Reviews
Austen
Edited by Claudia L. Johnson and Clara Tuite, A Companion to Jane AustenThis book covers everything you ever wanted to know about Jane Austen and probably didn't even know enough to ask. It is an extensive, perhaps definitive, collection of essays that reflect contemporary Austen studies. Suitable for serious Austen scholars and fans willing to handle its heft, there is much to learn and ponder here. COMING SOON...
Camus
David Sherman, CamusWithout question, Albert Camus (7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) ranks as one of the world’s great literary figures. He was also a philosopher and existentialist, even though he decried such labels. COMING SOON...
Chaplin
Richard Schickel, Film on Paper: The Inner Life of MoviesThis is the latest offering from Richard Schickel, a renowned film critic who probably knows more -- and writes with greater incision -- about the history of film than any contemporary reviewer.
John McCabe, Charlie ChaplinJohn McCabe's insightful biography of Charlie Chaplin is a scholarly work, which will easily engage both young and old. McCabe (1920-2005) is best known for his biographies.
Kevin J. Hayes, Charlie Chaplin InterviewsHis autobiography, filled with rank name-dropping, is almost unreadable. The 1992 biopic, despite a fine performance by Robert Downey, Jr., is an embarrassment. And not everyone wants to plow through a 750-page biography just to find out what made the Little Tramp tick. Luckily, there is now a better way to know Charlie Chaplin.
Dalí
Gille Néret, DalíThis brief and colorful volume offers a biographical and thematic survey of the remarkably complex and controversial work of the Spanish painter Salvador Dalí.
Darwin
David R. Contosta,Rebel Giants:This book offers a timely examination of the lives of two men who transformed their world -- and ours -- in ways that are difficult to adequately summarizein a few hundred pages.
Michael Shermer, Why Darwin MattersMany of the ideas brilliantly and compellingly explored in Why Darwin Matters made a showing in certain chapters of three of Michael Shermer’s earlier books: Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition<, and Other Confusions of Our Time (1997), How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science (2000), and The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule (2004). This is not to say that much of Why Darwin Matters isn’t new.
Descartes
Russell Shorto, Descartes' BonesMost books about the famed French philosopher Rene Descartes center on the man’s reputation as the most influential and controversial figure of his time. Indeed, some 350 years after Descartes’ death, he is still the subject of numerous books and scholarly articles. COMING SOON...
Einstein
Harald Fritzsch, The Curvature of Spacetime: Newton, Einstein and GravitationNewton, Einstein and Gravitation - In the late 1970s, Steve Allen hosted a show on PBS called “A Meeting of Minds.” Its format was a talk show bringing together renowned historical personalities, portrayed by actors.
David C. Cassidy, Einstein and Our World- Einstein and Our World is in many ways like an engaging, introductory school course – so effectively conveyed that it might inspire a lifelong passion for the subject. The “instructor” in this case is David C. Cassidy, a professor of natural sciences at Hofstra University, and the former associate editor of The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein
Hans C. Ohanian, Einstein's Mistakes: The Human Failings of GeniusWhile a patent clerk in 1905, Einstein published a handful of seminal physics papers which received wide critical acclaim. These papers, notes Ohanian, contained several mistakes.
John Rigden, Einstein 1905: The Standard of GreatnessEinstein 1905: The Standard of Greatness, is a detailed look into the five papers written by Einstein in 1905 - known as his Annus Mirabilis, the extraordinary year - that truly separated him from other physicists of his time and beyond.
Silvan S. Schweber, Einstein and Oppenheimer: The Meaning of GeniusEinstein and Oppenheimer examines the lives of two of the 20th century's most consequential physicists.
Burton Feldman, 112 Mercer StreetDuring the winter of 1943-44, as much of the supposedly civilized world tore itself limb from limb, four of the most brilliant thinkers of the century gathered in a small colonial-style house in Princeton, New Jersey.
Brian Greene, The Fabric of the CosmosPhysicist Brian Greene, a well-known string theorist, does his best to explain complex and abstract theoretical physics to the average layperson, which, no doubt, is a monumental feat.
Victor J. Stenger, GOD:The Failed HypothesisThe late, great Stephen J. Gould posited that science and religion can be described as properly having "non-overlapping magisteria" - in other words, that religion doesn't describe the processes of the natural world and science has nothing to say about morality.
