Exploring Books Through Articles, Reviews, Announcements, & Lists 2022-1 Jan.-Mar.

New postings for 2022, 1st quarter, Jan.-Mar.

Continues Exploring Books Through Articles, Reviews, Announcements, & Lists 2021-4 Oct.-Dec..

TLS January 7, 2022|No. 6197

Literature:

D.J. Taylor. Divers hands: On great literary collaborations. (Essay)

Craig Raine. Eliot’s foolish spectacle: In the first instalment of our new series: T. S. Eliot’s pince-nez experiment. (Essay)

Cláudia Pazos Alonso. I, what’s truly I: Fernando Pessoa’s tricks of repetition and multiple identity. Review of: Richard Zenith: Pessoa: An experimental life.

Chiara Marchelli. Tabucchi maintains: Three appointments with Lisbon’s master of the uncanny. Review of: Antonio Tabucchi, translated by Frances Frenayei: Little Misunderstandings of No Importance: And other stories -- Translated by Margaret Jull Costa: Requiem: A Hallucination -- Translated by Patrick Creagh: Pereira Maintains: A Testimony.

Joshua L. Freeman. Between Paris and the banlieue: A young Muslim woman in search of identity. Review of: Fatima Daas, Translated by Lara Vergnaud: The Last one: A Novel.

Dominic Leonard. Oh yes, it’s the great unsettler: Circling the joys and anxieties of poem-making. Review of: Jack Underwood: Not Even This: Poetry, parenthood and living uncertainly and A Year in the New Life.

Additional literature reviews, chiefly poetry: Kevin Young: Stones: Poems -- Sheri Benning: Field Requiem -- Raymond Antrobus: All the Names Given -- Joelle Taylor: C+NTO: And othered poems -- Caleb Femi: Poor. Fiction: Julie Zeh, translated by Alta L. Price: New Year -- Adam O’Riordan: Falling Thread -- Michelle de Kretser: Scary Monsters

Arts & Culture

Gabriel Josipovici. Astride the world: Albrecht Dürer’s restless sense of wonder. Review of The National Gallery's exhibition, Dürer's Journeys: Travels of a Renaissance artist.

Madeleine Brettingham. Funny business: The inner lives of comedians". Review of: Bob Mortimer: And Anyway ... -- Billy Connolly: Windswept and Interesting -- Phil Wang: Sidesplitter: How to be from two worlds at once -- Jimmy Carr: Before & Laughter.

Cassia St. Clair. Putting the colour back: Blood, beauty and the case for vivid hues. Review of: James Fox: The World According to Colour: A Cultural History.

Language & Philosophy:

Irina Dumitrescu. Different words for blue: How mother tongues are lost and found.
Review of: Julia Sedivy: Memory Speaks: On losing and reclaiming language and self.

Lucy Mcdonald. Limits of an examined life: The psychological roots of irrationality. Review of: Steven Nadler and Lawrence Shapiro: When Bad thinking Happens to Good People: How philosophy can save us from ourselves -- Neil Levy: Bad Beliefs: Why they happen to good people

History, Politics, Society:

Richard Handler. . Prehistory without hierarchy: Why modern bureaucracy was not inevitable. Review of: David Graeber and David Wengrow: The Dawn of Everything: A new history of humanity.

Jessica Loudis. Waiting in the wings: How modern work reinforces precarity. Review of: Amber Husain: Replace Me.

Nick Holdstock. Guinea pigs for dystopia: Detention, surveillance and profit-making in Xinjiang. Review of: Sayragul Sauytbay, with Alexandra Cavelius, Translated by Caroline Waight: The Chief Witness: Escape from China’s modern-day concentration camps -- Geoffrey Cain: The Perfect Police State: An undercover odyssey into China’s terrifying surveillance dystopia of the future -- Darren Byler: Terror Capitalism: Uyghur dispossession and masculinity in a Chinese city.

Rosemary Righter. Tigers and flies: A rare first-hand account of kickback China. Review of: Desmond Shum: Red Roulette: An insider’s story of wealth, power, corruption and vengeance in today’s China.

Nabeelah Jaffer. Where we belong: Unpicking stereotypes about British Muslims. Review of: Tawseef Khan: The Muslim Problem: Why we’re wrong about Islam and why it matters -- Ed Husain: Among the Mosques: A journey across Muslim Britain -- Sarfraz Manzoor: They: What Muslims and non-Muslims get wrong about each other -- Fatima Manji: Hidden Heritage: Rediscovering Britain’s lost love of the Orient.

Joan C. Williams. Remodel jobs: The sense of entitlement that keeps men at the top. Review of: Claudia Goldin: Career and Family: Women’s century-long journey toward equity.

Tom Chesshyre. The Critic, 01/04/2022: Too woke to travel write?: Perhaps a little less introspection will see a renaissance of the troubled genre.

"The fate of Mailer’s collection, however, generated a heated debate on social media this week, after the journalist Michael Wolff reported in the newsletter The Ankler that Random House had canceled its planned publication of the title because it determined that Mailer — who was famously brash, physically violent, misogynistic and pugnacious in attacking those who disagreed with him — had become too controversial. Citing a Random House source, Mr. Wolff wrote that the publisher was also swayed by “a junior staffer’s objection to the title of Mailer’s 1957 essay, ‘The White Negro.’”

Alexandra Alter and Elizabeth A. Harris. NYT, 01/04/2022: Was Norman Mailer Canceled? His Publishers Say No.

"There’s plenty about sex here—the book covers rape, sexual harassment, sex work, sexual preferences and behavior—and Srinivasan explores the ways these subjects have shaped feminism."

Katha Pollitt. Dissent, 01/03/2022 (winter 2022 issue): Feminists on All Sides: Desire is shaped by social assumptions and prejudices, Amia Srinivasan argues in The Right to Sex. So what does one do about it?. Review of Amia Srnivasan: The Right to Sex.

Lisa Gitelman. Public Books, 01/4/2022: What is a Book?. Review of: Matthew G. Kirschenbaum: Bitstreams: The Future of Digital Literary Heritage and Mark McGurl: Everything and Less: The Novel in the Age of Amazon.

The Chronicle of Higher Education, 1/05/2022. The Best Scholarly Books of 2021: Thinkers including K. Anthony Appiah, Priya Satia, and Greil Marcus pick their favorites.

T. S. Eliot. Complete Prose of T.S. Eliot: The Critical Edition (8 v.) reviewed by Simon During.

Carlo Rovelli. Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution. Reviewed by Lisa Feldman Barrett.

Frances Wilson. Burning Man: The Trials of D.H. Lawrence reviewed by Corey Robin.

Kwame Anthony Appiah. Justice Across Ages: Treating Young and Old as Equals reviewed by Kwame Anthony Appiah.

Amitav Ghosh. The Nutmeg's Curse reviewed by Priya Satia.

Julia Galef. The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don’t reviewed by Paul Bloom.

Christy Thornton. Revolution in Development: Mexico and the Governance of the Global Economy reviewed by Ignacio M. Sanchez Prado.

Eric Weisbard. Songbooks: The Literature of American Popular Music reviewed by Greil Marcus.

Chad Wellmon and Paul Reitter. Permanent Crisis: The Humanities in a Disenchanted Age reviewed by Jennifer A. Frey.

Two recent articles from Michael Dirda, one from 2021.

Michael Dirda. WaPo, 1/05/2022: T.S. Eliot may have been flawed, but a new book reminds of his greatness on the page. Review of: T.S. Eliot, Ronald Schuchard, general editor: The Complete Prose of T.S. Eliot: The Critical Edition (8 v.)

Michael Dirda. WaPo, 12/28/2021: 12 books I should have reviewed last year: A critic’s lament.

"Filippo Bernardini is accused of impersonating publishing figures to steal manuscripts, in scam that has stumped authors and editors for years."

Sian Cain. The Guardian, 1/05/2022: Literary mystery may finally be solved as man arrested for allegedly stealing unpublished books.

Deidre Lynch. Public Books, 01/06/2022: In Praise of Search Tools. Review of: Dennis Duncan: Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age and Craig Robertson: The Filing Cabinet: A Vertical History of Information.

Jennifer Jenkins. Center for the Study of the Public Domain, 01/01/2022 (?): Public Domain Day 2022.

Book examples include: Winnie the Pooh -- The Sun Also Rises -- The Seven Pillars of Wisdom -- The Murder of Roger Ackroyd -- Bambi: A Life in the Woods.

"Without up-to-date dictionary, what makes language unique becomes more obscure."*

Jackson Weaver. CBC News, 01/02/2022: Canada's English dictionary hasn't been updated in almost 2 decades. What does that say about us?.

*Dropping the article is Canadianese?

From recent Bafflers:

Rithika Ramamurthy. 01/05/2022: The Replacements: Turning the cultural logic of capitalism on its head. Review of: Amber Husain: Replace Me.

Adam Ross. 01/06/2022: Conceptual Personae: The many imagined lives of Fernando Pessoa.

