Geraldine Brooks (http://geraldinebrooks.com/) is a skilled writer whose 2005 novel, March, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Originally from Sydney, Australia, she became a US citizen in 2002. In this piece of historical fiction (inspired by the true story of Eyam) the scene is set when an infected bolt of cloth carries bubonic plague from London […]
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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