Kristine Larsen, Stephen Hawking: A BiographyKristine Larsen begins her biography of Stephen Hawking with a central question: how has a theoretical physicist known for "esoteric mathematics" and "the secret language of general relativity" become a cultural icon and the most recognizable scientist in the world?
Jeff Kanipe, The Cosmic ConnectionIn "The Cosmic Connection," Jeff Kanipe tackles the Earth's place in the universe, and how other denizens and aspects of the cosmos have contributed to the development of life here. Yet, they may also have led to mass extinctions in the past and may yet again in the future. The cosmos giveth and the cosmos taketh away, it seems.
David Bodanis, E=mc2: A Biography of the World's Most Famous EquationThis is a book about a mathematical formula that nearly everyone -- even those who are science-phobic -- can recite, but almost no one can actually explain with the slightest degree of coherence.
Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our FutureWritten by Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science, and marine biologist Sheril Kirshenbaum, Unscientific America addresses the disconnect between the country's brightest minds and the political process that has so much power over funding and applications for new research.
N. David Mermin, It's About Time: Understanding Einstein's RelativityIt's About Time: Understanding Einstein's Relativity began as a series of notes and lectures Mermin, a physicist at Cornell University, wrote for his nonscientist students during the 1990s. The notes were continually organized and revised as students raised new questions.
Michael Paterniti, Driving Mr. AlbertWhen Jack Kerouac drove into "the great American night," then poured its manic pace into On the Road, he created a living literary genre -- the road narrative. Since Kerouac, authors from John Steinbeck to William Least Heat-Moon have taken to the road in vans or, hitchhiking, bringing their memories and dogs for the ride. But only one writer hit the road with Albert Einstein's brain.
Eliot
Robert Sencourt, T.S. Eliot: A MemoirIn his October 21, 1971 review of T.S. Eliot: A Memoir, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt commented, “this book makes one wonder whether all that will be written about Eliot’s life and art will tell us so much more than what this strange flash of lightning in the darkness has revealed.” COMING SOON...
Fellini
Hollis Alpert, Fellini: A LifePerhaps once in a generation, an artist comes along to permanently alter the landscape of his medium. In Fellini: A Life, Hollis Alpert guides the reader through the tumultuous life of this fascinating Italian master.
Peter Bondanella, The Cinema of Federico FelliniEverything you ever wanted to know about Federico Fellini’s film history is in Peter Bondanella’s exhaustive and scholarly treatment of the director’s early influences.
Freud
Tamas Pataki, Against ReligionThe enduring power of religious belief in the 21st century would come as something of a surprise to Sigmund Freud, Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx, and the other long-departed social theorists whose influence lurks in the background of Tamas Pataki’s provocative essays Against Religion.
Frank Tallis,Hidden Minds: The History of the UnconsciousHaving exposed the power of the unconscious, Sigmund Freud was hardly modest in assessing his own achievement. Like Copernicus and Darwin, he argued, his theories had delivered the “third and most wounding blow” to the “naïve self-love” that characterized human culture.
Nicolle Rosen, Mrs. Freud: A Novel.Despite the recent biography of Martha Freud by Katja Behling, and the numerous books about her husband, Sigmund Freud, little has been written about how Mrs. Freud (1861-1951) may have felt about her life with the founder of psychoanalysis.
Timothy A. Kelly, Healing the Broken MindJoining the chorus of voices in the health care debate, an issue which has continued to dominate the American conversation, is Timothy A. Kelly with Healing the Broken Mind.
Jed Rubenfeld, The Interpretation of MurderIn 1909 Austrian neurologist and father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud made his first and only trip to the United States. He had been invited by the president of Clark University to give a series of lectures on psychoanalysis. This visit, however, has always been shrouded in mystery and it is believed that Freud left the country feeling nothing but contempt for the Americans. What really happened?
Janine Burke, The Sphinx on the TableJanine Burke's examination of Sigmund Freud is part biography, part art history, and part analysis of Freud, the man. She has opened up new territory by choosing to study Freud's life and ideas through a focus on his collection of art and antiquities. Using the excellent metaphor of psychoanalysis as archaeology, Burke presents us with a new perspective of a man who was arguably one of the strongest influences on the intellectual history of the 20th century.
Galileo
Wade Rowland, Galileo’s MistakeWade Rowland, the author of Galileo’s Mistake, characterizes the trial of Galileo Galilei by the Inquisition in 1633 as a defining moment in modern Western culture. As generally understood, this trial pitted arbitrary and dangerous religious authorities against the progression of scientific discovery. COMING SOON...