NYRB articles/reviews from the Jan. 13, 2022 issue:

"A recent book surveys different styles that can be used to prove a single theorem—a mathematical version of musical variations on a theme, inspired by the Oulipo writer Raymond Queneau."

Dan Rockmore. NYRB, 01/13/2022: Prove It!. Review of: Philip Ording: 99 Variations on a Proof.

Jacqueline Rose. NYRB, 01/13/2022: An Endless Seeing. Review of Robert Zaretsky: The Subversive Simone Weil: A Life in Five Ideas.

James Shapiro. NYRB, 01/13/2022: Shakespeare Noir. Review of The Tragedy of Macbeth, a film written and directed by Joel Coen.

"Recent books by Woody Holton and Alan Taylor offer fresh perspectives on early US history but overemphasize the importance of white supremacy as its driving force."

Sean Wilentz. NYRB, 01/13/2022: The Paradox of the American Revolution. Review of: Woody Holton, Liberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution and Alan Taylor: American Republics: A Continental History of the United States, 1783–1850.

"Eva Illouz’s The End of Love presents a world starkly divided between male and female, straight and gay, sex and love, dignity and humiliation."

Anahid Nersessian. NYRB, 01/13/2022: Love for Sale. Review of: Eva Illouz: The End of Love: A Sociology of Negative Relations.

"A harrowing, suppressed memoir by Gertrude Beasley and a revisionist western by Robin McLean add up to a savage indictment of regional misogyny."

Caroline Fraser. NYRB, 01/13/2022: From Hell and Back. Review of: Gertrude Beasley, with a foreword by Nina Bennett: My First Thirty Years and Robin McLean: Pity the Beast.

Susan Tallman. NYRB, 01/13/2022: The House That Johns Built. Review of: Carlos Basualdo and Scott Rothkopf: Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror (Catalog of the exhibition of the same name held September 29, 2021–February 13, 2022 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City.

"James Castle’s drawings and constructions seem to have been beamed in from a parallel universe of art-making and do not easily yield their meanings."

Andrew Martin. NYRB, 01/13/2022: Castle's Kingdom. Review of: John Beardsley: James Castle: Memory Palace.

Ian Frazier. NYRB, 01/13/2022: ‘Part of Why We Survived.’. Review of: Kliph Nesteroff: We Had a Little Real Estate Problem: The Unheralded Story of Native Americans in Comedy and The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels and the History of American Comedy.

Also adding an excerpt from Yale Professor Timothy Snyder's book Our Malady: Lessons in Liberty from a Hospital Diary documenting his experience at the Yale New Haven Emergency ward in 2019 that appeared in NYRB in 2020 (it appears as an archival item in the NYRB 01/13/2022 issue). I was taken there in 2021, but my symptoms, at least short term, were not as harrowing as his, though some of it rings true; amazing he could document what happened under the circumstances.

Timothy Snyder. NYRB, Sept. 13, 2020. What Ails America.

Two reviews of a travel book by Colin Thubron The River Amur Between Russia and China (U.S. title: The Amur River); bit of a political divide I suspect:

Tom Chesshyre. The Critic, Dec./Jan. 2021-2022: Hard times on the Black Dragon River.

Ben Ehrenreich. NYT, 09/24/2021: A Journey Along the River That Separates Russia From China.

Rebecca Evans. LARB, 01/03/2022: Is Geoengineering the Only Solution?: Exploring Climate Crisis. Reviewing Neil Stephenson, Termination Shock: A Novel.

Jennifer Fleissner. Public Books, 01/07/2022: What to Do About Freedom? Review of Rachel Greenwald Smith: On Compromise: Art, Politics, and the Fate of an American Ideal and Maggie Nelson: On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint.

Peter L. Levin. Quillette, 01/07/2022: The Case Against the Case Against AI. Review of: Henry A. Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, and Daniel Huttenlocher: The Age of AI and Our Human Future.

Two from The Millions, one from 2022, the other from 2017; no thematic relationship.

Ed Simon on signs of the end times; so it wasn't a bird pandemic, it seems:

Ed Simon. The Millions, 01/07/2022: Letter from the Collapse.

Notable for the ongoing discussion in the comments:

Ben Roth. The Millions, 02/21/2017: Against Readability.

Overlooked in 2021:

Radhika Natarajan & John Munro. Public Books, 05/21/2022: Imperialism: A Syllabus.

Two books on South Africa & apartheid:

Bongani Kona. Baffler, 01/11/2022: Age of Iron: Two new histories revisit the fall of Apartheid. Review of: Mac Maharaj and Pallo Jordan: Breakthrough: The Struggle and Secret Talks that Brought Apartheid South Africa to the Negotiating Table -- William Dicey: 1986.

Paywalled, but non-subscribers might be able to log in to an article or 2 like many sites, or create a free trial. I'm currently reading Menand's The Free World: Art and the Thought in the Cold War; the review's perspective might be understandable since his earlier book was on American pragmatism.

Brian Rosenberg. Chronicle of Higher Education, 01/07/2022: This Is the Way the Humanities End: A recent book review by Louis Menand carries the field further along the path to oblivion. In addition to the New Yorker review by Menand, references Roosevelt Montás, Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation, and Arnold Weinstein, The Lives of Literature: Reading, Teaching, Knowing.

The Menand New Yorker review was cited in the previous thread (2021-4, item 86); I copied the link to the article in this posting:

Louis Menand. 12/13/2021 (print: 12/20): What’s So Great About Great-Books Courses?. Review of: Roosevelt Montás: Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation and Arnold Weinstein: The Lives of Literature: Reading, Teaching, Knowing.

TLS January 14, 2022|No. 6198

Literature:
Frances Wilson. Struggling for a likeness: The biography of a fearless literary critic. Review of: Cathy Curist: A Splendid Intelligence: The Life of Elizabeth Hardwick.

Peter Webb. Light in the tunnel: Arabic stories of endurance through suffering. Review of: al-Muhassin ibn ‘Alī al-Tanūkhī, translated and edited by Julia Bray: Stories of Piety and Prayer: Deliverance follows adversity.

Amir-Hussein Radjy, Exchange of fire and reason: The combative wit of a brilliant tenth-century dilettante. Review of: Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi and Abu ‘Ali Miskawayh, translated by Sophia Vasalou and James E. Montgomery: The Philosophers Responds: An intellectual correspondence from the tenth century.

A. E. Stallings. Like a red-haired comet: The savage beauty of an American original’s poems. Review of: Edna St Vincent Millay; edited by Tristram Fane Saunders: Edna St Vincent Millay: Poems and Satires.

Jude Cook. Seeing double: Why twinship ought to be more than a mere plot device. (Essay)

Also reviews of fiction by: Sara Freeman: Tides -- Claire Vaye Watkins: I Love You but I've Chosen Darkness -- Paulo Scott, translated by Daniel Hahn: Phenotypes -- Afonso Cruz, translated by Rahul Bery: Kokoschka's Doll.

Arts:

Lamorna Ash. Taking the blue pill: Rebooting a groundbreaking franchise. Review of the film Matrix Resurrections.

Alex Peake-Tomkinson. Femme fatale: The face and voice of a generation. Review of: Jennifer Otter Bickerdike: You Are Beautiful and You Are Alone: The biography of Nico and James Young: Nico, Songs They Never Play On the Radio.

History:

T.H. Breen. Life, liberty for all? :Historians debate how we tell the story of American independence. Review of Woody Holton: Liberty Is Sweet: The hidden history of the American Revolution -- Joseph J. Ellis: The Cause: The American Revolution and its discontents, 1773–1783 -- Gordon S. Wood: Power and Liberty: Constitutionalism in the American Revolution.

Christopher B. Krebs. Before the die was cast: Caesar’s seizure of power was not inevitable. Review of: Robert Morstein-Marx: Julius Caesar and the Roman People.

Diane Darke. People divided by history: Two comprehensive studies of the Kurds. Review of: Hamit Bozarslan, Cengiz Gunes and Veli Yadirgi, editors: The Cambridge History of the Kurds -- David McDowall: A Modern History of the Kurds (4th ed.).

Paul Zimansky. Decease and exist:
Life after death in ancient Mesopotamia. Review of: Irving Finkel: The First Ghosts.

Politics and Society:

Joanna Scutts. To dream, perchance to sleep with: The complicated story of a governing illusion. Review of: Barbara H. Rosenwein: Love: A history in five fantasies.

A. N. Wilson. Divine comedy: How empire turned men into gods. Review of: Anna Della Subin: Accidental Gods: On men unwittingly turned divine.

Annie Ford. Boston Review, 01/13/2022: What Good Can Dreaming Do?. On Ursula K. Leguin: The Lathe of Heaven.

I read Fire in the East by Harry Sidebottom not that long ago, intrigued by the author being an Oxford University scholar specializing in ancient history. He has quite a few titles listed in LT, almost all of the genre type. In the following he discusses 5 historical novels set in the ancient world; not necessarily the best, but the ones that influenced him.

Harry Sidebottom, interviewer Benedict King. fivebooks.com, 01/13/22: Historical Fiction Set in the Ancient World.

