Book reviews from THE

Book of the week: Not Exactly: In Praise of Vagueness

Thu, 4 Feb 2010 00:00:00 GMT

John Gilbey is reassured that not always having an answer is normal

The Imagination of Evil

Thu, 4 Feb 2010 00:00:00 GMT

For many readers, morbid stories reaffirm a conviction in their own morals, finds Stacy Gillis

The Rhetoric of Terror: Reflections on 9/11 and the War on Terror

Thu, 4 Feb 2010 00:00:00 GMT

All terror is "rhetorical", for terror tries to be persuasive. It tries to convince a public to think and feel one thing rather than another. But surrounding the rhetoric of terror comes another rhetoric: a rhetoric of response, of process,...

The Canon: Film as Film: Understanding and Judging Movies. By V.F. Perkins

Thu, 4 Feb 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Growing up in the 1980s, how I wished films were an intravenous fix. You can understand how satisfying it was to discover Film as Film, albeit in the years after I finished my BA.

Anna Seward: A Constructed Life, A Critical Biography

Thu, 4 Feb 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Isobel Grundy welcomes a biography of an independent and long-neglected poet

Atlantic Gateway: The Port and City of Londonderry since 1700

Thu, 4 Feb 2010 00:00:00 GMT

During the Second World War, the River Foyle, upon whose banks the city of Londonderry stands, was of vital military and strategic importance. At any one time, it was home to more than 100 Allied ships seeking to protect shipping and hunt...

Elizabethan Architecture: Its Rise and Fall, 1540-1640

Thu, 4 Feb 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Mark Girouard's Elizabethan Architecture is concerned with "the intensely artificial, elaborately composed houses of great people, as artificial as the clothes that encased their inhabitants". It is up to date, opinionated and brilliantly...

Published this week

Thu, 4 Feb 2010 00:00:00 GMT

BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT

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Thu, 4 Feb 2010 00:00:00 GMT

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Book of the week: Lake Views

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Graham Farmelo delights in a top physicist's views on science, policy and faith

Justice, Legality and the Rule of Law: Lessons from the Pitcairn Prosecutions

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

This work's narrow focus misses women's suffering and lack of redress, argues Rosemary Hunter

Published this week

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

? = Review forthcoming

What are you reading?

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Clever: Leading Your Smartest, Most Creative People

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Nurturing gifted employees will benefit workers and employers - it makes sense to David Orford

Disturbances of the Mind

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

In this cleverly constructed book, several of the puzzles of present-day neurology are considered alongside accounts of the lives and times of those with whom they are eponymously associated. Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, and...

The Canon: The History of Britain. By John Milton

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Not only do we not know what the future holds; often we have little idea what the past holds. For Francis Bacon: "Time is like a river, which has brought down to us things light and puffed up, while those which are weighty and solid have...

Policing Stalin's Socialism: Repression and Social Order in the Soviet Union, 1924-1953

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Hidden victims of Stalinist suppression are revealed, finds Harold Shukman

Stuff

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Daniel Miller's Stuff brings together in one compact volume a deftly rewritten and engaging retrospective summary of 30 years of cultural anthropology carried out in the Caribbean, London, India and elsewhere. At the core of the book is...

Book of the week: Out of Athens: The New Ancient Greeks

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Tom Palaima is persuaded to think in new ways about classical culture

Inventing a Socialist Nation

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

East Germany's selective use of homeland culture in its reconstruction is illuminating, writes Gareth Dale

At the Bottom of Shakespeare's Ocean

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Why must we go down to the sea again? In wrestling with this question and the apparent ubiquity of the ocean in Shakespeare's oeuvre, Steve Mentz provides some intriguing suggestions. He also demonstrates a real flair for good old-fashioned...

The Canon: Crime and Industrial Society in the Nineteenth Century. By J.J. Tobias

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Some books exhibit such scope and endeavour, provoking thought and initiating responses, that they are surely canonical. In the field of the history of crime and its social context, this book is one such work, first published by Batsford in 1967.

Destination unknown

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

What happens after death remains a mystery, but as John Casey tells Matthew Reisz, he has drawn upon his religious struggles to illuminate the way

What are you reading?

