Author: Andrew Delbanco As the commercialization of American higher education accelerates, more and more students are coming to college with the narrow aim of obtaining a preprofessional credential. The traditional four-year college experience—an exploratory time for students to discover their passions and test ideas and values with the help of teachers and peers—is in danger of becoming a thing of the past. In “College,” prominent cultural critic Andrew Delbanco offers a trenchant defense of...
Authors: Richard V. Fisher, Grant Heiken, And Jeffrey Hulen Whenever a volcano threatens to erupt, scientists and adventurers from around the world flock to the site in response to the irresistible allure of one of nature’s most dangerous and unpredictable phenomena. In a unique book probing the science and mystery of these fiery features, the authors chronicle not only their geologic behavior but also their profound effect on human life.
Author: PETER R. GRANT “Enchanted by Daphne” is legendary ecologist Peter Grant’s personal account of his remarkable life and career. In this revelatory book, Grant takes readers from his childhood in World War II–era Britain to his ongoing research today in the Galápagos archipelago, vividly describing what it’s like to do fieldwork in one of the most magnificent yet inhospitable places on Earth. This is also the story of two brilliant and courageous biologists raising a family together while...
Author: Jonathan Rosen “The Best Minds” is Jonathan Rosen’s brilliant and heartbreaking account of an American tragedy. “The Best Minds” is a deeply sad book. It is a story about the bonds of family, friendship, and community; the promise of intellectual achievement; and the lure of utopian solutions. Tender, funny, and harrowing by turns, at times almost unbearably sad, “The Best Minds” is an extreme version of a story that is tragically familiar to all too many. In the hands of a writer of...
Author: Paul J. Nahin For centuries, mathematicians the world over have tried, and failed, to solve the zeta-3 problem. Math genius Leonhard Euler attempted it in the 1700s and came up short. The straightforward puzzle considers if there exists a simple symbolic formula for the following: 1+(1/2)^3+(1/3)^3+(1/4)^3+ . But why is this issue — the sum of the reciprocals of the positive integers cubed—so important? With “In Pursuit of Zeta-3,” popular math writer Paul Nahin investigates the history...
For the first time, we will see Mars 'live' as images are streamed almost in real time from the surface of the Red Planet, right on to YouTube.
RIYADH: “Before the Coffee Gets Cold,” published in 2015, is a time travel-themed novel written by famous Japanese playwright Toshikazu Kawaguchi and translated to English by Geoffrey Trousselot. In the novel, four women wish to travel back in time for various reasons, whether to confront the man who left them, to receive a letter from a husband suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, to visit a loved one for the last time, or to see a daughter they were never able to meet.
In the acknowledgements of his 2020 debut novel, ’A Star Is Bored,’ Byron Lane thanked his then-boyfriend, fellow author Steven Rowley, in a sweet paragraph that ended with the words, “Will you marry me?” Then, in the acknowledgements of his own 2021 novel, ’The Guncle,’ Rowley finally gave his public reply: “A thousand times YES.” Now, with the knot long tied, both of the pair’s next books are hitting shelves—and on the same day, May 30, just in time for Pride month. We caught up with Steven...
Father's Day is coming soon and we have the perfect idea for book-loving fathers.
The DOJ has unsealed the full federal indictment charging President Trump, and for a 76-year-old man, the document represents nothing else than a threat to put him in prison for the rest of his life.
Never have images from the red planet been seen in near real-time. You can watch the live stream here starting Friday at 12 p.m. ET.