Another set of recommendations by Alison Weir, who writes historical non-fiction & fiction, focusing primarily on Early Modern, but sometimes Medieval. Like the Sidebottom recommendations, Weir's go back several decades. Anya Seton was popular when I was a teenager, as I recall, in the 60's, and would have been labeled historical romances. Weir's books seem to be quite popular on LT.

Alison Weir, interviewer Sophie Roell. fivebooks.com, (I do wish Five Books would date its older postings): The Best Historical Novels. The title is misleading since the recommendations are limited to a rather narrow chronological and geographical range.

TLS January 21, 2022|No. 6199

Literature & Bibliography:

Adam Sutcliffe. Prophet of Podolia: Olga Tokarczuk’s magnum opus about a messianic mystic. Review of: Olga Tokarczuk; translated by Jennifer Croft: The Books of Jacob.

William Connell. The new learning: The Italian Renaissance in – and beyond – Florence. Review of: Ross King: The Bookseller of Florence: Vespasiano da Bisticci and the manuscripts that illuminated the Renaissance -- Mary Hollingsworth: Princes of the Renaissance -- Paul Strathern: The Florentines: From Dante to Galileo.

Ronnie Ferguson. Venetian Inscriptions.Writing on the wall: Venice comes to life in its vernacular inscriptions. Review of: Ronnie Ferguson: Venetian Inscriptions: Vernacular writing for public display in medieval and Renaissance Venice.

Benjamin Markovits. In the footsteps of Nabokov: Gary Shteyngart imagines a group of friends hunkering down to weather the Covid storm. Review of: Gary Shteyngart: Our Country Friends: A Novel.

Ruth Gilligan. Green thoughts: Literature through the eyes of two Irish writers. Review of: Seamus Deane: Small World: Ireland, 1798–2018 -- Patricia Craig: Kilclief and other essays.

Frances Wilson. No point thinking about the kids: Tessa Hadley’s brilliant novel about love and escape in a turbulent decade. Review of: Tessa Hadley: Free Love.

In Brief Review of: Joseph Conrad, Edited by Allan H. Simmons and Michael Foster, with Owen Knowles: A Set of Six.

In Brief Review of: Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, translated by Anthony H. Chambers and Paul McCarthy: Longing and other stories.

Arts:

Muriel Zagha. Carnival at the end of the line: Guillermo del Toro’s updated film noir. Review of the film: Nightmare.

Sarah Watling. Playing for time on a precipice: Does appeasement have lessons for us today? Review of the documentary film: Munich: The Edge of War.

Ian Sansom. Through a Glass, darkly: A fight at the opera. (Essay)

In Brief Review of: Jonathan Freedman: The Jewish Decadence: Jews and the aesthetics of modernity.

In Brief Review of: Paula Richman and Rustom Bharucha, editors: Performing the Ramayana Tradition: Enactments, interpretations, and arguments.

Philosophy:

Steven E. Aschheim. Too solemn, too frivolous: How Hannah Arendt and Isaiah Berlin fought over freedom. Review of: Kei Hiruta: Hannah Arendt and Isaiah Berlin: Freedom, politics and humanity.

Simone Gubler. Darwin vs Kant: Why ethics may change with evolution. Review of: David Edmonds, editor, Future Morality.

Kieran Setiya. Intellectually simulating: The world as an illusion of technology. Review of: David J. Chalmers: Reality+: Virtual worlds and the problems of philosophy.

History:

Eleanor Janega. A plague on all our houses: Making claims for a comprehensive history. Review of: Ole J. Benedictow: The Complete History of the Black Death.

Abigail Green. Dynastic daughters: The first history of the Rothschild women in the round. Review of: Natalie Livingstone: The Women of Rothschild: The untold story of the world’s most famous dynasty.

In Brief Review of: Orietta da Rold: Paper in Medieval England: From pulp to fictions.

In Brief Review of: Ryan K. Noppen: Holland 1940: The Luftwaffe’s first setback in the West.

Politics & Society:

Kieran Pender. Breaking away: How to the enter the private club of the United Nations. Review of: Ryan Griffiths: Secession and the Sovereignty Game: Strategy and tactics for aspiring nations -- Danilo Mandić: Gangsters and Other Statesmen: Mafias, separatists, and torn states in a globalized world.

Clifford Thompson. Elected for orderly conduct: Barack Obama’s impossible job. Review of: Claude A. Clegg III: The Black President: Hope and fury in the age of Obama.

Jay Caspian Kang. Baffler, 01/18/2022: A Minor Success: Jay Caspian Kang challenges the usual narratives about Asian Americans. Review of Jay Kaspian Kang: The Loneliest Americans.

Felix Salten's Bambi went out of copyright this year. Here's an article about the original novel, not the movie.

Kathryn Schulz. The New Yorker, 01/17/2022: “Bambi” Is Even Bleaker Than You Thought.

Two from LARB, 01/19.2022:

Mathew Porges. A Political Garden of Eden. Review of: David Graeber & David Wengrow: The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity.

Michael D. Gordin. Every Age Gets the Mythology It Deserves. Review of Colin Burgess: The Greatest Adventure: A History of Human Space Exploration.

Susan DeFreitas. LitHub, 01/19/2022: My Year of Reading Every Ursula K. Le Guin Novel.

See also >24 featherbear:

Graham Majin. Quillette, 01/18/2022: Bitter Fruit: Marshall McLuhan and the Rise of Fake News.

"Against the philosopher’s dying wish, the final volume of History of Sexuality has now been published. How should we approach it, and what can it teach us about how Christianity shaped the modern self?"

Mark Jordan. Boston Review, 01/19/2022: In Search of Foucault's Last Words. Reviewing: Michel Foucault, edited by Frederic Gros and translated by Robert Hurley: Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality 4).

Nicolas Langitz. Chronicle of Higher Education, 01/19/2022: We Need a Less Moralistic Humanities: Sometimes it’s OK to side with the devil.

TLS January 28, 2022|No. 6200

Literature:

Benjamin Markovits. Getting better acquainted: The growth of clarity and honesty in the American Republic of Letter. Review of: Philip Lopate, editor: The Glorious American Essay: One hundred essays from colonial times to the present.

Tash Aw. Nothing was orderly" Monica Ali’s gloriously entertaining tragicomedy of everyday London life. Review of Monica Ali: Love Marriage.

Yoojin Grace Wuertz. . Death is a small price: A sweeping saga of twentieth-century Korea. Juhea Kim: Beasts of a Little Land.

Dina Birch. . A wild ride: Are books good for us?. Review of: Rob Doyle: Autobibliography -- Heather Cass White: Books Promiscuously Read: Reading as a way of life. -- Marisa Palacios Knox: Victorian Women and Wayward Reading: Crises of identification -- Robert Olen Butler: Late City .

Mia Levitin. Devil on horseback: A prophet of the #MeToo generation. Review of: Mary Gaitskill: Oppositions: Selected Essays -- The Devil's Treasure: A book of stories and dreams.

Christy Edwall. On with the dance: Lord Byron’s rich, strange and lasting influence. Review of: Clare Bucknell and Matthew Ward, editors: Byron Among the English Poets: Literary tradition and poetic legacy.

Molly Clark. Collage homage: A magical tribute to Philip Sidney and Arcadia. Review of: Rachel Eisendrath: Gallery of Clouds,

History:

Llewelyn Morgan. Renegade of the Raj: A British deserter’s remarkable discovery". Review of: Edmund Richardson: Alexandria: The quest for the lost city.

Donald Bloxham. . Look at it again: History as a departure from the consensus. Review of: Helen Carr and Suzannah Lipscomb, editors: What is History Now?: How the past and present speak to each other and James M. Banner, Jr: The Ever-Changing Past: Why all history is revisionist history.

Ian Cawood. Standards of misconduct: The long history of British sleaze. Review of: Mark Knights: Trust and Distrust: Corruption in office in Britain and its empire, 1600–1850.

Regina Rini. Libelling the dead?: Anne Frank’s informer and ethics. (Essay)

Culture:

Rana Mitter. Difficult characters: Adapting the Chinese script for the modern age. Jing Tsu: Kingdom of Characters: A tale of language, obsession, and genius in modern China.

Yvonne Reddick. Flippin’ epic: A new angle of ascent in the literature of climbing. Review of: Anna Fleming: Time on Rock: A climber’s route into the mountains.

Ed Kessler. The Lord thy God is not always a jealous God: How believers have learnt to listen to each other. Review of: Thomas Albert Howard: The Faith of Others: A history of interreligious dialogue.

Science & Psychology:

Andrew Scull. Muzzling the black dog: The search for better ways to treat depression, Review of: Jonathan Sadowsky: The Empire of Depression: A new history -- Oliver Kamm: Mending the Mind: The art and science of overcoming clinical depression -- Alex Riley: A Cure for Darkness: The story of depression and how we treat it.

Robin George Andrews. Thar she blows: The ubiquity of volcanism. Robin George Andrews: Super Volcanoes: What they reveal about Earth and the worlds beyond.

