EGGHEAD CHOICE – Crack open for a hard boiled think

The Sense of an Ending (1967) is a book which seeks to establish a connection between fiction, time and apocalyptic modes of thought. Frank Kermode (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Kermode) sees in the apocalyptic certain features which, he suggests, provide a useful analogy with the process of reading and writing fiction. The author tells us that in imagining an end […]

The language that would become English arrived in these islands in the fifth century with Germanic tribes as the Roman empire began collapsing. Bragg describes it in almost Darwinian terms, a “subtle and ruthless” survivor that defeated competing tongues over the next three centuries, refusing to marry with the indigenous Celtic language (which has left us

Consciousness, morality, creativity, language, and art: these are the some of the traits that combine to make us human. Scientists have have often explained these qualities as merely a side effect of surplus brain size, but Miller (http://psych.unm.edu/people/directory-profiles/geoffrey-miller.html, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Miller_(psychologist)) argues that they were sexual attractors, not side effects. The author bases his argument on Darwin’s

This book by Cleanth Brooks is a classic ‘must read’ study in the criticism of poetry for reasons adequately given here  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Well_Wrought_Urn:_Studies_in_the_Structure_of_Poetry 324 pages in Mariner Books paperback edition. ISBN 978-0156957052

“Fiction and The Reading Public” provoked fierce controversy when first published in 1932, and it has since come to be recognised as a classic in its field. In her fascinating study, Q D Leavis (http://mypages.surrey.ac.uk/eds1cj/qd-leavis-life-and-work.htm#lifeandwork) investigates what has happened to the public taste in the last three centuries and what effect this has had on

You can imagine the scene. They’ve gone up to the top of  Tinto Hill on an evening full of expectation. Thrilling expectation, because that night is going to be The End of The World. The chosen ones (among whom they are counted in the number) are to be taken to a heavenly place in a

The physical and natural sciences investigate how the world is, its contents and relations between them. Why, though, is there anything rather than just nothing? This is a perenniel question and many thinkers cite this fact to suggest that it is really unanswerable. It may be able to be framed grammatically, yet could still be

Berlin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaiah_Berlin) was a colossus of a thinker bestriding the twentieth century. His unique intellectual contribution was the concept of value-pluralism. Allow the mellifluous tones of John Gray to give you a tour round Berlin’s mind, and in particular his ideas about agonistic liberalism. 240 pages in Princeton University Press paperback edition. ISBN 978-0691157429