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

1989: Bob Dylan Didn't Have This to Sing About

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Martin James wishes this useful exploration of musical responses to the zeitgeist had more depth

A Better Pencil: Readers, Writers, and the Digital Revolution

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Dennis Baron is never any less than genial in this account of the relationship between reading, writing and technology. Unfortunately, he is never very much more than genial either. A Better Pencil is not that sharp.

Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Paul Rahe's new work is not only an erudite challenge to traditional views of Baron de Montesquieu as a backward-looking aristocratic liberal seeking to restore feudal limitations on the dictatorial tendencies of the 18th-century French...

Published this week

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

? = Review forthcoming

Book of the week: Making Reform Work: The Case for Transforming American Higher Education

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Rick Trainor discovers a critique of relevance on both sides of the pond

The Tunguska Mystery

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Alan Gilmore is doubtful of a study that ignores credible science and focuses on the unknown

Gangs, Marginalised Youth and Social Capital

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

In the early 1970s, a sociologist using the pseudonym James Patrick published a book that he researched by going undercover in Glasgow's tough inner-city housing schemes and participating in the everyday worlds of local "hard men". Patrick...

Changing the Score: Arias, Prima Donnas, and the Authority of Performance

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Musicologists, as well as opera buffs, will welcome this well-documented and thoughtfully written study on a relatively rare topic: namely, the practice and performance of insertion arias in operatic performances throughout the 19th century....

Our Dark Side: A History of Perversion

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

A confused attempt to explain the unspeakable falls back on the usual suspects, writes Fred Inglis

The Conservative Party: From Thatcher to Cameron

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

A.W. Purdue feels this Tory analysis may underestimate the fluidity of the electorate

Wittgenstein and Political Theory: The View from Somewhere

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Ludwig Wittgenstein was unarguably one of the most compelling and applicable thinkers across so many disciplines. Here, Christopher Robinson, assistant professor of humanities and social sciences at Clarkson University in New York, takes...

Issues in Contemporary Documentary

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

As Jane Chapman notes in her introduction to this broad-ranging book, "documentary is now so popular and diverse that it needs to be understood as complex, multifaceted and influenced by a range of different contexts". It is this complexity...

Being a Pilgrim: Art and Ritual on the Medieval Routes to Santiago

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Paula Gerson is transported to Galicia by this guide to the route to Saint James' remains

The Fighting Tudors

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

You cannot put a good man down! This appears to be David Loades' third book on the Tudors to have been published in 2009, and in total he must soon be approaching his half century, which should surely put him in the running for some kind...

Genocide before the Holocaust

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

The word "genocide" was coined by the Polish-born Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1943. Taking its roots from Greek and Latin, it describes the targeted and intentional killing or destruction of a racial, ethnic or religious group. It properly...

Published this week

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

? = Review forthcoming

Trotsky: A Biography

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Willy Maley enjoys the complexities, but not the cack-handed certainties, of this magisterial tome

What are you reading?

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

The Great War on the Small Screen: Representing the First World War in Contemporary Britain

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Jerome de Groot finds television's depiction of the First World War is put into clear focus

The Counter-Counterinsurgency Manual: Or, Notes on Demilitarizing American Society

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

The Counter-Counterinsurgency Manual - its authors call it a pamphlet - may well come to be regarded as the most important work to emerge from America's social sciences so far this millennium. It was written by some of the founders of the...

The Canon: Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist. By Walter Kaufmann

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Walter Kaufmann (1921-80) was a Lutheran of Jewish descent who converted to Judaism. Fleeing Nazi Germany for America, he became professor of philosophy at Princeton University after active service in the Second World War. His work as a...

Book of the week: Athanasius Kircher's Theatre of the World

Thu, 7 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

James Stevens Curl praises a masterly study of a German polymath

Wasted: Why Education Isn't Educating

Thu, 7 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Alan Ryan backs the brickbats for Labour but senses a confusion at the heart of this polemic

Science for All: The Popularization of Science in Early Twentieth-Century Britain

Thu, 7 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Victorian scientists were eager popularisers when building the standing of their new profession. The likes of Thomas Huxley were as likely to be found lecturing to working men or dashing off an essay for the Athenaeum as actually doing research....

The canon: Christianity in the West 1400-1700. By John Bossy

Thu, 7 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Startling originality is a rarity in history writing. It is perhaps particularly rare when writing the history of religion, where it is so hard to escape the constraints of dogma and institutional structure. In writing the history of the...

