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 ...
Tag: Books
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...
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 ...
Anthropology/Biology/Books/Brains and Behavior/Culture of Science/Genetics/History of science/Readings/Writing
Whites Win, Because Genes. My Times review of “A Troublesome Inheritance”
Today the New York Times Book Review published its advance online version of my review of Nicholas Wade’s A Troublesome Inheritance. (It will appear in print th...
Peter Matthiessen In Paradise
Perhaps so. Rivendell Books, here in Montpelier, didn’t waste anytime putting this where it belongs, right out front. I think of Matthiessen late a...
The Neuroscience of Disillusionment
The brain craze was bound to go through the usual hype cycle, so we shouldn’t be surprised that some of us are rolling back our enthusiasms for brain-base...
Janet Malcolm’s Inescapable Truthfulness
At the New Yorker’s “What We’re Reading” blog, Sasha Weiss articulates some of the many reasons I so enjoy Janet Malcolm: Reading Janet ...
Middlemarch, Through Layers of Time and Sympathy
A few paragraphs into her consideration of George Eliot’s Middlemarch, New York Magazine’s Kathryn Schulz lays out a refreshingly practical definiti...
Whence Comes Anxiety? Scott Stossel Explains
Scott Stossel’s fine vivid account of his spectacular struggles with anxiety — an Atlantic article excerpted from his new book —carries, among other pleas...