Book reviews from THE

The War of the Sexes: How Conflict and Cooperation have Shaped Men and Women from Prehistory to the Present

Thu, 10 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Women are born to demand their share - just ask the hunter-gatherers, argues Camilla Power

The Rise and Fall of Arab Presidents for Life

Thu, 10 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Philip Robins on the Middle Eastern despots who held power for so long and lost it so rapidly

Maps of Utopia: H.G. Wells, Modernity and the End of Culture

Thu, 10 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

How much is society prepared to invest in the quality of the education it offers and to make it easily accessible to its entire population? What can and should art and literature do for the societies in which they are produced? What is the...

Darkness Before Daybreak: African Migrants Living on the Margins in Southern Italy Today

Thu, 10 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

How hard life is for immigrants, exploited and robbed of their weekly wages by Neapolitans. What happens in a degraded economic area of Southern Italy when newcomers arrive illegally? The ethnographic dimension of such discussion goes back...

All in a Don's Day

Thu, 10 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

The chance to review a series of blogs on scholarly life was an offer Tom Palaima couldn't refuse

Complicity in the Holocaust: Churches and Universities in Nazi Germany

Thu, 10 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

"Licence to kill" - this was the message given to the German people during the era of the Third Reich by the two most morally authoritative groups in society, the churches and the universities, Robert Ericksen claims in Complicity in...

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Politics and Religion

Thu, 10 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Why can't we all just get along? According to moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt, the reason is that human nature is intrinsically "groupish" and judgemental. Haidt weaves together updated versions of experiments described in earlier articles...

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Thu, 10 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

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Why Love Hurts: A Sociological Explanation

Thu, 3 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Jean Duncombe ponders the interdependency of women's self-worth and romantic relationships

Stylish Academic Writing

Thu, 3 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Untold riches could be yours with academics' secret codex. Les Gofton gets a head start

What Did the Romans Know? An Inquiry into Science and Worldmaking

Thu, 3 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

In the Upper Midwest, "What do you know?" generates the reply "Not much. You?" From the Romans, historians of science typically get a similar answer: "warmed-over Greek science". Daryn Lehoux offers a better answer and new questions. No...

Postal Pleasures: Sex, Scandal, and Victorian Letters

Thu, 3 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Is post gendered? Does correspondence encourage queer cross-connections? Does the role of the postal or telegraph worker as an intermediary in love affairs (today, perhaps, we might think of the internet service provider) bring a queer polygamy...

Internal Time: Chronotypes, Social Jet Lag, and Why You're So Tired

Thu, 3 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Daily variations in human activity are driven by our built-in biological clocks, finds Greg Murray

The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans

Thu, 3 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Ever since the tragedy caused by hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2008, the world has had its doubts about the longevity of "The City that Care Forgot". Long associated with carefree music and fleshly pleasures, it suddenly looked like a lost...

The Event of Literature

Thu, 3 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

This guidebook, which steers us confidently through some of the thickets of literary theory, is of the companionable and clever variety that we have become accustomed to expect from Terry Eagleton. It's the sort of book whose covers, if...

Understanding Lone Wolf Terrorism: Global Patterns, Motivations and Prevention

Thu, 3 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Matthew Feldman reports on the modus operandi of far-Right 'leaderless resistance'

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Thu, 3 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

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The New Religious Intolerance: Overcoming the Politics of Fear in an Anxious Age

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Maleiha Malik applauds a road map that seeks to lead the West away from intolerance of Muslims

The Unrepentant Renaissance: From Petrarch to Shakespeare to Milton

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Willy Maley is tickled by an unexpected, less puritanical reading of post-Reformation culture

Love Online

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Love Online, first published in French as Sex @mour, seeks to document people's experiences, post-millennium, with respect to the rise of internet-mediated dating. Sociologist Jean-Claude Kaufmann provides very rich vignettes...

The Irresistible Fairy Tale: The Cultural and Social History of a Genre

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Next year will mark the 30th anniversary of the publication of Jack Zipes' Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion, a milestone in fairy tale studies that challenged a century of scholarship on the origins, psychology and universal...

Why Lyrics Last: Evolution, Cognition, and Shakespeare's Sonnets

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

David Gewanter applauds a literary - and scientific - exploration of the Bard's poetic longevity

Simulating War: Studying Conflict Through Simulation Games

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Computers have not eclipsed manual board war gaming. This is the strong message delivered in Philip Sabin's Simulating War. This book is about war gaming, and if you are expecting a traditional treatment of simulation, you may be...

Leon Trotsky: A Revolutionary's Life

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Leon Trotsky remains a compelling and controversial figure for historians, with two major biographies since 2009. Bertrand Patenaude's Stalin's Nemesis: The Exile and Murder of Leon Trotsky is a marvellous, critically empathetic...