Sibelius: A Composer's Life and the Awakening of Finland

Thu, 7 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

A new biography explains to David Revill the mystery of Sibelius' loss of creativity in later life

Manly Love: Romantic Friendship in American Fiction

Thu, 7 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

The young men would gaze into each other's eyes. They might hold hands. One of them would fall ill, and his friend would murmur caring nothings at the bedside. It was a familiar scenario in 19th-century American fiction and, like the English...

Shakespeare and Impure Aesthetics

Thu, 7 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Shakespeare has perennially been perceived as in need of rescue. In the 18th century, a squadron of editors, including Pope and Johnson, sought to rescue Shakespeare's drama from corruption on stage; in turn, 19th-century Romantics such...

The Trials of Academe: The New Era of Campus Litigation

Thu, 7 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Academic freedom is not a licence for sloppy or unprofessional behaviour, says David Palfreyman

The Artist's Eyes: Vision and the History of Art

Thu, 7 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

"Monet is only an eye," said Cezanne, "but what an eye!" Michael F. Marmor and James G. Ravin take this remark as their text for an investigation into artists' vision - think Specsavers, not clouds of glory or Christ on the cross - as understood...

Published this week

Thu, 7 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

? = Review forthcoming

Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared?

Thu, 7 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

John Armitage contemplates a meditation on our preoccupation with vanishings and reappearances

Safer Sex in the City: The Experience and Management of Street Prostitution

Thu, 7 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

This edited volume focuses on the violence experienced by street sex workers and examines how street prostitution could be managed to reduce the risk of violence, its two sections dealing with the former and the latter in turn.

Losing the News: The Future of the News That Feeds Democracy

Thu, 7 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

As newspaper owners around the world battle with the problem of trying to find a way of making news on the web pay, this should be a very timely book - and it almost is.

What are you reading?

Thu, 7 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

THE Book of the Week - Who Was Jacques Derrida? An Intellectual Biography

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Martin McQuillan applauds an outsider's appraisal of the giant of deconstruction

I Drink Therefore I Am: A Philosopher's Guide to Wine

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Martin Cohen is unimpressed by a work that staggers and falls between three stools

The Dying and the Doctors: The Medical Revolution in Seventeenth-Century England

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

This book investigates the "medicalisation" of England in the 17th century, "the pattern by which the English turned from praying for spiritual physic to paying for medicines when struggling with grave illnesses". It is a challenging topic.

The Canon - Rural Rides By William Cobbett

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

While in Farnham one October to teach journalism, I recalled my first encounter with William Cobbett, a famous son of the Surrey town. My inspirational A-level history teachers used his weekly newspaper, the Political Register, as a classroom...

Wounds, Flesh, and Metaphor in Seventeenth-Century England

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Jerome de Groot delights in a study of language in the middle of strife-ridden 17th-century England

Post-War Italian Cinema: American Intervention, Vatican Interests

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Post-War Italian Cinema: American Intervention, Vatican Interests. By Daniela Treveri Gennari. Routledge. 218pp, £65.00. ISBN 9780415962872. Published 27 February 2009

In Defence of the Enlightenment

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

On what intellectual and moral bases do we wish to construct our communal life? We will not receive any help from politicians (obsessed as they are with political correctness, greed and getting or holding on to power), from media pundits...

Exit Capitalism: Literary Culture, Theory, and Post-Secular Modernity

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Edward Quipp is provoked by a portrayal of key moments in English literary and cultural history

Personal Responsibility: Why It Matters

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Quite rightly, Alexander Brown appears to think that a book entitled Personal Responsibility: Does It Matter? would be an unnecessary prequel. Here, he is evidently happy to accept the importance of personal responsibility and examine...

The Empire of Trauma: An Inquiry into the Condition of Victimhood

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The stupendous waves of globalisation are, the economic historians tell us, well over a century old, but their terrific riptides - swirling, contradictory, uncontrollable - demand unprecedented new forms of thought and comprehension from...

The Universe: Order Without Design

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

This book tackles a large question in cosmology: Is the Universe designed for life? To which I am tempted to add my own query: is that question posed with sufficient clarity to inform rational inquiry? Carlos Calle believes it is. He is...

The Future of Newspapers

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

No British scholar has done more than Bob Franklin, of the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, to make the academic study of journalism relevant to journalists. This collection advances his project deep into the internet...

