The Warm Equations
"Aurora" and "Seveneves" break us out of our supremely well-rehearsed habit of apocalypse and let us see the option of a different future than permanent, hopeless standoff.
All Reviews
Excavating a Future
"The Water Knife" oscillates between nightmarish fantasy and discerning perception.
What Are Novels For?: Privilege, Race, and Shelter in Nell Zink’s “Mislaid”
Zink delights in the possibilities of fiction and the pleasures of playing with words, one-liners, and genres.
A Visit to the City of Dada
Jed Rasula on the many faces of the Dada movement and the contemporary relevance of Dada's political and artistic hijinks
How Cherokee Territory Became the “Deep South”
Two men find themselves on opposite ends of a battlefield. One was General Andrew Jackson — the other was John Ross, a fighter with the Cherokee regiment …
Everything Was in the Making
This book is for the pioneers at heart: those who want to be in the garage with Steve Jobs, on the Missouri with Lewis and Clark, at Cape Canaveral in 1961.
Signs and Wonders
Ultimately, Bidwell Smith mixes memoir with reportage to paint bustling, often wondrous pictures of posthumous worlds, and her ongoing inquiry …
Antoine Volodine’s Post-Exoticism
The literary movement called “post-exoticism,” practiced by a group of imprisoned revolutionaries in a fictional devastated world, bursts with invention.
Vision Science
John Searle, one of the leaders of positivist philosophy, returns with an analysis of visual perception, naturalism, and intentional states.
Liberalism as Drama
Fawcett has set out to write not a "philosophy" of liberalism, but a "chronicle" of it: a series of dynamic adaptations and compromises.
From Discontented Barons to Predator Drones
It's the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta.
At Home in the World
John Updike never wanted a biography written about him.
In a Sea of Books, In a Majestic Mundane
As equal but different mediums, graphic novels and traditional literature can now tackle the same fundamental subjects in tandem.
Secure Your Own Mask Before Helping Others
A trapdoor is most alarming when you don't see it; knowing the floor might give way at any moment allows you to brace yourself for the fall.
The Rocketman
A sense of incredible destiny surrounds inventor Elon Musk, the public face of the private space industry, but come on.
“Siphoning Away the Warmth”: On Jim Shepard’s Radical Empathy
"The Book of Aron" is a book about annihilation, and the human spirit that somehow lives on, in slivers and cracks.