The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Jon Turney on one scientist's successful efforts to resist the relentless assaults of the denialists

Evolution and Belief: Confessions of a Religious Palaeontologist

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

"Man, when he enters the world, is naturally led to inquire who he is, whence he comes; whither he is going; for what purpose he is created..." So wrote Carl Gustav Linnaeus in 1788 and it is very true, although the ultimate questions remain...

Elliptic Tales: Curves, Counting and Number Theory

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

In mathematics, numbers such as 0, ±1, ±2, ±3 are called integers, and ratios of two integers such as 1/3 and -2012/2011 are called rational numbers. Number theory is a branch of mathematics, and determining solutions of an equation within...

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Thu, 26 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

The Assumptions Economists Make

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Finance experts must ditch unrealistic conjecture and embrace eclecticism, finds Michelle Baddeley

Gothicka: Vampire Heroes, Human Gods, and the New Supernatural

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Deborah Rogers finds the modern netherworld too 'lite' and longs for a return to the dark side

Philosophical Interventions: Reviews 1986-2011

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Unlike the review you are now reading, those collected in this volume are essays of several thousand words each. In her introduction, Martha Nussbaum puts forth a philosophy of reviewing, based on the need for academics to publicly engage...

Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

You can't judge a book by its cover, nor even for that matter by the cover endorsements, as likely as not to be written by the author's friends. A much nicer indicator of the readability, if not the intellectual worth, of a book is the author's...

Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Harold Thimbleby gets to know the people behind the computer in a fascinating but rambling account

The Faith of the Faithless: Experiments in Political Theology

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Simon Critchley is a leading British "Continental" philosopher. Hegel said that philosophy started in the East and moved to the West: so with Critchley. He began in Essex and now teaches in New York. This biographical detail is relevant...

Wasted World: How Our Consumption Challenges the Planet

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

In his latest work, Rob Hengeveld has an important message to deliver: the Earth is on the brink of collapse and urgent action is needed because the carrying capacity of the planet has been exceeded. The book, a popular science work, is...

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Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Alan Ryan learns what the liberal-arts ideals of the US academy's founders can teach us today

The Stalin Cult: A Study in the Alchemy of Power

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Polly Jones is impressed by a rigorous iconography of one of the age of extremes' greatest tyrants

Breaking into the Lab: Engineering Progress for Women in Science

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Lawrence Summers, then president of Harvard University, stirred up a storm in 2005 by suggesting that women are under-represented in science owing to "issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that...

Keeper of the Nuclear Conscience: The Life and Work of Joseph Rotblat

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

When scientists attempt to play international politics, it usually ends in tears. The physicist Jo Rotblat, one of the first physicists to work on the Bomb, was one of the few to have bucked the trend and influence the thinking - and actions...

How Economics Shapes Science

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

James Wilsdon applauds an acute analysis of the mixed influence money has on scientific practice

Fear of Food: A History of Why We Worry about What We Eat

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

The clue to some of this book's limitations, from a British point of view, is in the name. "We" who worry and "we" who eat are American (and middle class). Many very good books, received with pleasure by a global readership, are by, for...

God's Instruments: Political Conduct in the England of Oliver Cromwell

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Much of Blair Worden's recent work has been devoted to exploring the interface between literature and history in early modern England. Marchamont Nedham, Andrew Marvell and John Milton came together in his Literature and Politics in...

What are you reading?

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Language: The Cultural Tool

Thu, 5 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Kerstin Hoge takes a trip into the heart of functionalism with a maverick iconoclast

An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization

Thu, 5 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

A reminder of pedagogy's power to reach beyond the logic of capital enthuses Shahidha Bari

On Sacrifice

Thu, 5 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Philosopher Moshe Halbertal distinguishes two kinds of sacrifice: sacrifice to and sacrifice for. Sacrifice "to", which is older, means a gift, as in the giving of an animal or even a human to a god. This kind of sacrifice is found...

Behind Closed Doors: IRBs and the Making of Ethical Research

Thu, 5 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

In this socio-historical account of the US' federally mandated institutional review boards, or IRBs, Laura Stark begins by offering an ethnographic analysis of the "knowledge experts" who sit on the committees, whose often-controversial...

Bird Sense: What It's Like to Be a Bird

Thu, 5 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Elizabeth Adkins-Regan dips her beak into the inner life of our mysterious feathered friends

The Daily You: How the New Advertising Industry is Defining Your Identity and Your Worth

Thu, 5 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

The media industry has unquestionably been transformed by advertisers' ability to collect data at the individual level about internet users and use it to design more effective ad campaigns. Here, Joseph Turow claims that the way individual-level...