Julia Bueno. We are flailing: Why being busy isn’t the answer. Oliver Burkeman: Four Thousand Weeks: Time and how to use it,

Jonathan Buckley. This side of the last threshold: What being on the edge really means. Review of: Donald Antrim: One Friday in April: A story of suicide and survival.

Leofranc Holford-Strevens. More than one eye on the clock: How we’ve struggled to tell the time. Review of: Chad Orzel: A Brief History of Timekeeping: The science of marking time, from Stonehenge to atomic clocks.

TLS February 4, 2022|No. 6201

Literature & Bibliography:

Audrey Magee. ‘Unbind the tongue’: Joyce and the Irish language, in the centenary year of Ulysses. (Essay)

Heather Cass White. We hit our mark. Was there any sin in that?:
A novel of a plundered Earth. Review of: Joy Williams: Harrow.

Pippa Goldschmidt. In the Martian mirror: An SF novelist’s dystopian visions – and nostalgic evocations. Review of: Ray Bradbury; Edited by Jonathan R. Eller: Novels & Story Cycles (Library of America).

Marina Warner. . Review of: Cristina Mazzoni, editor & translator: The Pomegranates and Other Modern Fairy Tales.

Chiara Marchelli. Radical Beatrice: Elena Ferrante’s struggle to unleash a voice of her own. Review of: Elena Ferrante: I Margini e il Dettato.

Sarah Fredman. A thirst for parchment: Why do some manuscripts survive and so many others not? Review of: Mary Wellesley: Hidden Hands: The lives of manuscripts and their makers.

Katherine Lebow. The black thoughts came after: The remarkable collected writings of an Auschwitz survivor. Review of: Tadeusz Borowski, Translated by Madeline G. Levine: Here in Our Auschwitz: and other stories.

Phillip Lopate. Mountains to climb: The rise of a gifted translator. Review of: Lydia Davis: Essays Two.

Craig Raine. Fellows, hold the chair: The blinding of Gloucester. (Essay)

Technology, Science, & Philosophy:

David Papineau. Our unique place in the cosmos?: Against scientific reductionism. Review of: Raymond Tallis: Freedom: An impossible reality.

Sophy Roberts. Branch lines: Meandering through a vast cultural territory in search of a tree. Review of: Tom Jeffreys: The White Birch: A Russian reflection.

Bathsheba Demuth. A lot of hot air: The future of Russian energy. Review of: Thane Gustafson: Klimat: Russia in the age of climate change.

Mary Evelyn Tucker. Praying for rain?: A distinctive contribution to the study of world history. Review of: Philip Jenkins: Climate, Catastrophe, and Faith: How changes in climate drive religious upheaval.

In Brief Review of: Susan Liautaud: The Power of Ethics: How to make good choices in a complicated world.

Politics, Society, & Culture:

En Liang Khong. Tails of the city: Pets, strays and clean pavements. Review of: Chris Pearson: Dogopolis: How dogs and humans made modern New York, London, and Paris.

Esmé O’keeffe. Notes of goaty garlic: The secretive trade in a kind of ‘edible jewellery.’ Review of: Rowan Jacobsen: Truffle Hound: On the trail of the world’s most seductive scent, with dreamers, schemers, and some extraordinary dogs.

Rohan Maitzen. We are not alone, and never have been: The consolations of art, and what they mean. Review of: Michael Ignatieff: On Consolation: Finding solace in dark times.

Charles King. Insolent in office: The quest for better leaders. Review of: Brian Klaas: Corruptible: Who gets power and how it changes us.

Fintan O’ Toole. When Nigel met Enoch: British nationalism, neo-fascism and Nigel Farage. Review of: Michael Crick: One Party After Another: The disruptive life of Nigel Farag.

Keith Miller. Minor variations: The muted pleasures of suburbia. Review of: Geoff Nicholson: The Suburbanist: A personal account and ambivalent celebration of life in the suburbs – with field notes.

Lisa Hilton. Angels on the tracks: The double rebellion of futurism’s feminist pioneers. Review of: Claudia Salaris: Donne d'Avanguardia.

Jared Marcel Pollen. Quillette, 01/31/2022: A World of Waste, Stripped of Transcendence: James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ at 100.

TLS February 11, 2022|No. 6202

Literature:

Becca Rothfeld. Too many Davids: Hanya Yanagihara’s anti-accomplishment. Review of: Hanya Yanagihara: To Paradise.

Ladee Hubbard. All part of the wider field: A reckoning with slavery in late-twentieth-century America. Review of: Honorée Fanonne Jeffers: The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois.

Gerald Jacobs. What did you learn?: An Auschwitz guide reflects on his trade. Review of: Yishai Sarid, translated by Yardenne Greenspan: The Memory Monster.

Andrew Motion. Sugar and spice: A poet’s first excursions in pseudonymous fiction. Review of: James Underwood: Early Larkin.

Sandie Byrne. The dream of a burnt fox: Ted Hughes’s wrangling with experience and form. Review of: Carrie Smith: Tne Page is Printed: Ted Hughes’s creative process.

Nick Groom. In the weird world web: A turn towards horror and its strange appeal. Review of: Roger Luckhurst: Gothic: An illustrated history and Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr: Eaters of the Dead: Myths and realities of cannibal monsters.

Irinia Dumitrescu. Beyond the girlboss: On the representation of women. (Essay on Chaucer)

In Brief Review of: Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar: Still Mad: American women writers and the feminist imagination.

In Brief Review of: Teffi, Robert Chandler, editor: Other Worlds: Peasants, pilgrims, spirits, saints.

In Brief Review of: Elizabeth Dearnley, editor: Fearsome Fairies: Haunting tales of the Fae.

Peter France. Russian discussions: Two émigré novels. Review of Nina Berberova, Translated by Marian Schwartz: The Last and the First and Gaito Gazdanov, translated by: Bryan Karetnyk: An Evening with Claire. See associated review by Kevin Platt in the History section directly below.

History:

Kevin M. F. Platt. Under Western eyes: The intellectual ferment of Russia’s diasporic communities. Review of: Faith Hills: Utopia's Discontent: Russian émigrés and the quest for freedom, 1830s–1930s. See associated review by Kate Manne in the Literature section directly above.

Bart Van Es. A source runs cold: The search for the informer who betrayed Anne Frank. Review of: Rosemary Sullivan: The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A cold case investigation.

Toby Wilkinson. Pyramid scheme: The discovery of a fourth-dynasty building inspector’s logbooks. Review of: Pierre Tallet and Mark Lehner: The Red Sea Scrolls: How ancient papyri reveal the secrets of the pyramids.

Tim Blanning. Family dynamic: The indomitable spirit of the Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa. Review of: Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger, Translated by Robert Savage: Maria Theresa: The Habsburg Empress in her time and Nancy Goldstone: In the Shadow of the Empress: The defiant lives of Maria Theresa, mother of Marie Antoinette, and her daughters.

Arts:

Adam Mars-Jones. Secrets and lies: Almodóvar’s fusion of melodrama and Spanish history. Review of Pedro Almodóvar’s film Parallel Mothers.

Rob Mengham. Beneath the world’s surface: War and water in the life of a great artist. Review of: Richard Calvocoressi: Georg Baselitz: Deconstructing memory.

Philosophy:

Kate Manne. The nice and the good: Four women philosophers at odds on the nature of morality. Review of: Benjamin J. B. Lipscomb: The Women Are Up to Something: How Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch revolutionized ethics.

Science, Technology & Culture:

Sarah Hudston. Tiger at the gates of dawn: Two centuries of nature writing, from appreciation to activism. Review of: Patrick Barkham, editor: An anthology of the best British and Irish nature writing -- Anita Roy and Pippa Marland, editors: Gifts of Gravity and Light: A nature almanac for the twenty-first century -- Kate Simpson, editor: Out of Time: Poetry from the climate emergency.

James Copnall. Abundance in the desert: Civilization’s indebtedness to the Nile waters. Review of: Terje Tvedt, Translated by Kerri Pierce: The Nile: History’s greatest river.

James Mcconnachie. Man vs machine: How Artificial Intelligence beats us in board games. Review of: Oliver Roeder: Seven Games: A human history.

Eric J. Iannelli. Thumb up, thumbs down: The pros and cons of hitchhiking. Review of: Jonathan Purkis: Driving with Strangers: What hitchhiking tells us about humanity.

In Brief Review of: Brian Oliu: Body Drop: Notes on fandom and pain in professional wrestling.

Recent Los Angeles Review of Books reviews:

Robert L. Huddleston. 02/08/2022: Hölderlin’s Errancy.

Naomi Kanakia. 02/08/2022: Are “The Classics” Bad for You?.

Bennett Parten. 02/09/2022: Crossing the Blood Meridian: Cormac McCarthy and American History. Cormac McCarthy: Blood Meridian.

Yangyang Cheng. 02/09/2022 Viral Stories on Guobin Yang’s The Wuhan Lockdown,

Paul Dicken. 02/10/2022: The World Is a Strange Madhouse: 100 Years of Relativity. "Paul Dicken marks the centenary of The Meaning of Relativity, Einstein's attempt to explain his runaway theory and correct its "mad" cultural appropriation."

