Should fitness share the stage with beauty? My review of Prum’s “Evolution of Beauty”
The Times Sunday Book Review, six days ahead of the Sunday paper, published today my review of Richard Prum’s “The Evolution of Beauty” (and a...
Category: Books
John Berger and Susan Sontag’s delicious shoptalk and big hair
What a fabulous conversation this is, between two giants we’ve lost. You see here, in this quiet, quietly intense, intensely curious conversation — in which (a ...
Anthropology/Biology/Books/Brains and Behavior/Culture/Culture of Science/History of science/Politics/Readings
A rowdy, harrowing, vital book: My Times review of ‘Galileo’s Middle Finger,’ by Alice Dreger.
I’ve a review of Alice Dreger’s latest book in this week’s New York Times Sunday Book Review; it just appeared online. “Galileo’s Middl...
Calvin and Hobbes walk into a bar. Grammar cop says Oh no they didn’t.
From today’s Read 2 You’d think a column arguing that Calvin and Hobbes is the best comic strip ever couldn’t start an argument. Yet it does. ...
How you read, Alice Munro writes, and war comes home
Here are three of the five items on today’s edition of my semi-regular “Read 2 of these and call me in the morning” mailing. The life, death, and resurrection o...
Alice Munro has some very bad news. Plus consciousness and Brits on the dole.
Three of thefive reads from today’s edition of my Read Two newsletter. You can get the other two here or sign up for more. Why can’t the world’s greatest ...
The Spy Who Wasn’t, or how a guy named Simons walked home with a vial of plutonium
Being immersed lately in tales of deception, deceit, and betrayal lately — my voracious read of Ben Macintyre’s magnificent A Spy Among Friends is only th...
Books/Brains and Behavior/Culture/Culture of Science/Genetics/History of science/Psychiatry/War/Writing
Talking Genetics and Writing with David Goodman
My journalist friend and colleague David Goodman had me on his radio show “The Vermont Conversation” this past Wednesday, over at WDEV’s fine ...
Michael Eisen on Wade’s Leaps of Logic
As my own review of Nicholas Wade’s book suggested, his treatment of genetics has many deep and fundamental problems. And as my blog post noted, many othe...