Published this Week

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

(J) = Review forthcoming

In search of a good companion

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Matthew Reisz weighs up the role of weighty tomes of literary reference in the digital age

The Passage to Cosmos: Alexander von Humboldt and the Shaping of America

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Humboldt is unfashionable in our postcolonial age, but it’s time for a renaissance, says Jeremy Jennings

What are you reading?

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Book of the week: The Infinity of Lists

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Umberto Eco's faintly fanatical offering fascinates Simon Blackburn

Scroogenomics: Why You Shouldn't Buy Presents for the Holidays

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Ironically, this provocative book would make a great stocking-filler, writes Michelle Baddeley

The Politics of Alcohol: A History of the Drink Question in England

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

James Nicholls' excellent book focuses on alcohol legislation in England. This focus was chosen primarily for reasons of space, he says, but reference is also made to drinking cultures and government legislation in Scotland, Ireland, France,...

The Canon: The Arcades Project. By Walter Benjamin

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

In the late 1920s, Walter Benjamin decided to pursue an ambitious project: a study of Paris, capital of the 19th-century world, with particular emphasis on what he believed was its quintessential architectural structure, the arcade. Over...

Playing the Fool: Subversive Laughter in Troubled Times

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The use of humour to disguise an intellectual challenge is an effective ruse, says Peter J. Smith

Mitzvah Girls: Bringing Up the Next Generation of Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Ayala Fader's Mitzvah Girls is a rigorous ethnographic study of the education of Hasidic girls in Brooklyn. It is entertaining and engaging, combining personal accounts and subjective prose with critical analysis. Fader's research takes...

Accident Prone: A History of Technology, Psychology, and Misfits of the Machine Age

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Before reviewing John Burnham's thoughtful book, let us review the Times Higher Education books editor. That lady suggested to your reviewer, a former RAF and airline pilot, that this book, Accident Prone, addressed his precise area of expertise,...

The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Judith Weingarten delights in the life of a leader who tested Romans with his battles and intrigues

Borderline Citizens: Women, Gender, and Political Culture in Britain, 1815-1867

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Caroline Franklin finds a useful correction to misconceived stereotypes of Victorian women

Ethics and Politics in Modern American Poetry

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The modern academy’s Department of English has fractured the voice of modern American poetry: one voice for poems, another for discussion. T.?S. Eliot could moan about not being Prince Hamlet, claim that Shakespeare’s Hamlet was an artistic...

In Time of War: Understanding American Public Opinion from World War II to Iraq

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Steadily dropping poll numbers in the US have registered growing public dissatisfaction with the war in Afghanistan. In this context, it is worth asking: what leads citizens to support or oppose military action? Adam Berinsky’s In Time of...

Economists and Societies: Discipline and Profession in the United States, Britain, and France, 1890s to 1990s

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Although it does not cover the current crisis, Andreas Hess discovers a study that sets the stage for it

The College Fear Factor: How Students and Professors Misunderstand One Another

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

British readers of this interesting and easy-to-read book exploring the US community college system are likely to see a number of parallels with undergraduate education in the UK. Community colleges’ closest British counterpart is, arguably,...

The Selfish Genius: How Richard Dawkins Rewrote Darwin’s Legacy

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Fern Elsdon-Baker’s book begins with a quote from Oscar Wilde: “Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live; it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.” The quote speaks very clearly to her central theme. This book is mainly...

Mark Twain and Male Friendship: The Twichell, Howells and Rogers Friendships

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The impact of three significant relationships on the ‘father of US literature’ fascinates J.?D. Stahl

A Grammar of Murder: Violent Scenes and Film Form

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The prominence of murder and violence in cinema is a well-researched and substantially described area of film studies. However, even though the many publications on the topic – mostly focusing on sociological and narrative aspects – cover...

The Historical Novel

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Is the historical novel in vogue as never before? Five of the six books on the 2009 Man Booker Prize shortlist were in the historical category. From the richly painted Tudor world of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall to the modernist, inter-war,...

Published this week

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

? = Review forthcoming

What are you reading?

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Book of the week: The Case for Books: Past, Present, and Future

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Electronification won't kill off books entirely, discovers Andreas Hess

Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

It's not often that you find fashionable chefs such as Moro's Samuel Clark or Nigella Lawson endorsing the latest book on human evolution, but then this is an unusual and compelling read. Richard Wrangham, a British primatologist and professor...