Hannah Joyner. 02/20/2021: Written in the Book of Life. On Kathryn Schulz’s Lost & Found: A Memoir.

Recent New Yorker book reviews & literary articles:

Merve Emre. 02/07/2022: The Seductions of “Ulysses”.

Casey Cep. 02/07/2022: Why King Tut Is Still Fascinating. Review article referencing: Toby Wilkinson: A World Beneath the Sands: The Golden Age of Egyptology, Zahi Hawass: King Tutankhamun: The Treasures of the Tomb, Christina Riggs: Treasured: How Tutankhamun Shaped a Century, et al. plus documentary films on the subject.

Frank Guon. 02/07/2022: Chuck Klosterman Brings Back the Nineties. Review of: The Nineties.

Alexandra Schwartz. 02/07/2022: How the Method Made Acting Modern. Review of: Isaac Butler: The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act.

Paruhl Segal. 02/07/2022: In Sheila Heti’s Novel, Critics Could Save the World—or Destroy It. Review of Sheila Heti: Pure Colour.

Adam Gopnick. 01/24/2022: What Made Buster Keaton’s Comedy So Modern?. Review/article covering the films, documentaries, and James Curtis: Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker's Life and Dana Stevens: Camera Man: Buster Keaton, The Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century.

Blair McClendon. 01/17/2022: The Many Visions of Lorraine Hansberry. Review of Charles J. Shields: Lorraine Hansberry: The Life Behind ‘A Raisin in the Sun’ .

Ian Buruma. 01/10/2022: How the Chinese Language Got Modernized. Review of: Jing Tsu: Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern

Caleb Cain. 01/10/2022: A Holocaust Survivor’s Hardboiled Science Fiction. The impact of the Holocaust on the author Stanislaw Lem & his science fiction, referencing Agnieszka Gajewska, translated by Katarzyna Gucio: Holocaust and the Stars and Wojciech Orliński: Lem: A Life Out of This World>/i> (not yet translated).

On the occasion of James Joyce's Ulysses centennial:

Literary Hub, 02/02/2022: Ulysses Turns 100!: Celebrating a Modernist Classic.

See also the Merve Emre essay at >39 featherbear: and >36 featherbear:

Recent New York Review of Books reviews & literary articles:

Literature & Arts:

Fintan O'Toole. 02/24/2022: Scenes of the Crime. Review of: John Banville: Snow and April in Spain. "In his new novels, John Banville is writing the kind of history that is the novelist’s proper concern—the history of a trauma that’s fully contained within the character he has invented."

Claire Jarvis. 02/24/2022: Playing Fast and Loose. Review of Rachel Cusk: Second Place.

Andrew O'Hagan. 02/24/2022: Riffraff. Review of: Billy Wilder, edited by Noah Isenberg and translated from the German by Shelley Frisch: Billy Wilder on Assignment: Dispatches from Weimar Berlin and Interwar Vienna -- Joseph McBride: Billy Wilder: Dancing on the Edge. "Billy Wilder’s evolution from interwar stylist to hard-bitten realist."Hearts vs. Minds.

Frances Wilson. 02/24/2022: ‘Invitations to Dig Deeper.’ Review of Rebecca Solnit: Orwell's Roses. "At a time when pleasure was considered suspect by politically engaged socialists, Orwell wrote about roses."

Vivian Gornick. 02/10/2022: Hearts vs. Minds. "Why, the leftist writer Tess Slesinger asked, should people give up sex and art to make the revolution?"

Sanford Schwartz. 02/24/2022: A Language of Geometric Forms. Review of Anne Umland and Walburga Krupp with Charlotte Healy, editors: Sophie Taeuber-Arp: Living Abstraction, catalog of the exhibition of the same name at the Kunstmuseum Basel, March 19–June 20, 2021; Tate Modern, London, July 13–October 17, 2021; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, November 21, 2021–March 22, 2022.

Politics, Law, History:

Laurence H. Tribe. 03/10/2022: Politicians in Robes. Review of: Stephen Breyer: The Authority of the Court and the Peril of Politics and Linda Greenhouse: Justice on the Brink: The Death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Rise of Amy Coney Barrett, and Twelve Months That Transformed the Supreme Court. "Why does Stephen Breyer continue to insist that the Supreme Court is apolitical?"

David S. Reynolds. 02/24/2022: In the Shadow of Slavery. Review of: Clint Smith: How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America. "Merging memoir, travelogue, and history, Clint Smith evokes the horrors of slavery."

Mark Borrello and David Sepkoski. 02/05/2022: Ideology as Biology. "E. O. Wilson corresponded for years with a notorious proponent of race science, advocating for his research behind the scenes. What does it tell us about his most controversial work?"

Anne Diebel. 02/10/2022: The Dungeon Master. Review of Max Chafkin: The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power. "Peter Thiel is full of contradictions—a libertarian who founded a company that aids government surveillance, a critic of tech who supports Facebook’s mission for world domination, and a defender of free speech who helped to kill a media outlet.:

David Shulman. 02/10/2022: Review of: Sylvain Cypel, translated from the French by William Rodarmor: The State of Israel vs. the Jews. "Sylvain Cypel’s transformation from liberal Zionist to ferocious critic of Israel."

Lis Harris. 02/24/2022: Strangers in a Strange Land. Review of: Nathaniel Deutsch and Michael Casper: A Fortress in Brooklyn: Race, Real Estate, and the Making of Hasidic Williamsburg -- Nomi M. Stolzenberg and David N. Myers: American Shtetl: The Making of Kiryas Joel, a Hasidic Village in Upstate New York. "Two recent books investigate the canny mastery of housing politics that has allowed the Hasidic Satmar sect to build thriving, isolated communities in Brooklyn and upstate New York."

Kwame Anthony Appiah. 02/24/2022: Liberation Psychology. Review of: Frantz Fanon, translated from the French by Richard Philcox, with a preface by Jean-Paul Sartre, a foreword by Homi K. Bhabha, and an introduction by Cornel West: The Wretched of the Earth. "How Frantz Fanon came to view violence as therapy."

Seyla Habib. 02/24/2022: Thinking Without Banisters. Review of: Samantha Rose Hill: Hannah Arendt (Critical Lives) -- Hannah Arendt, edited by Barbara Hahn, with the support of Johanna Egger and Friederike Wein: Rahel Varnhagen: Lebensgeschichte einer deutschen Jüdin/The Life of a Jewish Woman Complete Works, Critical Edition, Volume 2 -- Dana Villa: Arendt -- D.N. Rodowick: An Education in Judgment: Hannah Arendt and the Humanities.

Jenny Uglow. 02/24/2022: Europe’s Great Emporium. Review of: Michael Pye: Europe’s Babylon: The Rise and Fall of Antwerp’s Golden Age. "Sixteenth-century Antwerp was alive with entrepreneurial merchants, rapacious moneylenders, whispering spies, and heretical ideas."

"Marlon James discusses writing realistic Black characters, being inspired by African folktales, and why we don’t have to let go of the world of make-believe to tell serious stories."

Marlon James, interviewed by Nate File. Boston Review, 02/09/2022: “Representation doesn’t just mean heroes. We need the villains as well.”

See also the interview regarding Moon Witch, Spider King & his process in The Brooklyn Rail, 02/2022: Marlon James with John Domini.

The Left Hand of Darkness as a BFF sci-fic novel:

Muiz Akhtar. Vox, 02/13/2022: One Good Thing: The Left Hand of Darkness showed us that the greatest romances in life can be friendships.

"The Pulitzer Prize winner’s latest sees Indians haunted by the ghosts of vengeful white people." Sounds like another book to be banned or burned.

Constance Grady. Vox, 02/11/2022: In The Sentence, Louise Erdrich asks what we owe the dead. Review of Louise Erdrich: The Sentence.

"On Mayukh Sen’s “Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America."

Sharmila Mukherjee. LARB, 02/13/2022: Resisting the Food Establishment.

See also the review in >39 featherbear:

Jack Hanson. Baffler, 02/14/2022: How Should a Person Tree?: Sheila Heti’s luminous creation myth. Review of Pure Colour.

The year 1922 & literature:

John Self. The Critic, Feb. 1922: Literature’s year zero.

2 Chekhov biographies:

Bob Blaisdell. LARB, 02/15/2022: Chekhov Large and Small. Review of: Michael C. Finke: Freedom from Violence and Lies: Anton Chekhov’s Life and Writings -- Donald Rayfield: Anton Chekhov: A Life.

TLS February 18, 2022|No. 6203

Literature:

Ann Hallamore Caesar. A fairy tale, but with strings attached: The crossover appeal of a world-famous puppet. Review of: Carlo Collodi, translated and edited by John Hooper and Anna Kraczyna: The Adventures of Pinocchio.

