December 18, 2009

Christopher Davidson on recent events in Dubai and the UAE

“It’s not the end of the Arab dream, it just means the Arab dream will be taking a different course now and Dubai will not be the poster boy for it.”—Christopher Davidson Christopher Davidson, author of Dubai: The Vulnerability of...

December 17, 2009

The World selects Sōseki as an international read for the holidays

One of the more interesting year-end lists comes from Bill Marx at PRI’s The World. Marx, a champion of books in translation and works published by university and independent presses, chooses a list of titles that raise the thorny issue...

December 16, 2009

Morality is not necessarily good — An interview with Hans-Georg Moeller

Q: Are you hoping to just inform readers? Give them pleasure? Piss them off? A: All of the above. Admittedly, the following quote from a recent interview in Religion Dispatches with Hans-Georg Moeller, author of The Moral Fool: A Case...

December 15, 2009

How the books saved Christmas

“Books may be going high-tech this holiday season, but that doesn’t mean, as some fear, that we’ve abandoned the cultural and economic habits they’ve helped to foster. Our Kindles and Nooks may appear to be pointing toward the digital future,...

December 14, 2009

Sibyl Schwarzenbach on Huffington Post and Rorotoko

Sibyl Schwarzenbach, author of the just-published On Civic Friendship: Including Women in the State, has recently contributed pieces to both Rorotoko and The Huffington Post. In “A Failure of Civic Friendship,” Schwarzenbach argues that the United States and its political...

December 11, 2009

Save on holiday books from Columbia University Press

From food history and the science of the oven to birds and baseball, click HERE for some holiday gift suggestions from Columbia University Press. All books are available online or at your local bookstore. Happy Holidays! SAVE 30% on these...

December 10, 2009

Experimenting with Herve This

Below is a video of a lecture Herve This recently gave at Imperial College entitled “Molecular Cooking is Cooking: Molecular Gastronomy is a Scientific Activity.” However, don’t let the word “lecture” scare you off, This’s talks, which include several experiments...

December 9, 2009

Steven Cohen on weatherizing New York City

“In the end, all the forward-looking policies articulated in Washington and in Copenhagen will have meaning only when a landlord in New York City decides to sign up a contractor this summer to weatherize his pre-World War II apartment building.”—...

December 8, 2009

On the anniversary of Pearl Harbor — A post by Greg Robinson

The following post is by Greg Robinson, author of A Tragedy of Democracy: Japanese Confinement in North America. December 7 remains, as Franklin Roosevelt predicted, a date that lives in infamy. It merits this title, though, not just as the...

December 7, 2009

James Igoe Walsh takes the page 99 test

Taking Ford Maddox Ford’s suggestion to heart (“Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you”), The Page 99 Test asks authors to focus in on this particular page. Recently...

December 4, 2009

Best films of the decade

Since it is 2009 we are seeing both best-of-the-year and best-of-the-decade lists. While many of these lists seemingly serve to reinforce critical consensus, the same cannot be said of the Toronto International Film Festival’s list of the best movies from...

December 3, 2009

Kelly Oliver takes The Page 99 Test

Taking Ford Maddox Ford’s suggestion to heart (“Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you”), The Page 99 Test asks authors to focus in on this particular page. Recently,...