Published this week

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

? = Review forthcoming

Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

A broadbrush approach to 1930s US culture sweeps too far and wide, says Susan Currell

Regulating Sex For Sale: Prostitution Policy Reform in the UK

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

It is timely that Jo Phoenix's edited collection, Regulating Sex For Sale: Prostitution Policy Reform in the UK, should have made its way into print just after the Policing and Crime Act 2009 became law. She presents a lively and contemporary...

The Delight of Art: Giorgio Vasari and the Traditions of Humanist Discourse

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

This is a book about the delight of art and the art of delight. It traffics in "imaginancies", to use the term David Cast borrows from Inigo Jones after Baldassare Castiglione (appropriation being an integral part of the process), meaning...

Those Who Work, Those Who Don't: Poverty, Morality, and Family in Rural America

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

At last a work that unpacks the reality of US rural poverty, writes Rebekah Peeples Massengill

What are you reading?

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Women's Human Rights: Seeking Gender Justice in a Globalising Age

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Taking up the thorny issue of transnational feminist advocacy in the context of universal human rights protection, with all its visible failures, Niamh Reilly presents it as a case study in this well-grounded, thoroughly researched and timely...

The Canon: Unmasking Medicine. By Ian Kennedy

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Unmasking Medicine was published in 1981 following Ian Kennedy's Reith lectures. Its ideas were intended for, and reached, a wide audience. His central premise was that medicine had been insufficiently scrutinised and, on analysis, was found...

No Small Matter: Science on the Nanoscale

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Andrew Briggs finds much to praise in an enlightening introduction to nanoscience

'Tinkers': Synge and the Cultural History of the Irish Traveller

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

In the age of The X Factor, it is difficult to assess someone else's work without slipping into the Simon Cowell syndrome. For a literary critic, it feels as though reading for review has become a matter of determining a book's, as well...

Book of the week: Southern Horrors

Thu, 3 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Sexual violence was rife in the 19th-century US, as Mary Evans discovers

Down to the Wire: Confronting Climate Collapse

Thu, 3 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Gwyn Prins on a book he says helps to wreck the chance for a mature debate on climate change

The mythbuster

Thu, 3 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Although we may be unaware of it, a number of powerful preconceptions still dog our understanding of the turbulent history of Czechoslovakia, as Mary Heimann discovered. Matthew Reisz reports

Published this week

Thu, 3 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

ECONOMICS

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Thu, 3 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Of Apes and Ancestors: Evolution, Christianity, and the Oxford Debate

Thu, 3 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

A more ambitious project than the contents convey is suggested by the subtitle of Ian Hesketh's book. It amounts to a discussion of what happened at the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, which took place...

The Canon: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. By Ludwig Wittgenstein

Thu, 3 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is a book of philosophy written in short, seemingly oracular, numbered remarks. Its conclusion suggests that those who understand its author will regard as nonsense the elucidatory propositions...

Book of the week: No Enchanted Palace

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Simon Rushton on a unorthodox account of how the UN was born

Political Correctness: A History of Semantics and Culture

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Words and meanings change over time, but this narrative leaves Lynne Segal craving more analysis

The Historiographic Perversion

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

While the mass killings of the Armenians in 1915, which claimed more than 1 million lives, have been recognised as a genocide by many historians and more than 20 governments around the world, there is still a great deal of controversy surrounding...

The Canon: Les Regles de l'Art: Genese et Structure du Champ Litteraire. By Pierre Bourdieu

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) is perhaps best known for La Distinction (1979), but it is his 1992 work Les Regles de l'Art that in my view best sums up the themes he explored throughout his academic life. While it settles...

The Handbook of Sustainability Literacy: Skills for a Changing World

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

To tackle the Earth's problems, we must look at the culture behind them, finds Laurence Coupe

Demobbed: Coming Home After World War Two

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Men serving on the front line are like puppets on a string, postulated German playwright Wolfgang Borchert on his return from the Eastern Front: all individual thought and impulses reduced to an absolute minimum in the communal goal of victory....

The American Civil War

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The American Civil War, or as we prefer to call it in the South, the War Between the States (or, alternatively, the War of Northern Aggression or the War for Southern Independence), has captivated me since sometime around my eighth birthday....

Published this week

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

? = Review forthcoming

What are you reading?

