We tend to divide people pretty crudely into good and bad in our moral estimation. How much, though, do background factors play in moral behaviour? Genetics, parenting, economic conditions, quality of schooling, peer group association, and a whole host of other factors have influence. The individual has had no choice or control over any of these. […]
Hard Luck by Neil Levy Read More »
Let’s face it. A great deal of science writing is impenetrable to the non professional. Not only is modern science so deep, broad and complex, it is full of its own jargon. Richard Dawkins has put together an anthology of some of the finest science writing of recent times. It proves that science can be
The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing Read More »
Hugely popular John Grisham (http://www.johngrisham.co.uk/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Grisham) has used his professional experience in law and politics to great effect in his fiction. Many of his works including The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client and A Painted House have made it onto film and television. In this novel from October 2014 Grisham offers a new hero
What do atoms have to do with your life? Millions of human beings have obviously lived their lives in the past without the faintest suspicion of the existence of atoms. In Your Atomic Self, scientist Curt Stager (http://www.curtstager.com/About__Biography_.html) reveals how they connect you to some of the most amazing things in the universe. Stager will show how your oxygen atoms move through
Val McDermid (http://www.valmcdermid.com/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Val_mcdermid) will need little introduction to her many fans or to the readers of these reviews. Her new stand alone book has been published in September of 2014 and the summary is as follows: When a skeleton is discovered hidden at the top of a crumbling, gothic building in Edinburgh, Detective Chief Inspector Karen
The news media in all its formats is saturated with reports of conflict and violence from around the world. A great deal of this violence is in the name of religion. Whole religious traditions as well as factions and sects within those traditions seek to assert their dominance over one another. Former Roman Catholic nun
Fields of Blood by Karen Armstrong Read More »
It’s not often you find top ten best selling popular fiction set in Carluke. Yet here we have it in the latest outing from Quintin Jardine (http://www.quintinjardine.com/). This is a story of a man’s quest for justice at any cost. The summary is as follows. It’s 1818 in Carluke, Lanarkshire. Mathew Fleming returns home to
Andrew Roberts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Roberts_(historian)) would be the first to point out that there are already thousands of studies of Napoleon already in print (the British Library catalogue lists 13,000 items with the word ‘Napoleon’ in the title field). It takes some guts and ambition, therefore, to seek to add to that number. Fortunately we’re in the hands
Napoleon the Great Read More »
As J.D. Robb, prolific author Nora Roberts (http://www.nora-roberts.co.uk/) has published a series of futuristic science fiction police procedurals. These books, all part of the “In Death” series, feature NYPSD Detective Eve Dallas and her husband Roarke. They are set in a mid-21st century New York City. Despite the emphasis on solving a crime in each of the books, the
