Category Archives: Book Reviews

Quarantine Reads

Posted on June 1, 2020 by Pooja Viswanathan

Emma Garst Quarantine is a wonderful time to get caught up on your “to be read” stack. However, some of us have felt culturally adrift since the shutdown in New York, wanting to take the opportunity to engage with good … Continue reading →

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Quarantine Don’t Reads

Posted on May 31, 2020 by Pooja Viswanathan

Jennifer Einstein My brother, apparently, has become a baker. The girl who sat two rows behind me in second grade just planted her first veggie garden. The first alto in my high school Concert Choir now makes soap. And Shakespeare … Continue reading →

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Review: Mama’s Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves

Posted on September 3, 2019 by Sarah Baker

Frans de Waal W.W. Norton and Company, March 12, 2019 326 pages Hardback, $15.00 Yuriria Vazquez Can you imagine your human life without emotions? In other words, can you imagine yourself not feeling any joy, sadness, fear, anger, empathy, … Continue reading →

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Review: Einstein’s Shadow: A Black Hole, a Band of Astronomers, and the Quest to See the Unseeable

Posted on November 1, 2018 by Sarah Baker

Seth Fletcher Ecco/HarperCollins, October 9, 2018 288 pages Hardback, $27.00 Emma Garst What if the speed of light was 25 miles per hour? What if we lived in “Flatland”, a world of two dimensions? What if you fell … Continue reading →

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Book Review – Eye of the Shoal: A Fishwatcher’s Guide to Life, the Ocean and Everything

Posted on July 2, 2018 by Sarah Baker

Emma Garst Eye of the Shoal: A Fishwatcher’s Guide to Life, the Ocean and Everything Helen Scales Bloomsbury Sigma, 2018 320 pages Hardback, $27.00 Consider the Barreleye, a deep-sea fish named for its two long, cylindrical eyes pointed directly upwards … Continue reading →

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Culture Corner – The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Posted on July 2, 2018 by Sarah Baker

Bernie Langs The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind Julian Jaynes Houghton Mifflin, 1990; originally published in 1976 491 pages Paperback, $15.00 Two cylinder seals with modern impressions; top: Weather god on a … Continue reading →

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Culture Corner

Posted on March 6, 2017 by Juliette Wipf

Bernie Langs “Truth” in Painting Getting to a ‘core essence’ in a mystic or revelatory sense can be as elusive as tracing the path of an electron or photon, famously described as both particle and wave. The arts can be … Continue reading →

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Culture Corner

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Qiong Wang

Landscape Into Art: Thoughts on the book Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape (by Christopher S. Wood), and the film The Revenant (directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu) Bernie Langs Caution: spoilers ahead! The inspired ideas and emotions one experiences … Continue reading →

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Culture Corner

Posted on April 4, 2016 by Qiong Wang

Book Review: Sudden Death: A Novel, by Álvaro Enrigue, translated by Natasha Wimmer By Bernie Langs I often view the study of European history as a lesson in arbitrarily defined epochs populated by individuals lost in a haze of their … Continue reading →

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CULTURE CORNER

Posted on March 2, 2016 by Qiong Wang

Learning Lessons from Multi-Volume Series By Bernie Langs There is no challenge in reading more rigorous than the study, over several years, of a series of books by a single author on one subject. From about 1983 through the late … Continue reading →

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Culture Corner

Posted on February 3, 2016 by Qiong Wang

Book Review: A Manuscript of Ashes, by Antonio Muñoz Molina By Bernie Langs When the book A Manuscript of Ashes by Antonio Muñoz Molina arrived in the mail in a glorious hardcover edition, I knew that this unexpected present from … Continue reading →

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Culture Corner

Posted on March 2, 2015 by Qiong Wang

Book Review: My Struggle Book 1, by Karl Ove Knausgaard By Bernie Langs For several months I had heard chatter about an extraordinary set of books written by an eccentric Norwegian chronicling his life in the minutest detail. There was … Continue reading →

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The Pursuit of Vocation

Posted on January 11, 2015 by Nicolas Renier

By Peng Kate Gao Work is love made visible. −Kahlil Gibran Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, in his brilliantly written book The Happiness Hypothesis, summarized three ways that people generally view their work: a job, a career, or a calling. A job … Continue reading →

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Leaving the Lab, but Still Thinking Science

Posted on July 30, 2014 by Nicolas Renier

By Mayla Hsu Barbara Ehrenreich graduated from The Rockefeller University (RU), Class of 1968, but never worked as a scientist. Instead, she became a journalist, best known for Nickel and Dimed, in which she documented the hardship of life working … Continue reading →

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Culture Corner

Posted on July 30, 2014 by Nicolas Renier

An Interview with Richard Torregrossa, Author of Terminal Life: A Suited Hero Novel and Cary Grant: A Celebration of Style By Bernie Langs Several years ago, I was checking the blurbs of recommended articles and reviews indexed by the Arts … Continue reading →

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Culture Corner – The “Exotic Foreign” of Wes Anderson and Haruki Murakami

Posted on July 7, 2014 by Nicolas Renier

By Bernie Langs There is much made in some classical and modern philosophies of the concept and ambiguity of what is termed “the other.” In addition, one can find obscure musings on the idea of “the stranger” from the pens … Continue reading →

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Culture Corner: book review “Seiobo There Below” by László Krasznahorkai

Posted on May 11, 2014 by Nicolas Renier

By Bernie Langs I would bet that it is safe to say that anyone reading these pages is more than busy in this life and that many of you who continue to read for pleasure are overwhelmed by the truth … Continue reading →

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An interview with White Out: The secret life of Heroin author, Michael W. Clune, Ph.D

Posted on March 19, 2014 by Nicolas Renier

By Bernie Langs I did not know what to expect when I procured a copy of Michael W. Clune’s memoir, White Out: The Secret Life of Heroin, after reading a blog review about the book in the New Yorker. I … Continue reading →

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Scientists Invade the Comics

Posted on December 13, 2013 by Nicolas Renier

By Jason Rothhauser This holiday season, two comic books that share one thing hard to find in today’s popular fiction: scientists are the stars of the show. One comic proposes an outrageous alternate history in which a cabal of real-world … Continue reading →

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CULTURE DESK — Book reviews: Inferno, by Dan Brown & The Inferno of Dante (translated by Robert Pinsky)

Posted on July 16, 2013 by cduggan

by Bernie Langs When I heard that best-selling author Dan Brown had written a book centering around a mystery involving Dante’s Inferno, I came up with a scheme to read the original Inferno section of Dante Alighieri’s famous poem, Commedia … Continue reading →

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