Between Citizens and the State: The Politics of American Higher Education in the 20th Century

Thu, 5 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

People who dwell in architectural masterpieces generally ignore the design's importance in their day-to-day pursuits. Here, Christopher Loss shows why academics should stop ignoring the higher education system. It has shaped American political...

China or Japan: Which Will Lead Asia?

Thu, 5 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

The fortunes of East Asia's two great powers are inextricably linked, argues Kerry Brown

The Green Paradox: A Supply-Side Approach to Global Warming

Thu, 5 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

When one thinks about what to do to combat climate change, the answer seems obvious: take steps to reduce the use of fossil carbon. Improve engine efficiency, switch to alternative sources of electricity and dilute motor fuels with bioethanol....

The Science of Language: Interviews with James McGilvray

Thu, 5 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

This isn't a book by Noam Chomsky, it isn't really composed of interviews, and it contains no "science of language".

What are you reading?

Thu, 5 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Dignity: Its History and Meaning

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Simon Blackburn explores an ancient moral concept that some consider fundamental to human society

Survival of the Beautiful: Art, Science, and Evolution

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Darwin fails to explain fully why some evolved traits are so exquisitely alluring, finds Jon Turney

The Arch Conjurer of England: John Dee

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Magic at the Elizabethan court, Glyn Parry argues here, was pretty much like sex. Even if no one talked about it openly, everyone was thinking about it, wanted to do it and feared they might not be any good at it. And so someone who promised...

The Freud Files: An Inquiry into the History of Psychoanalysis

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

"How did psychoanalysis attain its prominent cultural position?" This book, first published in 2006 in French and now available in translation with some light additions and changes, attempts to answer this question. However, the authors...

The Anatomy of Harpo Marx

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Philip Kemp has qualms about the purpose of an examination of a dumb comedian's physicality

Why Calories Count: From Science to Politics

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

People should read this book. They should read it if they are obsessive weight-watchers or serial dieters, or just concerned about what their children eat. They should read it if they work in public health, the food industry, catering or...

Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

For many years, willpower was out of fashion. In psychology, both Freudians and behaviourists were sceptical of the idea that we have conscious control, and the dominant view was that teaching self-esteem to children is a key determinant...

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Thu, 29 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Mercedes Camino commends the untangling of atrocities committed during the Franco era

17 Equations that Changed the World

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Charles Seife is eased through mathematical relationships that help to make sense of reality

The French Way: How France Embraced and Rejected American Values and Power

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

In this dense, if repetitious, study of the modernisation of France, Richard Kuisel tells of a second French resistance. Not to German occupation, but to a foe pervading all of French life, namely Americanisation. Kuisel contends that in...

Emanuel Swedenborg, Secret Agent on Earth and in Heaven: Jacobites, Jews, and Freemasons in Early Modern Sweden

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

It is a disturbing truth, as Jonathan Clark has pointed out in Revolution and Rebellion: State and Society in England in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (1986), that academics promoting a view of the 18th century as predominantly...

What are you reading?

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

An exposition on successful economies impresses Howard Davies, but may not thrill the REF panels

Too Big to Know

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Martin De Saulles sees how new ways to share online can lead to quicker knowledge creation

Thinking the Twentieth Century: Intellectuals and Politics in the Twentieth Century

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

This book has an unusual structure. It grew from conversations recorded by Tony Judt (1948-2010) with a younger historian, Timothy Snyder, of Yale University. Although they present their specialisms as complementary (respectively Western...

Sex, Gender and the Conservative Party: From Iron Lady to Kitten Heels

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

The altered gender balance among Conservative MPs after the 2010 general election was noticeable. Yet, despite a well-publicised pledge by David Cameron to increase the number of female and ethnic-minority Conservative candidates, the 48...

How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

California in the 1970s: LSD, seances...quantum mechanics? Chris Sachrajda takes a strange trip

Bush's Wars

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

While the Obama administration struggles to disentangle itself from Iraq and Afghanistan, nearly a decade after George W. Bush's absurd "mission accomplished" boast of May 2003, it is useful to have this clear and succinct account of how...

Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

As witness recent squawks on Fox News about the "communist" leanings of the latest Muppets movie, the idea of Hollywood as a hotbed of leftist subversion dies hard. Steven Ross aims to set the record straight, showing that although plenty...

What are you reading?

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Fixing Drugs: The Politics of Drug Prohibition

Thu, 8 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

David Nutt applauds a well-balanced evaluation of narcotics law, with all its inconsistencies and flaws

Wired for Culture: The Natural History of Human Cooperation

Thu, 8 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

A grand biological theory for what makes us so special does not convince Steven Rose

The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society

Thu, 8 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

This is a very unexpected book. Brad Gregory's first book, Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe, was much admired: a detailed, scholarly work that stayed fairly firmly in the 16th century. The Unintended...

