The November issue is now live featuring David Marks Shribman on John Honderich, Sandra Martin on Cary Fagan’s latest, Rosemary Counter on writing and motherhood, Mobólúwajídìde D. Joseph on journeys home, and a cover by David Parkins.
Category Archives: Reviews
Rising Inflation: The Shelter Index Explained
Changes in the housing market are often delayed in inflation data, which can make things difficult for the Fed. Housing is one of the most weighted categories when tracking inflation, but it’s also one of the most complicated to measure. WSJ’s David Harrison explains how the shelter index is calculated, and why it can muddy the inflation outlook for the Fed. Illustration: Laura Kammermann
Culture: New York Times Magazine – Oct 16, 2022

The Culture Issue – 10.16.22
The Elusive Power of Cate Blanchett
The actress has stayed one step ahead of audiences by constantly being in motion. In her new movie “Tár,” she’s as inscrutable as ever.
American Culture Is Trash Culture
It’s not just that trash is what Americans want from movies; it’s who we are. So where did it go?
Can Black Literature Escape the Representation Trap?
A crop of recent novels strains against the expectations of a publishing industry attempting to embrace diversity.
Books: The New York Times Book Review – Oct 16, 2022
The Genre-Shattering Fictions of Alan Moore
With his first story collection, “Illuminations,” the British writer and comic-book titan works his subversive power on a smaller scale.
| There’s more, of course, including Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi’s powerful novel in stories, “Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions”; Maggie Haberman’s “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America”; Buzz Bissinger’s “The Mosquito Bowl,” about a game played on Guadalcanal between two Marine regiments in 1944; and Amal El-Mohtar’s latest science fiction and fantasy column. |
| Don’t miss the latest entry in our “Read Your Way Around the World” series, which will whisk you to the brightly hued streets of Reykjavík, or our excerpts from Bob Dylan’s new book, “The Philosophy of Modern Song.” (In 1971, 45 years before he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Book Review opined, rather tartly, that “Dylan is not a literary figure. Literature comes in books, and Dylan does not intend his most important work to be read.”) |
Cover for @nytimesbooks Junot Diaz’s review of Alan Moore’s new story collection “Illuminations”.
The New York Times Book Review
Preview: New York Review Of Books – Nov 3, 2022

Gored in the Afternoon
Getting Lost by Annie Ernaux, translated from the French by Alison L. Strayer
Annie Ernaux, the 2022 Nobel Literature laureate, has published a diary of a sublime love affair—both a quest for self-awareness and a desire to escape the self—in which she traces a familiar arc of loss.
Reform or Abolish?
American prisons are often unjust, inhumane, and ineffective at protecting public safety. Mariame Kaba and Ruth Wilson Gilmore believe they should be eliminated entirely.
We Do This ’Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice by Mariame Kaba, edited by Tamara K. Nopper and with a foreword by Naomi Murakawa
Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation by Ruth Wilson Gilmore, edited by Brenna Bhandar and Alberto Toscano
Then What Happened?
Yasmine Seale’s new translation of The Thousand and One Nights has a texture—tight, smooth, skillfully patterned—that make previous versions seem either garish or slightly dull by comparison.
The Annotated Arabian Nights: Tales from 1,001 Nights translated from the Arabic by Yasmine Seale, edited and with an introduction and notes by Paulo Lemos Horta
The Limits of Press Power
To what extent did newspapers influence public opinion in the US and Britain before and during World War II?
The Newspaper Axis: Six Press Barons Who Enabled Hitler by Kathryn S. Olmsted
The Media Offensive: How the Press and Public Opinion Shaped Allied Strategy During World War II by Alexander G. Lovelace
‘We Know What That’s Like’
The filmmaker Jafar Panahi’s recent arrest in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison marks the latest phase in a campaign that the Iranian judiciary has been waging against him for over a decade.
No Bears a film written and directed by Jafar Panahi
A Prisoner of His Own Restraint
Felix Frankfurter was renowned as a liberal lawyer and advocate. Why did he turn out to be such a conservative Supreme Court justice?
Democratic Justice: Felix Frankfurter, the Supreme Court, and the Making of the Liberal Establishment by Brad Snyder
The Illusion of the First Person
A historical survey of the personal essay shows it to be the purest expression of the lie that individual subjectivity exists prior to the social formations that gave rise to it.
Research Preview: Science Magazine – Oct 14, 2022
How SARS-CoV-2 battles our immune system
Meet the protein arsenal wielded by the pandemic virus
Evidence backs natural origin for pandemic, report asserts
Authors were dropped from broader Lancet review
A viral arsenal
SARS-CoV-2 wields versatile proteins to foil our immune system’s counterattack
Hydrogen power gets a boost
A fuel cell gains more power from ion-conducting, porous covalent organic frameworks
Views: American Scientist Magazine – Nov/Dec 2022