Gödel
Janna Levin, A Madman Dreams of Turing MachinesWithout a doubt, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing were two of the most compelling figures in the history of mathematics, logic and philosophy. Gödel's revolutionary “incompleteness theorems” and Turing's work with artificial intelligence have changed the world.
Rebecca Goldstein, Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt GodelIncompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel by Rebecca Goldstein tells the story of Kurt Gödel, one of the greatest mathematicians and logicians of modern times.
Paul Hoffman, The Man Who Loved Only NumbersWhen the great Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdos died in 1996 at the age of 83, he left behind a staggering body of work. With nearly 1500 academic articles to his credit -- by far the most extensive publishing record of any mathematician in history -- Erdos collaborated with 485 co-authors during his long career.
Sylvia Nasar, A Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John NashMathematician John Forbes Nash Jr. was so confident of his own genius that in 1948, at the age of 20, he challenged Albert Einstein in his Princeton office about amending the physicist’s quantum theory. Nash was a man obsessed with originality and regularly sought answers to unsolved math problems that no other theorist would touch.
Hemingway
A.E. Hotchner, Papa Hemingway: A Personal MemoirThis new edition of Papa Hemingway from Da Capo Press brings A.E. Hotchner's famous memoir back into print for the first time in nearly a decade.
Scott Donaldson, Fitzgerald and Hemingway: Works and DaysIn Fitzgerald and Hemingway: Works and Days, Scott Donaldson draws on his own remarkable writings, crafted over the last four decades, to form a collection of essays -- part biographical, part critical -- about two of the most celebrated authors of the 20th century.
Herodotus
Justin Marozzi, The Way of Herodotus: Travels with the Man Who Invented HistoryIt is safe to assume that few historians, ancient or modern, could inspire a young writer to embark on the sort of journey chronicled in Justin Marozzi’s entertaining and enthusiastic new book. However, few historians can compete with the works of Herodotus, the elusive, oldest Greek historian who wrote in the 5th century BCE (Before the Common Era). Herodotus’ fabulous, rambunctious Histories serve as a model for Marozzi in two ways. COMING SOON...
Hitchcock
David Thomson, The Moment of Psycho: How Alfred Hitchcock Taught America to Love MurderDavid Thomson's The Moment of Psycho is a foray into the black-and-white imagination of Alfred Hitchcock's most famous film. While it is an examination of the movie and its impact on contemporary cinema, the book's ultimate strength lies in little details that Thomson...
Kant
Pablo Muchnik, Kant’s Theory of EvilPablo Muchnik’s Kant’s Theory of Evil provides a defense of the continuing relevance of Kant’s moral philosophy by systematically addressing interpretive glosses that may be unfair to the renowned Königsberg professor. Some criticisms of Kant—that he merely dresses up the doctrine of original sin in philosophical language with his notion of radical evil; that his rigorous insistence on rationality and universality is itself a form of preference or prejudice; that he unfairly demotes the emotions to a secondary status—are all addressed by Muchnik with precision.
Le Corbusier
Flora Samuel, Le Corbusier: Architect and FeministFlora Samuel, an architect and lecturer at the Welsh School of Architecture, has written widely on the subject of Le Corbusier. In Le Corbusier: Architect and Feminist, she unearths certain aspects of his work that other researchers have ignored or discounted.
Jean-Louis Cohen, Le CorbusierCharles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris -- better known as Le Corbusier, the name he adopted in 1920 -- was among the most significant architects and urban planners of the 20th century, and his career was marked by an astonishing productivity and self-promoted celebrity.
Phaidon, Le Corbusier Le GrandSeveral years ago, German publisher, Taschen, released a book of monumental proportions in celebration of boxing's "Greatest of All Time" - Muhammad Ali. It tipped the scales at 75 lbs and gave new meaning to over-sized coffee table books measuring 20" x 20" and offering over 3,000 images of Ali over the course of his remarkable and irrepressible career. COMING SOON...
Leonardo
Sherwin B. Nuland, Leonardo da VinciDr. Sherwin Nuland described his writing to Sara Ivry in an interview in this way, “I have. . .the kind of mind that everything I read, whether it’s medicine or politics or whatever, ends up synthesized. All of my books are essentially what the French call ‘vulgarization.’ COMING SOON...
