Essay Sherlock Holmes and the history of information January 28, 2021 Over Christmas week I reread Arthur Conan Doyle鈥檚 Sherlock Holmes stories. I had first read them as a child, working slowly through a worn red volume that contained them all. Read More
Essay Jeremy DeSilva on A Most Interesting Problem January 22, 2021 On February 24, 1871 Charles Darwin published The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, a follow-up to his most famous book On the Origin of Species. Read More
Essay MLK Day reflections on diversifying publishing January 17, 2021 Publishing itself is an act of mutuality, a series of symbiotic relationships ranging from idea and page, to author and publisher, to bookseller and reader. The garments we create鈥攂ooks鈥攁re shaped by current knowledge, imagination, and tools, and are also often cloaked by or interwoven with fabrics of history. Read More
Essay Translating science: The real work of forensic scientists January 16, 2021 When I tell people about my new book about forensic scientists, Blood, Powder and Residue:聽 How Crime Labs Translate Evidence into Proof, they usually think about popular TV shows such as 鈥淐SI.鈥� 聽But there鈥檚 a gap between the public image of scientists and what scientists do, and this gap matters. Read More
Essay Material unfurling, digital scrolling, urban strolling, c. 1830鈥搉ow January 14, 2021 The companion website, developed with support from 91桃色鈥檚 Global Equity Grant, supplements The Place of Many Moods: Udaipur鈥檚 Painted Lands and India鈥檚 Eighteenth Century. While taking the book to broader audiences, the website features objects published and studied for the first time in-depth. Read More
Essay How Each Line Appears | some loose leaves January 04, 2021 Rain in Plural is the much-anticipated fourth collection of poetry by Fiona Sze-Lorrain, who has been praised by The Rumpus as 鈥渁 master of musicality and enlightening allusions.鈥� In the wholly original world of these poems, Sze-Lorrain addresses both private narratives and the overexposed discourse of the polis, using silence and montage, lyric and antilyric, to envision what she calls 鈥渃reating between liberties.鈥� Read More
Interview Katherine Zubovich on Moscow Monumental December 17, 2020 In 1947, Stalin decreed that eight monumental buildings be built in the Soviet capital. Seven of these neoclassical structures were completed in the 1950s and these buildings continue to stand today as originally intended: as elite apartment complexes, luxury hotels, and the headquarters of key institutions including Moscow State University and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Read More
Essay The irrationality of 2020 December 16, 2020 Irrationality聽was published in 2019, but the real subject of the book, it turns out, is the year 2020. The book now seems to me to be describing a world that had been gestating for some years, but that only came out kicking and screaming, loud enough for all to hear and for none to deny, in the pandemic era, which coincides, significantly, with the final year of Donald Trump鈥檚 ignominious presidency.聽 Read More
Essay The mountain memories that fuelled Tolkien鈥檚 epic tales December 14, 2020 鈥業t鈥檚 a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door.鈥� Bilbo Baggins is thinking of adventure, of course, not pandemics. 鈥榊ou step into the Road, and if you don鈥檛 keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.鈥� Yet The Lord of the Rings is a lesson in how far you can travel without leaving home. Read More
Essay Reaffirming human rights December 10, 2020 On December 19, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly passed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). It took more than two years of intense, difficult negotiations, but the members of the drafting committee understood that they could not fail. Read More
Essay Timeless wisdom on generosity and gratitude December 01, 2020 The approach of the winter holidays invites us to wrestle once again with the complexities of giving.聽On surface it seems simple enough:聽Buy something nice, wrap it in colorful paper, present it to your giftee. Read More
Interview By Design | Books about books, or the cataloging of ideas November 27, 2020 Sales catalogs have a noble lineage, one that an academic press would gladly embrace. The first catalog was published in Venice in 1498 by Aldus Manutius, founder of the Aldine Press. Read More
Essay Can logic be fun? November 24, 2020 Many people have tried to define logic. James Thurber wrote, 鈥淪ince it is possible to touch a clock without stopping it, it follows that one can start a clock without touching it.鈥� Read More
Essay Looking at medieval objects November 17, 2020 A few years ago, I was in the Medieval Collection of the Metropolitan Museum in New York City examining one of the objects I was writing a book about when a father came by with two children, a boy of about 10 and a girl of 7 or 8. He was taking them to see the medieval armor in the next exhibit room. Read More
Essay Leadership in a time of crisis: Nero and the Great Fire of Rome November 13, 2020 There is one political failing that people seem unable to forgive. In the case of George W. Bush it was not the bitterly divisive invasion of Iraq that blighted his presidential image, nor was Donald Trump鈥檚 belligerent governing style his most serious liability in the 2020 election. Read More
