The World Archaeology October 2022 issue explores the secrets of Japan’s stone circles, the lost prehistoric cities of Bolivia, women’s everyday lives in the Ice Age, an idyllic alpine region that saw fierce fighting during the First World War, and much more.
The stone circles of Japan are enigmatic monuments. These structures were created by Jomon hunter-gatherers, mostly from roughly 2500-300 BC, and can be associated with burials, seasonal ceremonies, and solar alignments. Such preoccupations are far from being restricted to Jomon Japan, with study of these circles proving influential when it came to early 20th-century attempts to understand Stonehenge. In our cover feature, we take a detailed look at some of the Jomon stone circles, examining both the monuments themselves, and wider activity in the period.
A family tree of sea cows suggests that the dugong traversed an ocean to reach its present habitat.
Builder drones
Ground-based robots have potential for helping in the construction industry, but they are limited by their height. In this week’s issue, Mirko Kovac, Robert Stuart-Smith and their colleagues introduce highly manoeuvrable aerial robots that can perform additive 3D construction tasks. Inspired by natural builders such as wasps and bees, the researchers created BuilDrones (as shown on the cover) that can work in an autonomous team to perform 3D printing tasks using foam- or cement-based materials. They also created ScanDrones to assess the quality of the structures
being built. The team hopes that this approach of ‘aerial additive manufacturing’ could help to build structures in difficult to access areas.
Ukraine defiant: George Packer, Anne Applebaum, and Franklin Foer on democracy’s front lines. Plus the myopia generation, the Benin bronzes’ contested return, Ian McEwan’s anti-memoir, cursive’s demise, redshirting boys, John Roberts v. the Voting Rights Act, the GOP’s extremist history, and more.
Six months into Ukraine’s defiant stand against Russia’s invasion, The Atlantic is publishing a special cover package devoted to life in the country and the state of the war, with new, on-the-ground reporting by staff writers George Packer, Anne Applebaum, and Franklin Foer. Packer, Applebaum, and Foer are three of the most influential and established voices on the perils of war, authoritarian threats to democracy, and Ukrainian and Russian politics.
This September 23, 2022 @TheTLS:Nicola Shulman on the obituarist’s art; @LeoLensing on Bambi; Jonathan Rée on rules; @Dr_Dimitra_Fimi on The Rings of Power; Eric Naiman on Yuri Felsen – and more.
When Abdulrazak Gurnah won the Nobel Prize in literature last year, most Americans had never read anything by this fascinating author.
Born in 1948 in Tanzania, Gurnah fled to England after the 1964 uprising in Zanzibar. Over the years, he’s written 10 critically-acclaimed novels.
The latest, “Afterlives” (Riverhead), offers an intimate look at village life in East Africa during the period of German colonialism at the start of the 20th century. This is a book that reclaims forgotten history and honors lost people in a way that’s heartbreaking and revelatory.
Maggie O’Farrell’s novel “Hamnet,” about the death of William Shakespeare’s only son, was one of the best books of 2020.
Now O’Farrell is back with “The Marriage Portrait” (Knopf), a terrific historical thriller that drops us into the panicked mind of a teenage girl who knows her husband is plotting to kill her.
The girl is Lucrezia de’ Medici, immortalized by Robert Browning’s poem, “My Last Duchess.” History tells us she died in 1561 before she could celebrate her first anniversary, but O’Farrell will have you guessing ’til the very last page.
What if Americans elected a narcissistic psychopath to the White House?
Some people might say we’ve already seen what that would be like. But James Patterson’s breathless new thriller, “Blowback” (Little, Brown), takes that scenario to the brink of World War III.
Written with Brendan DuBois, “Blowback” imagines a president determined to defeat America’s enemies once and for all.
A pair of secret agents are honored to help the president’s plan – until they realize he’s about to destroy the country.
“Blowback” by James Patterson and Brendan DuBois (Little, Brown and Company), in Hardcover, Large Print Trade Paperback, eBook and Audio formats, available via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Indiebound
Mary Rodgers, who died in 2014, lived her life in the melodies of American musical theater. She was Richard Rodgers’ daughter, composer Adam Guettel’s mother, and Stephen Sondheim’s friend – and she was an accomplished composer and author herself.
Through painful relationships and happy ones, disappointments and successes, Rodgers is never anything but candid, forgiving and witty. So, take a seat and let the curtain rise.
Here is the truly amazing thing that few people besides Tommie Smith remember about his gold medal–winning 200-meter run in the 1968 Olympics: He broke the world record in just under 20 seconds on one good leg.
As we were editing our Sept. 15 issue in mid-August, news broke that author Salman Rushdie had been attacked at a lecture in western New York state. The story sent shock waves through the literary community—a stark reminder that violence can lurk in the corners of literary debate. Rushdie is the author of many works of fiction and nonfiction and is most celebrated for his 1981 novel, Midnight’s Children, a kaleidoscopic epic of Indian life after independence that won the Booker Prize as well as two subsequent honors, the Booker of Bookers in 1993 and the Best of the Booker in 2008.
Michael Wyetzner of Michielli + Wyetzner Architects returns to AD, this time breaking down details from the many on-screen depictions of Wayne Manor – home to mysterious playboy millionaire Bruce Wayne and (more importantly) the headquarters for Batman. From the more humble depictions in comics and on television to the cosmopolitan high rise seen in 2022’s “The Batman,” see how the hero Gotham deserves has lived from the 1930’s to now.
Apple’s iPhone 14 Pros have a new multitasking feature called the “dynamic island.” WSJ’s Joanna Stern went out to a real island to test the Pros’ new always-on screen cameras, including the new 48-megapixel main camera and the new action mode.
She also compares them to the more affordable iPhone 14. 0:00 Welcome to Joanna’s dynamic island 1:07 iPhone 14 screen size and tests: always-on and dynamic island 3:41 iPhone 14 camera specs and tests 4:58 iPhone 14 action mode tests 5:35 Emergency SOS and crash detection: the iPhone 14 features Joanna couldn’t test
News, Views and Reviews For The Intellectually Curious