Ukrainian Scientists and Educators in Wartime
Following Russia’s invasion on February 24, the lives of scientists in Ukraine, like those of everyone else in the country, were upended. Russia has targeted educational and research institutions, destroying 285 buildings and damaging 2,528, according to the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine.
The Art of Turbulence
Despite enormous efforts, physicists are still struggling to create a complete theory of turbulent flows. Perhaps they need a change of perspective.
The Push and Pull of Friction
Forces involved in everyday activities become so familiar that we overlook how complicated they can be.
Shakespeare & Company: Author William Boyd On His Book ‘The Romantic’
Soldier. Farmer. Felon. Writer. Father. Lover.
One man, many lives.
Born in 1799, Cashel Greville Ross experiences myriad lives: joyous and devastating, years of luck and unexpected loss. Moving from County Cork to London, from Waterloo to Zanzibar, Cashel seeks his fortune across continents in war and in peace. He faces a terrible moral choice in a village in Sri Lanka as part of the East Indian Army. He enters the world of the Romantic Poets in Pisa. In Ravenna he meets a woman who will live in his heart for the rest of his days. As he travels the world as a soldier, a farmer, a felon, a writer, a father, a lover, he experiences all the vicissitudes of life and, through the accelerating turbulence of the nineteenth century, he discovers who he truly is. This is the romance of life itself, and the beating heart of The Romantic.
Hurricanes: Why Storm Surge Can Be So Deadly
Storm surge is the deadliest part of a hurricane. Discover what causes this effect, and which regions are most at risk.
Storm surge is produced by water being pushed toward the shore by the force of the winds moving cyclonically around the storm. The impact on surge of the low pressure associated with intense storms is minimal in comparison to the water being forced toward the shore by the wind.
Wind and Pressure Components of Hurricane Storm Surge
The maximum potential storm surge for a particular location depends on a number of different factors. Storm surge is a very complex phenomenon because it is sensitive to the slightest changes in storm intensity, forward speed, size (radius of maximum winds-RMW), angle of approach to the coast, central pressure (minimal contribution in comparison to the wind), and the shape and characteristics of coastal features such as bays and estuaries.
Health: Nature Medicine Magazine – October 2022
Association of step counts over time with the risk of chronic disease in the All of Us Research Program
Using electronic health records data from the All of Us Research Program, we show that higher daily step counts in data collected over several years of Fitbit fitness tracker use were associated with lower risk of common, chronic diseases, including diabetes, hypertension, gastroesophageal reflux disease, depression, obesity and sleep apnea.
Meat, vegetables and health — interpreting the evidence
Although questions remain about several diet and disease associations, current evidence supports dietary guidelines to limit red meat and increase vegetable intake.
CRISPR–Cas9 hits its target in amyloidosis
Nature Medicine explores the latest translational and clinical research news, with an analysis of Intellia and Regeneron’s gene-editing treatment, which reduced levels of transthyretin in patients.