde, a