Chris Townsend. Inheritors of the cult: Why we’re still obsessed with Shakespeare. Review of: David Fuller: Shakespeare and the Romantics -- Charles LaPorte: The Victorian Cult of Shkaespeare: Bardology in the nineteenth century -- Margreta de Grazia: Four Shakespearean Period Pieces.

Arts & Philosophy:

Caroline Moorehead. Ripped from the magic circle: The fate of Jewish art collections in the Second World War. Review of: James McAuley: The House of Fragile Things: Jewish art collections and the Fall of France -- Jonathan Petropoulos: Goring's Man in Paris: The story of a Nazi art plunderer and his world.

In Brief Review of: Howard Sherman: Another Day's Begun: Thornton Wilder’s Our Town in the 21st century.

In Brief Review of: Roosevelt Montás: Rescuing Socrates: How the great books changed my life and why they matter for a new generation.

Science and Technology:

Barbara J. King. Swarms and the man: How and why to save insects from death by pesticide. Review of: Dave Goulson: Silent Earth: Averting the insect apocalypse.

Kate Simpson. History is gunk: Jellies, gloops, glues and other substances essential to life on Earth. Review of: Susanne Wedlich. Translated by Ayça Türkoğlu: Slime: A Natural History.

History & Biography:

George Berridge. On the way somewhere: New perspectives on a troubled celebrity chef. Review of: Laurie Woolever: Bourdain: In stories-- Tom Vitale: In the Weeds: Around the world and behind the scenes with Anthony Bourdain.

Shauna Isaac. The great hoard of Snowdonia: How London’s art treasures survived the Blitz. Review of: Caroline Shenton: National Treasures: Saving the nation’s art in World War.

David Arnold. White power rebukes itself: The anti-colonial renegades at Gandhi’s side. Review of: Ramachandra Guha: Rebels Against the Raj: Western fighters for India’s freedom.

Judith Hawley. The age of light, libel, levity and lead: A long view of Georgian Britons. Review of: Penelope J. Corfield: The Georgians: The deeds and misdeeds of 18th-century Britain.

Polly Jones. Decency under dictatorship: A new translation of the great Soviet writer Konstantin Paustovsky. Konstantin Paustovsky, Translated by Douglas Smith: The Story of a Life Books 1-3.

Dai Smith. Talk on the way to Cardiff Bay: A skewed oral history of postwar Wales. Review of: Richard King: Brittle with Relics: A history of Wales, 1962–97.

Politics & Society:

Joe Moran. Good offices: How our working lives are changing – and how they harm us. Review of: Julia Hobsbawm: The Nowhere Office: Reinventing work and the workspace of the future and Jonathan Malesic: The End of Burnout: Why work drains us and how to build better lives.

Paul Seabright. Please sir, can I have quite a lot more?: The dance between innovators and their financial backers. Review of: Sebastian Mallaby: The Power Law: Venture capital and the art of disruption,

Julian Franz. Shards of language: Dispatches from the DonbasM/a>. Review of: Lyuba Yakimchuk, Translated by Oksana Maksymchuk, Max Rosochinsky and Svetlana Lavochkina: Apricots of Donbas -- Stanislav Aseyev, Translated by Lidia WolanskyL In Isolation: Dispatches from occupied Donbas -- Olesya Khromeychuk, A Loss: The story of a dead soldier told by his sister.

"Known mainly as a realist, the writer used the gothic form to explore the horror of being confined by gender."

Jennifer Bernstein. Boston Review, 02/16/2022: Edith Wharton’s Ghosts. Review of the NYRB reprint of Edith Wharton: Ghosts.

"The author of “Pachinko” and “Free Food for Millionaires” discusses her research process, her memories of arriving in America, and why she reads the Bible before writing."

Michael Luo. The New Yorker, 02/17/2022: What Min Jin Lee Wants Us to See.

"Dostoevsky and Flaubert should be studied together as progenitors of the modern novel."

John G. Rodden. American Purpose, 02/11/2022: The Master of Petersburg and the Martyr of Style.

On the occasion of the reprint of the only novel by Lucy Lippard, the art critic:

Timothy Bewes. Public Books, 02/17/2022: B-Sides: Lucy R. Lippard's "I See/You Mean."

TLS February 25, 2022|No. 6204

Literature:

Claire Lowdon. Fatal subtraction: Sheila Heti, without the laughs. Review of: Sheila Heti: Pure Colour.

Jacqueline Banerjee. Virtually Victorian: A return to formal engagement with the novel. Review of: Timothy Gao: Virtual Play and the Victorian Novel: The ethics and aesthetics of fictional experience -- Matthew Sussman: Stylistic Virtue and Victorian Fiction: Form, ethics, and the novel -- Simon Reader: Notework: Victorian literature and nonlinear style.

Alicia Rix. Writers and other crocodiles: Origins of the polyglot challenge to ‘national’ literature. Review of: Stefano EvangelistaL Literary Cosmopolitanism in the English fin de siecle: Citizens of nowhere.

Janet Montefiore. Not only for ease and pleasure: Sylvia Townsend Warner – outsider, modernist and great novelist. Review of: Sylvia Townsesnd Warner: Lolly Willowes -- Mr. Fortune's Maggots -- The True Heart -- Summer Will Show -- After the Death of Don Juan -- The Corner That Held Them -- The Flint Anchor -- English Climate: Wartime Stories -- Valentine Ackland: A Transgressive Life. (On the occasion of the reprint of these works by Penguin Classics)

Diana Lecca. Velvet whistles: The fine distinctions that tell us what poems mean. Review of: Marjorie Perloff: Infrathin: An experiment in micropoetics.

In Brief Review of: Jennifer Gribble: Dickens and the Bible: ‘What Providence Meant’.

Arts:

Sophie Oliver. Return of the repressed: The material world of Louise Bourgeois's later work. Review of: Louise Bourgeois: the woven child, exhibition held at the Hayward Gallery.

Patrick Mccaughey. Make things beautiful: The all-encompassing credo of a modern primitivist. Review of: Sophie Taeuber-Arp: Living AbstractionM, exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, to March 12.

In Brief Review of: Marc Petitjean. Translated by Adriana Hunter: Back to Japan: The life and art of master kimono painter Kunihiko Moriguchi.

Philosophy & Religion:

Jonathan Egid. . Inward empire: What metaphors tell us about the inner life. Review of: Jonardon Ganeri: Inwardness: An Outsider's Guide.

Regina Rini. Moral disruptors: What the Canadian truckers can teach us. (Essay)

Bruce Fudge. When the wine flowed: How Victorian prudishness curtailed Arab Islamic diversity. Review of: Thomas Bauer, Translated by Hinrich Biesterfeldt and Tricia Tunstall: A Culture of Ambiguity.

Science and Technology:

Jeremy Mynott. Birders of a feather: Bustards, dodos, ibises and other sources of an enduring obsession. Review of: Richard Pope: Flight from Grace: A cultural history of humans and birds -- Boria Sax: Avian Illuminations: A cultural history of birds -- Tim Birkhead: Birds and Us: A 12,000-year history: from cave art to conservation.

In Brief Review of: Paul Freedman: Why Food Matters.

History, Politics, & Society:

Kyle Burke. They’re out to get you: The man who paved the way for the paranoid American right. Review of: Edward H. Miller: A Conspiratorial Life: Robert Welch, the John Birch Society, and the revolution of American conservatism.

Tristram Wright. Allure of the Metropole: How social climbing destroyed a great trading dynasty. Review of: Joseph Sassoon: The Global Merchants: The enterprise and extravagance of the Sassoon dynasty.

David Herman. Path to destruction: How pogroms in Ukraine foreshadowed the Holocaust. Review of: Jeffrey Veidlinger: In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The pogroms of 1918–1921 and the onset of the Holocaust.

Mark Glanville. Voice from the shadows: A great yiddish poet’s chronicle of massacre and ruin. Review of: Abraham Sutzkever. Edited and translated by Justin D. Cammy: From the Vilna Ghetto to Nuremberg: Memoir and Testimony.

Mark Roseman. Murder’s moving target: The postwar struggle to define mass extermination. Review of: A. Dirk Moses: The Problems of Genocide: Permanent security and the language of transgression.

Jonathan Buckley. True bromance: Guts, glory and Papua New Guinea. Review of: Benedict Allen: Explorer: The quest for adventure and the great unknown.

In Brief Review of: Jordan Salama: Every Day the River Changes: Four weeks down the Magdalena. (The Magdalena is a river in Colombia)

In Brief Review of: Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah: The Sex Lives of African Women.

In Brief Review of: Nan Sloane: Uncontrollable Women: Radicals, reformers and revolutionaries.

In Brief Review of: Christina Patterson: Outside the Sky is Blue: A family memoir.

Jason Ray Carney. LARB, 02/19/2022: Reading Sword-and-Sorcery to Make the Present Less Real.

"In February 2020, a hugely influential philosopher decided COVID lockdowns looked a lot like Nazi Germany. The fallout in academia and beyond has raged ever since."

Adam Kotsko. Slate, 02/20/2022: What Happened to Giorgio Agamben?.