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Book of the week: Francis Crick: Hunter of Life's Secrets

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Jon Turney on the DNA pioneer's life and long career

The Framed World: Tourism, Tourists and Photography

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Laura González on the meanings beneath people's compulsion to capture images of places visited

The Culture of Knitting

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

As a knitter and an academic (although not an academic in the field of visual or textile arts), I found this treatise on the culture of knitting an engaging read. I consider myself well plugged in to the knitting culture at large: not only...

Comparing Conrad: Essays on Joseph Conrad and His Implied Dialogues with Other Writers

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

This book has no ISBN. "Can it even exist?" I hear booksellers and librarians ask. It hasn't even come from a publishing house. It is a self-published work. I can now detect the gasps of appalled academics for whom self-publication is aligned...

Cracking the Einstein Code: Relativity and the Birth of Black Hole Physics

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

It's high time Roy Kerr's contribution to theoretical physics was recognised, writes Graham Farmelo

He Was Some Kind of Man: Masculinities in the B Western

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

There's an assumption - and this is not about proprietary disciplinary boundaries - that anyone can write about film. As many studies attest, this is manifestly not the case. He Was Some Kind of Man is, in many ways, a fascinating study,...

Sound Targets: American Soldiers and Music in the Iraq War

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

In 2003, news emerged that detainees at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere had been subjected to hours of repeated playing of songs by bands ranging from the American heavy metallists Metallica to - bizarrely - the children's puppet Barney the...

Addiction: A Disorder of Choice

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Lots of good sense but too narrow a base leads to author's success and failure, says Bruce Alexander

Published this week

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES

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Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Milton's Words

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The individual phrases of a great poet's work are freighted with significance, says Sophie Read

A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

You might be forgiven for expecting a 1,000-page book to be a little self-indulgent. Not this one. The prose is taut and tart, sometimes to the point of breathlessness; and it is an astonishing feat of compression. After all, this book aspires...

The Canon. Reading Dancing. By Susan Leigh Foster

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Reading Dancing enjoys somewhat emblematic status as a core text in the young discipline of dance studies. Published in 1986, it argues vehemently against the notion that dancing - and by extension, the role of dancers or choreographers...

THE Book of the Week - Rich Democracies, Poor People: How Politics Explain Poverty

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Fiona Taylor gives full marks to an expose of beggary amid plenty

The Emperor's New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

A clear account of theories and possibilities but conclusions not so satisfactory, writes David Smail

Newspeak in the 21st Century

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Newspeak in the 21st Century is the latest publication from Media Lens, a campaign group that undertakes press monitoring from an anti-war, anti-corporate perspective. Tackling left-liberal UK publications including The Independent...

The Canon: The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World By Barrington Moore Jr.

An inveterate activist

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Although his days in the front line of humanitarian aid are past for James Orbinski, his passion for justice and human rights is undiminished, as Matthew Reisz discovers

What are you reading?

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

'Non-Lethal' Weapons

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The development of military hardware that does not kill is proving elusive, as Russell Brown discovers

Martyrs and Murderers: The Guise Family and the Making of Europe

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

This book began badly for me, with one of those imaginative reconstructions that some people enjoy; in this case of Francois de Lorraine, second Duke de Guise, setting out from his principal residence, the Chateau de Joinville, on the morning...

The Dawn of Green: Manchester, Thirlmere, and Modern Environmentalism

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Prior to picking up The Dawn of Green, I had been re-reading Edward Abbey's novel The Monkey Wrench Gang. First published in 1975, it concerns the activities of four misfits with a shared love of wilderness. They wage a...

The Provocative Joan Robinson: The Making of a Cambridge Economist

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Housewife to acclaimed economist within a decade - not bad going, says Natalie Gold

Martha Hill and the Making of American Dance

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The "making of American dance" bit of the title likely brings to mind a certain Martha, and indeed the legendary Graham figures significantly in Janet Mansfield Soares' biography. Its subject, however, is the rather less known Martha Hill...

Sexy Orchids Make Lousy Lovers and Other Unusual Relationships

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

"Gross," starts the preface to this curious collection on the strangeness of nature. Beetles that commit siblicide, toxic frogs, kleptoparasitism in birds, hallucinogenic plants, poisonous dragons, monkeys that wipe millipedes on their fur...

Published this Week

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

CULTURAL STUDIES