Category: Book Reviews

by Jerry Melchor Read these two scenarios and note how you would answer the questions: 1) The Linda experiment: Linda is thirty-one years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in antinuclear demonstrations. Which alternative…

The reading suggestions have been kindly provided by staff members of the downtown bookstore McNally Jackson. Fated by S.G. Browne From the acclaimed author of Breathers—an irreverent novel about fate, destiny, and the karmic consequences of getting involved with humans. Over the past few thousand years, Fabio has come to hate his job. As Fate,…

by Bernie Langs After years of feasting on nonfiction books, I find myself binging on works of fiction these days, and most recently, of all things, Hungarian prose. Having read the German W.G. Sebald and the Austrian Thomas Bernhard, who both write with no paragraph breaks, I was not taken aback when I realized that…

by Joseph Luna The birth of a scientific field often combines new technology with bold hypotheses, unexpected collaboration, and a healthy dose of luck. There’s also time, that ultimate arbiter of the significant, upon which a new field grows and matures, from puzzling first glimpses to textbook diagrams and beyond. Increasingly in today’s world, inhabited…

by Bernie Langs The three current kingpins of British literature are, in my opinion, Martin Amis, Ian McEwan and Julian Barnes. In the past I have enjoyed novels by all three, reveling in their tragedies and comedies filled with satire, sarcasm, wit, fine prose, elegance, and decadence, all in the continued tradition of masters such…