This is mostly about Ezra Pound, with Joseph Brodsky as a touchstone.

Robert D. Kaplan. The New Criterion, March 2022: Idol temptations on the Adriatic.

Two recent pieces by Ed Simon; they seem to be related:

Ed Simon. The Millions, 02/17/2022: Daring to Eat the Peach: The Nature of Being Possessed. (On William S. Burroughs influences)

Ed Simon. LitHub, 02/23/2022: A History of Demonology is a History of the World. (This is an excerpt from his forthcoming Pandemonium: An illustrated history of demonology.

A talk about academic writing:

Timothy Aubry, interviewer Jessica Swoboda: The Point, 02/19/2022: Risking Embarrassment: A conversation with Timothy Aubry.

Two topical "bests:"

Serhii Plokhy; interviewer Sophie Roell. fivebooks.com, 02/22/2022: The best books on Ukraine and Russia.J*

Lindsay Chervinsky, interviewer Eve Gerber: fivebooks.com, 02/21/2021: The best books on The US Cabinet.

*More Ukraine bibliographic items:

Henrikas Bliudzius. LitHub, 02/24/2022: Understanding the Ukraine Crisis: A Comprehensive Reading List.

TLS March 4, 2022|No. 6205

Literature:

Kathryn Hughes. Faint praise: The cultural significance of conking out. Review of: Naomi Booth: Swoon: A poetics of passing out.

Xenobe Purvis. A weakness for toads: How Christopher Isherwood foretold his own betrayal. (Essay)

Eileen M. Hunt. Of love and monsters: The birth of British mythology. Review of: Philip Ball: Modern Myths: Adventures in the machinery of the popular imagination -- Michael Dolzani: The Productions of Time: A study of the human imagination -- Amy Jeffs: Storyland: A new mythology of Britain.

Bharat Tandon. Caste away: A Bildungsroman of a twenty-first-century India. Review of: Pankaj Mishra: Run and Hide.

Ian Thomson. A Yalie all at sea: Rediscovering a lost Beckettian novel of the 1930s. Review of: Herbert Clyde Lewis: Gentleman Overboard.

Craig Raine. Incest in Mansfield Park: Taboo, concealment and impossibility. (Essay)

In Brief Review of: Andrew Hadfield: John Donne: In the Shadow of Religion.

Architecture:

Michael Hall. Socialist stately homes: The survival of the country house after 1945. Review of: Adrian Tinniswood: Noble Ambitions: The fall and rise of the post-war country house -- John-Paul Stonard: Chatsworth, Arcadia, Now: Seven scenes from the life of a house.

History & Biography:

Blair Worden. Regicide readings: An ingenious account of the English kingdom without a king. Review of: Anna Keay: The Restless Republic: Britain without a crown.

Katja Hoyer. Being there: What did Angela Merkel achieve in sixteen years?. Review of: Ralph Bollmann: Angela Merkel: Die Kanzlerin und ihre Zeit -- Kati Marton: The Chancellor: The remarkable odyssey of Angela Merkel.

Rory McLean. A tour of the Wild East: An ‘erudite, shocking’ guide to a hundred years of Russian history. Review of: Pieter Waterdrinker, translated by Paul Evans: The Long of Tchaikovsky Street: A Russian Adventure.

Noel Malcolm. In search of Süleyman: The reimagined life of the great Ottoman sultan. Review of: Christopher de Bellaigue: The Lion House: the Coming of a King.

Claire Griffiths. Undutiful daughter: Memoirs of a feminist activist. Review of: Sheila Rowbotham: Daring to Hope: My Life in the 70s.

TLS March 11, 2022|No. 6206

Literature:

Roz Kaveny. A plea to the inquisitor: The second instalment in Marlon James’s African legendarium. Review of: Marlon James: Moon Witch, Spider King.

Mary Norris. Say what you’re going to say: The ease and authority of Margaret Atwood’s nonfiction. Review of: Margaret Atwood: Burning Questions: Essays and occasional pieces 2004–2021.

Muriel Zagha. A Numbers game: The story of a gangster and civil rights advocate. Review of: Elizabeth Colomba and Aurélie Lévy: Queenie: La marraine de Harlem. (Graphic novel)

Angela Escott. Sent up sparklingly: A first scholarly edition of an ‘obscene’ play. Review of: Hannah Cowley, edited by William D. Brewer: The World as it Goes.

Seamus Perry. Eeyore reports for duty: The ‘devoted patience’ of T. S. Eliot, wartime correspondent. Review of: Valerie Eliot and John Haffenden: The Letters of T.S. Eliot Volume 9: 1939–1941.

Kit Fan. The other Eliot: A Chinese Romantic returns to the anglosphere. Review of: Stuart Lyons: Xhu Zhimo: Life and poetry.

Arts:

Keith Miller. Beyond piety and plaster: Antonio Canova – a giant refreshed by his surroundings. Review of the exhibition In Luce: Fotografie di Alessandra Chemollo nella Gypsotheca di Possagno at Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice.

History, Politics & Biography:

Stephen Kotkin. Review of: Susanne Schattenberg, translated by John Heath: Brezhnev: The making of a statesman -- Vladislav M. Zubok: Collapse: The fall of the Soviet Union -- M. E. Sarotte: Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the making of post-Cold War stalemate -- Martin Sixsmith: The War of Nerves: Inside the Cold War mind.

Benjamin T. Smith. Review of: Edward Shawcross: The Last Emperor: A disaster in the New World.

Sujit Sivasundaram. Bitter fruit: How the spice trade prefigured today’s environmental crisis. Amitav Ghosh: The Nutmeg's Curse: Parables for a planet in crisis.

Clare Pettit. Adventures in empire: The nose for business of a mobile ‘Crimean heroine’.

Eric Rauchway. Pirates of the metropolis: How today’s privateers brought their bad business home. Review of: Oliver Bullough: Butler to the World: How Britain became the servant of tycoons, tax dodgers, kleptocrats and criminals -- Casey Michel: American Kleptocracy: How the US created the greatest money-laundering scheme in history -- Kojo Koram: Uncommon Wealth: Britain and the aftermath of Empire,

Irina Dumitrescu. Burnout culture: A disconnect between expectation and reality. Helen Rappaport: In Search of Mary Seacole: The making of a cultural icon,

TLS March 18, 2022|No. 6207

Literature:

Nelly Kaprielian. Cassandra of the Fifth Republic: Houellebecq flirts with the extreme right in his latest novel. Review of: Michel Houellebecq: Aneantir -- Michel Houellebecq, translated by Andrew Brown: Interventions: 2020.

Lucy Dallas. On her own again: Anne Tyler’s masterclass in sympathy and understanding. Review of: Anne Tyler: French Braid.

Bryan Karetnyk. A world unchanged: A tale of revenge in a bigoted Japan, by the ‘Queen of Mysteries’. Review of: Kaoru Takamura: Lady Joker: volume 1.

Ian Thomson. Camp or Gulag?: A wartime reckoning in Finland. Review of: Petra Rautiainen, translated from the Finnish by David Hackston: Land of Snow and Ashes.

Mark Romald. Beyond the riverbed: Barrie Cooke, Seamus Heaney and friends. (Essay)

In Brief Review of: Nick Rennison: 1922: Scenes from a Turbulent Year.

Arts:

John Greening. Fragments of life’s song: An intricate portrait of music’s ‘un-modern’ pioneer. Review of: Daniel M. Grimley: Jean Sibelius: Life, music, silence.

Philosophy:

Lesley Chamberlain. Maker of Modernism:The man who moved aesthetics to the philosophy of art. Review of: Robert B. Pippin: Philosophy by Other Means: The arts in philosophy and philosophy in the arts,

Simone Gubler. Slippery things: The natural body as a bulwark against social pressures. Review of: Clare Chambers: Intact: A defence of the unmodified body.

Keith Frankish. Beast machines: A scientific approach to the mind. Review of: Anil Seth: Being You: A new science of consciousness.

In Brief Review of: Larry S. Temkin: Being Good in a World of Need.

In Brief Review of: Peter Neumann, translated by Shelley Fisher: Jena 1800: The republic of free spirits.

History, Biography, Culture:

Richard Overy. Secret armies: Occupation and defiance during the Second World War. Review of: Halik Kochanski: Resistance: The underground war in Europe, 1939–1945.

John-Paul Stonard. Rolling stones: Was Stonehenge a great communitarian project?. Review of: Duncan Garrow and Neil Wilkin: The World of Stonehenge --- Mike Pitts: How To Build Stonehenge.

Richard Bellamy. A trinity of Gramscis: Revisiting, and reviving, the lay saint of Eurocommunism. Review of: Antonio Gramsci, Edited and translated by Joseph A. Buttigieg and Marcus E. Green: Subaltern Social Groups: A critical edition of Prison Notebook 25 -- Jean-Yves Frétigné Translated by Laura Marris: To Live is to Resist: The Life of Antonio Gramsci.

Ferdinand Mount. Failing upwards: How Lord Cornwallis became popular despite losing America. Review of: Richard Middleton: Cornwallis: Soldier and statesman in a revolutionary world.