Marx
Francis Wheen, Karl Marx: A LifeWhat do a rogue elephant, a wild boar, and a shaven porcupine have in common? They all reflect facets of Karl Marx’s personality as described by British journalist Francis Wheen in “Karl Marx: A Life,” an entertaining biography of a man whose life story does not immediately appear to have had the potential for a lot of laughs.
David Conway, A Farewell to Marx: An Outline and Appraisal of His TheoriesHere is a quote to consider: "[Karl Marx's] real mission in life was to contribute in one way or another to the overthrow of capitalist society and of the forms of government which it had brought into being, to contribute to the liberation of the present-day proletariat, which he was the first to make conscious of its own position and its needs, of the conditions under which it could win its freedom."
Mozart
Maynard Solomon, Mozart: A LifeMozart. The name conjures up various images: a child prodigy playing blindfolded on the keyboard; a moody composer writing music on a billiard table; a man-child throwing his head back in high-pitch giggles. Probably thanks to the unforgettable, Academy Award winning film Amadeus, these are the images that flash through our minds.
Newton
David Berlinski, Newton's Gift: How Sir Isaac Newton Unlocked the System of the WorldIn our dumbed-down age, when even the most grounded scientific theory is often distrusted by too many, it may be hard for the ordinary reader to recall how a single genius once bestrode the world. COMING SOON...
Picasso
Ingo F. Walther, PicassoThis brief biography, published as part of Taschen’s short and affordable series on notable artists, provides a nice introduction to the life and work of Pablo Picasso.
Marina Picasso, Picasso, My GrandfatherThis memoir -- the first from a Picasso progeny -- recounts the cumulative familial wreckage produced by Pablo Picasso, as told by his granddaughter, Marina.
Quine
Quintessence: Basic Readings from the Philosophy of W. V. QuineFor much of the latter part of our previous century, the philosopher who exerted the greatest influence over his field, at least in the Anglo-American tradition, was Harvard professor W.V. Orman Quine (1908-2000). With unusual flair and wit, Quine ranged over some of the most abstruse philosophical problems of the day with great aplomb and unequaled rigor.... COMING SOON...
Alex Orenstein, W.V. QuineWillard Van Orman Quine (1908–2000), was one of the greatest analytic philosophers and logicians of the 20th century whose body of work fits into a long history of philosophical treatments of metaphysics, epistemology and language, especially within the empiricist tradition, which remains profoundly influential to this day.
Shakespeare
Stephen Greenblatt, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became ShakepeareStephen Greenblatt's book Will in the World is an enlightening biographical study of not only William Shakespeare, but also of England in the late 1500s.
Bill Bryson, Shakespeare: The World as StageBill Bryson’s concise biography of William Shakespeare is brilliantly written, humorously insightful, and entirely delightful. The prose is a well-crafted and playful presentation of the dozen odd facts known about Shakespeare and many of the suppositions, inferences, and wild speculations about the man and his work.
Colin McGinn, Shakespeare's PhilosophyAlthough he died nearly 400 years ago, William Shakespeare's legacy continues to resonate today. His works, which include 37 plays, five poems and 154 sonnets, strike a chord with modern audiences not only because...
David Bevington, How To Read A Shakespeare PlayHow to Read a Shakespeare Play is part of a small series of "How To" books released by Blackwell Publishing and designed to aid college-level students with their literature studies. Despite the somewhat officious title, this small volume by David Bevington strays....
Jack Lynch, Becoming ShakespeareUnlike most biographies, this one begins not with the birth, but with the death of its subject. Not much is known about William Shakespeare's life, but much has come to be known about the playwright since his death in 1616. This growth in the reputation of the Bard (as he became known ) is a fascinating story in its own right.
Turing
Jon Agar, Turing and the Universal Machine: The Making of the Modern ComputerIn this book, Agar focuses on the development and importance of the idea of the "stored program, or the set of instructions that tells a machine what to do. The stored program transforms the modern computer from a “special-purpose machine” to a “universal machine.” COMING SOON...
Wagner
Michael Tanner, WagnerFor some, Richard Wagner is a sublime genius, capable of profoundly moving us with drama and music through prodigious talent and tremendous depth of feeling. For others, Wagner is not only overrated, with overblown productions matched only by the man’s personal pomposity, but dangerous as well. COMING SOON...
Yeats
Helen Vendler, Our Secret DisciplineHelen Vendler is one of the most important literary critics in recent decades. This latest offering, Our Secret Discipline: Yeats and Lyric Form, is the sort of book that one might read out of a passing interest in William Butler Yeats.