The Science Delusion: Freeing the Spirit of Enquiry

Thu, 8 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

After Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion comes the reply. Wham bam! Rupert Sheldrake takes on the "truth-finding religion" of science in general and "ten dogmas" of the 21st-century worldview in particular. These include arguments...

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Thu, 8 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Why Have Children? The Ethical Debate

Thu, 1 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Mary Warnock navigates the moral questions that come to bear on the having of children

The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning

Thu, 1 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Eva Aldea is intrigued by an account of our enduring fascination with barbarous images

The Rise of Female Kings in Europe, 1300-1800

Thu, 1 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

William Monter's subject is female kings: a contradiction in terms, one might think. But as he points out, the word "queen", from the Anglo-Saxon cwén, in origin means a king's wife, not a female sovereign. The presumption against female...

Humanity 2.0: What it Means to be Human: Past, Present and Future

Thu, 1 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

As its title indicates, this book is an attempt to unravel what it means to be human in the past, present and future. Its ambition is to provide "a comprehensive set of historical, philosophical and sociological resources" for readers to...

Dickens and the Workhouse: Oliver Twist and the London Poor

Thu, 1 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Sketches of a street where Boz grew up - and a place that scarred him - captivate Valerie Sanders

The Russian Origins of the First World War

Thu, 1 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Who was responsible for the First World War? That Germany was largely to blame has become the established view, but Sean McMeekin points his finger at a different culprit, Russia. His thesis is supported by his research in the Imperial Russian...

Banding Together: How Communities Create Genres in Popular Music

Thu, 1 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Jennifer Lena attempts to take on two of popular music's most regularly debated areas and get to the heart of the problems in previous scholarship. Given that academics working in different areas of popular music studies can barely agree...

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Thu, 1 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

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How Not to Be Eaten: The Insects Fight Back

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Michelle Harvey gets caught up in the evolutionary arms race of six-legged predators and prey

Privatising the Public University: The Case of Law

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

The demise of state funding has altered students' attitudes to the legal profession, says Huw Morris

Reinventing Political Culture: The Power of Culture versus the Culture of Power

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Political culture is a bit of an elephant in the living room for social scientists. It's large and we know it's there, but we're not sure how to deal with it. As a result, it is often ignored at the expense of a clearer understanding of...

The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions are Changing World Politics

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

At the London School of Economics a few years ago I listened as Richard Goldstone, then the great guru of the international criminal court, outlined his case for what the author of this stimulating book calls here (only slightly misleadingly)...

The Poetry of Thought: From Hellenism to Celan

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Tom Palaima lauds a reflection on the millennia-old struggle to express original ideas through language

The Anticipatory Corpse: Medicine, Power and the Care of the Dying

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

I approached this book with caution. It begins with the story of Nancy, a woman diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, a disease I have witnessed at close quarters and had no wish to reacquaint myself with. Then, in setting out his approach to...

Why Religion is Natural and Science is Not

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Don't be misled by the title. This is not a book written in praise of religion as natural or criticising science as unnatural - quite the contrary. The author, Robert McCauley, is a cognitive science philosopher, and the book is part of...

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Thu, 23 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

What Are Universities For?

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Fred Inglis applauds a polemic on higher education's purpose and the perils it faces

Galla Placidia: The Last Roman Empress

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Judith Weingarten is fascinated by the woman who, amid decline and fall, ruled an empire for 12 years

The Shakespeare Thefts: In Search of the First Folios

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

In Susan Hill's superlative ghost story The Small Hand, a London book dealer named Adam travels on behalf of a wealthy client to a remote French monastery in search of Shakespeare's First Folio. Hill conjures up the eeriest of atmospheres...

Capitalist Revolutionary: John Maynard Keynes

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

In our troubled times, there is much to learn from John Maynard Keynes' approach to understanding and remedying the problems of stagnating economies and unstable financial systems.

Thinking, Fast and Slow

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

An investigation into our behaviour shows we're not as logical as we imagine, Miriam Teschl discovers

Mediating Climate Change

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Julie Doyle used to study techniques for the visualisation of the body in the context of anatomy; in her spare time she was a Greenpeace campaigner. This book blends those preoccupations: it asks how climate change is represented and envisioned...

Stravinsky's Ballets

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Igor Stravinsky's stature as one of the most influential composers of the modern era seems all but incontestable, and Charles Joseph's study accordingly situates its subject as the 20th-century counterpart of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms....

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Thu, 16 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers