Life in a small market town like Lanark has its charms and frustrations. There you glimpse its fat cats and notice its small fry, its friendly locals and its entrenched conservatism. But what lies behind the faces of folk at the supermarket veg stall, the petrol station, at the leisure centre, at the Summer gala […]
There are a number of measurements of wealth among nations. One standard is ‘Gross Domestic Product’ (GDP) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_domestic_product). Currently the UK lies 6th in a list of 191 nations (with the United States at the top and Tuvalu at the foot) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)). Scanning tables such as this convinces one what enormous disparities in material wealth
The Wealth and Poverty of Nations by David S. Landes Read More »
In this landmark book of popular science, Daniel E. Lieberman (https://scholar.harvard.edu/dlieberman/home) gives us a lucid and engaging account of how the human body evolved over millions of years. He illuminates the major transformations that contributed to key adaptations in the body: the rise of bipedalism; the shift to a non-fruit-based diet; the development of hunting
The Story of the Human Body Read More »
It’s been 20 years since the first publication of Virginia Postrel’s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Postrel) influential book ‘The Future and it’s Enemies’ in 1998. Much of the author’s analysis of contemporary global culture has been borne out. Postrel argued that the old political labels of ‘left’ and ‘right’ no longer carry much meaning, and that it’s better to
The Future and Its Enemies by Virginia Postrel Read More »
What do jazz musician Dave Brubeck, Apple’s Steve Jobs, Mattel’s Ruth Handler, and architect Frank Gehry all have in common? They are credited with some of the most inventive accomplishments of the past half-century. The classic jazz album Time Out, the iPod, Barbie, and the spectacular Guggenheim Museum are their creations. Yet their creative leaps all
Smart World by Richard Ogle Read More »
From the advent of Fauvism to the development of Dada, the early part of the twentieth century saw a series of avant-garde movements in European literature, music, and painting, which fundamentally re-examined the languages of the arts. The strength of Early Modernism by Christopher Butler is its treatment of the great movements of this period in
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Today’s digital communication and social media make the cultivation of anger and resentment an easy hobby. The Internet is bursting with people full of rage, and also anxiously scanning the world for signs of their own ‘ego status’. In this book, derived from her 2014 Locke Lectures at Oxford University, Martha Nussbaum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Nussbaum) argues that
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Australopithecine, dinosaur, and trilobite fossils conjure up images of lost worlds filled with vanished organisms. But in the full history of life, ancient animals, even the trilobites, form only the half-billion-year tip of a nearly four-billion-year iceberg. Andrew Knoll (https://eps.harvard.edu/people/andrew-h-knoll) explores the deep history of life from its origins on a young planet to the
Life on a Young Planet Read More »
There are many animal species that co-operate. One thinks of the social insects, of an ants’ nest and a termite mound. One thinks of the meerkat ‘manor’ and a pride of lions. In fact, solitary animals are rare. But why do humans, uniquely among animals, cooperate in such large numbers to advance projects for the
A Cooperative Species Read More »