Amy Nelson Burnett. Soldier of purified scripture: The combative conscience behind the Swiss Reformation. Review of: Bruce Gordon: Zwingli: God's Armed Prophet.

Hettie O'brien. ‘I want the Kardashian figure’: Making digital humiliation pay. Review of: Symeon Brown: Get Rich or Lie Trying: Ambition and deceit in the new influencer economy -- Cathy O'Neil: The Shame Machine: Who profits in the new age of humiliation?

TLS March 25, 2022|No. 6208

Literature:

Miranda France. Tightening the vice belt: Fernanda Melchor’s visions of violence in modern Mexico. Review of: Fernanda Melchor, Translated by Sophie Hughes: Paradais and Aqui e nos Miami.

Esmé O’keeffe. We are not a clone: Hervé le Tellier's Oulipian puzzles. Review of Hervé le Tellier, translated by Adriana Hunter: The Anomaly.

Arts:

Marilyn Ann Moss. Screen and not heard: The unsung heroines of cinema, from the silent era to today. Review of: Vanessa Morton: The Performer's Tale: Nine lives of Patience Collier -- Hayley Mills: Forever Young: a Memoir -- Mena Suvari: The Great Peace: a Memoir -- Melanie Bell: Movie Workers: The women who made British cinema.

Adam Mars-Jones. Fangs for the memories: Nosferatu at 100 and the long shadow of the vampire. (Essay)

Ginette Vincendeau. ‘On team Monroe’ A screen icon in 1950s England. Review of: Michelle Morgan: When Marilyn Met the Queen: Marilyn Monroe’s life in England.

History, Politics, & Culture:

Robert Darnton. Despotism centre-stage: Theatricality and violence in Paris on the eve of revolution. (Essay)

Regina Rini. Risking everyone’s world: Why we can't stay rational while talking about the bomb. (Essay)

Michael Caines. Skin tones: Challenging stereotypes about British minorities. Review of: Helena Lee, editor: East Side Voices: Essays celebrating East and Southeast Asian identity in Britain.

Norma Clarke. Shop till you drop: Three centuries of purchases and provisions. Review of: Rachel Bowlby: Back to the Shops: The high street in history and the future.

Irina Dumitrescu. Scratch the surface: What psoriasis tells us about social outcasts. Review of: Sergio del Molino, translated by Thomas Bunstead: Skin.

Jonathan Sumption. The overruling classes
Legal systems as agents of social and moral change. Review of: Fernanda Pirie: The Rule of Laws: A 4,000-year quest to order the world -- Martti KoskenniemiL To the Uttermost Parts of the Earth: Legal imagination and international power, 1300–1870.

Jerry White. Rise and fall: London’s capacity for reinvention in different eras. Review of: Andrew Saint: London, 1870-1914: A city at its zenith -- John Davis: Waterloo Sunrise: London from the Sixties to Thatcher.

Paul Duguid. Playing dangerous games: A calculating physicist and his foresight. Review of: Ananyo Bhattacharya: The Man From the Future: The visionary life of John von Neumann.

"How the impeccably credentialed, improbably charming economic historian Adam Tooze supplanted the dirtbag left."

Molly Fisher. New York, 03282022Galaxy Brain. (or, as the magazine's cover title has it: Adam Tooze Explains Everything)

Books by Tooze include: The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931 -- The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy -- Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World -- Statistics and the German State, 1900-1945: The Making of Modern Economic Knowledge

Two from The Baffler:

Rob Madole. Baffler, 03/16/2022: The Billionaire’s Bard:On the rationalist fictions of Neal Stephenson. On Stephenson's Termination Shock as well as his earlier novels. Fans include: Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, Sergey Brin, & Reid Hoffmann (LinkedIn)

Charles Tyson. 03/15/2022:The New Neurasthenia: How burnout became the buzzword of the moment. Review of Jonathan Malesic: The End of Burnout: Why Work Drains Us and How to Build Better Lives.

Miscellaneous reviews/articles from LARB.

Bryan A. Garner. Los Angeles Review of Books, 03/14/2022: May I Quote?. Review of Fred R. Shapiro: The New Yale Book of Quotations.

Gianluco Didino. 03/22/2022: Near-Coincidences: Digression and the Literature of the Age of the Internet.

Justin E.H. Smith, interviewed by Julien Crockett. 03/22/2022: The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is: A History, A Philosophy, A Warning. Discussing Smith's The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is.

Charles Taylor. 03/23/2023: Deep in the Jaundiced Heart of Texas. Review of Edna Ferber Giant & the movie as well.

"Again and again, it spirals around the connections between science and madness, science and beauty, science and war."

Constance Grady. Vox, 03/11/2022: Have we ceased to understand the world?. Review of Benjamin Labatut: When We Cease to Understand the World.

On academic postmodern writing and literary criticism, politics & aesthetics:

Timothy Aubry, interviewed by Jessica Swobodo. The Point, 02/22/2022: Risking Embarrassment.

Transitions in French intellectual life:

Clay Risen. NYT, 02/27/2022: Leo Bersani, Literary Critic and Theorist on Gay Life, Dies at 90.

Patrick Chamorel. American Purpose, 01/31/2022: Emotions Run High in the Land of Descartes. Review of Eugénie Bastié: La Guerre des idées: Enquête au coeur de l’intelligentsia française.

TBRs in my case. Wonder if the public libraries have already weeded them out?

Bethanne Patrick. The Atlantic, 01/19/2022: 15 Books You Won’t Regret Rereading: Years after these titles were popular, they’re still worth picking up.

TLS April 1, 2022|No. 6209

Literature & Publishing:

Jeremy Noel-Tod. Lost in the concrete jungle: Revisiting the avant-garde poetic movement that had TLS readers up in arms. Review of: Nancy Perloff, editor: Concrete Poetry: A 21st-century anthology.

Sam Leith. True to typo: The complicated – and occasionally messy – business of making books. Review of: Rebecca Lee: How Words Get Good: The story of making a book.

Kate Webb. It doesn’t take magic to change the world: Gods, sex robots and oligarchs in a mutating Lagos. Review of: Eloghosa Osunde: Vagabonds!.

Pablo Scheffer. The return of Herne the hunter: Enchantment and enclosure in a near-forgotten London wood. Review of: Zoe Gilbert: Mischief Acts.

Arts:

Boyd Tonkin. Big skies and little books: How Peter Rabbit’s creator shaped the countryside as we know it. Review of: Annemarie Bilclough, editor: Beatrix Potter: Drawn to nature, catalog of the same name at the Victoria & Albert Museum -- Matthew Kelly: The Women Who Saved the English Countryside.

James Hall. Painting the Eternal: Van Gogh’s preoccupation with knowing himself. Review of the catalog & exhibition of the same name at the Courtauld Gallery: Louis van Tilborgh and Martin Bailey, edited by Karen Serres: Van Gogh: Self Portraits.

James Campbell. Charm of the familiar: The influential impressionist, displayed alongside other artist. Review of the catalog & exhibition of the same name at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford: Colin Harrison and Linda Whiteley: Pissaro: Father of Impressionism.

En Liang Khong. ‘A duty to dissent’: Ai Weiwei’s artistic rebellion against the Chinese state. Review of: Ai Weiwei: 1000 Years of of Joys and Sorrows.

History, Politics, & Society:

Tera W. Hunter. A child’s-eye view of Jim Crow: Slavery and the origins of the United States. Review of: Annette Gordon-Reed: On Juneteenth -- Clint Smith: How the Word Is Passed: A reckoning with the history of slavery across America.

Hugo Drochon. Concert or coup d’état: Writing about the construction of the European Union. Review of: Anthony Pagden: The Pursuit of Europe: A History -- Perry Anderson: Ever Closer Union? : Europe in the West -- Shane Weller: The Idea of Europe: A critical history -- Geert Mak: The Dream of Europe: Travels in the twenty-first century.

Matthew Reston. Circular arguments: Did Magellan really sail around the world?. Review of: Felipe Fernández-Armesto: Straits: Beyond the myth of Magellan.

Cal Flyn. Both real and imaginary: Locating the boundary between North and South. Review of: Bernd Brunner, Translated by Jefferson Chase: Extreme North: A Cultural History.

Thread continues with Exploring Books Through Articles, Reviews, Announcements, & Lists 2022-2, Apr.-June

ADDENDA. Overlooked 1st quarter articles. From March:

Aja Romano. Vox, 03/11/2022: She was the Agatha Christie of romance novels. You’ve probably never heard of her. (About Georgette Heyer)

John Loyd. Quillette, 03/29/2022: Corrupter of the World. Review article including: Bo Rothstein: Controlling Corruption: The Social Contract Approach -- Oliver Bullough: Butler to the World -- Mark Hollingsworth and Stewart Lansley: Londongrad -- Catherine Belton: Putin's People -- Oliver Bullough: Moneyland.

Kat Rosenfeld. Persuasion, 03/27/2022: The Many Faces of Literary Censorship.