When Anne Boleyn was beheaded in 1536 on the orders of her husband, King Henry VIII, she left behind a country that had been profoundly changed due to her role as its queen. She also left behind a daughter who would become one of England’s most famous and influential rulers. In many ways, Elizabeth I […]
Are you looking for a gooed popular science book? Slime: A Natural History by Susanne Wedlich, translated from German by Ayça Türkoğlu, oozes charm. The text touches on the biology of slime of all kinds, from organisms like slime molds to secretions like mucus, but doesn’t get mired in complex scientific details. The book also […]
This has been my year of reading books about shipwrecks. Boats stove by a whale, or a yarn recounted by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I’m here for it. The Wager, the latest book by David Grann, is a seaworthy addition to this run of dramatic, gnarly, narrative non-fiction. The year, 1741. The dream: win naval glory […]
1914 saw the start of a new type of war, where technological advances in weaponry reshaped the battlefield into an unforeseen nightmare. The Great War is cited as the first modern, mechanized war, its impact reverberating far beyond the toll of almost ten million soldiers lost. Another twenty-one million who survived would be irrevocably changed […]
