History
Empire of Enchantment: The Story of Indian Magic by John Zubrzycki ($35, PB)
India’s association with magicians goes back thousands of years. Conjurers & illusionists dazzled the courts of Hindu maharajas & Mughal emperors. As British dominion spread over the subcontinent, such wonder-workers became synonymous with India. Western magicians appropriated Indian attire, tricks & stage names. Switching their turbans for top hats, Indian jugglers fought back, and earned their grudging respect. John Zubrzycki tells the story of how Indian magic descended from the realm of the gods to become part of daily ritual & popular entertainment across the globe. Recounting tales of levitating Brahmins, resurrections, prophesying monkeys, and ‘the most famous trick never performed’, he vividly charts Indian magic’s epic journey from street to stage.
The Vietnam War: An Intimate History by Geoffrey C. Ward & Ken Burns ($35, PB)
Drawing on hundreds of brand new interviews, Ken Burns & Geoffrey C. Ward show us the war from every perspective: from idealistic US Marines & the families they left behind to the Vietnamese civilians, both North & South, whose homeland was changed for ever; politicians, POWs & anti-war protesters; and the photographers & journalists who risked their lives to tell the truth. This history goes into the grit & chaos of combat, while also outlining the complex chain of political events that led America to Vietnam.
Energy: A Human History by Richard Rhodes
Human beings have confronted the problem of how to draw life from raw material since the beginning of time. Each invention, each discovery, each adaptation brought further challenges, and through such transformations, we arrived at where we are today. Through an unforgettable cast of characters, Pulitzer Prizewinning author Richard Rhodes explains how wood gave way to coal and coal made room for oil, as we now turn to natural gas, nuclear power, and renewable energy. He highlights the successes & failures that led to each breakthrough in energy production, and addressing the spectre of global warming, and a population hurtling towards ten billion by 2100 he details how this knowledge of our history can inform our way tomorrow. ($30, PB)
The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America by Edward L. Ayers ($49.95, HB)
Virginia’s Great Valley, prosperous in peace, invited destruction in war. Voracious Union & Confederate armies ground up the valley, consuming crops, livestock, fences & human life. Pitched battles at Gettysburg, Lynchburg & Cedar Creek punctuated a cycle of vicious attacks & reprisals in which armies burned whole towns for retribution. North of the MasonDixon line, free black families sent husbands & sons to fight with the US Colored Troops. In letters home, even as Lincoln commemorated the dead at Gettysburg, they spoke movingly of a war for emancipation. As defeat & the end of slavery descended on Virginia, with the drama of Reconstruction unfolding in Washington, the classrooms of the Freedmen’s Bureau schools spoke of a new society struggling to emerge. Edward Ayers offers history at its best: powerful, insightful & grounded in human detail
Unfabling the East: The Enlightenment’s Encounter with Asia by Jürgen Osterhammel
During the long 18th century, Europe’s travellers, scholars & intellectuals looked to Asia in a spirit of puzzlement, irony, & openness. Jürgen Osterhammel shows how major figures such as Leibniz, Voltaire, Gibbon & Hegel took a keen interest in Asian culture & history. He introduces lesser-known scientific travellers, colonial administrators, Jesuit missionaries & adventurers who returned home from Asia bearing manuscripts in many exotic languages, huge collections of ethnographic data & stories that sometimes defied belief. Bringing the sights & sounds of this tumultuous age vividly to life, from the salons of Paris to the steppes of Siberia he demonstrates how Europe discovered its own identity anew by measuring itself against its more senior continent, and how it was only toward the end of this period that cruder forms of Eurocentrism—and condescension toward Asia—prevailed. ($63, HB)
The End of the French Intellectual : From Zola to Houllebecq by Shlomo Sand ($40, HB)
Mixing reminiscence and analysis, he revisits a history that, from the Dreyfus Affair through to Charlie Hebdo, seems to him that of a long decline. As a long-time admirer of Zola, Sartre and Camus, Sand is staggered to see what the French intellectual has become today, in such characters as Michel Houellebecq, Eric Zemmour and Alain Finkielkraut. In a work that gives no quarter, and focuses particularly on the Judeophobia and Islamophobia of the elites, he casts on the French intellectual scene a gaze that is both disabused and mordant. 16
Science & Nature
Rare & Wonderful: Treasures from Oxford University Museum of Natural History
Founded in 1860, the Oxford University Museum of Natural History holds over 7 million scientific specimens including 5 million insects, half a million fossil specimens & half a million zoological specimens. It also holds an extensive collection of archival material relating to important naturalists such as Charles Darwin, William Smith, William Jones and James Charles Dale. This lavishly illustrated book features highlights from the collections ranging from the iconic Dodo (the only soft tissue specimen of the species in existence) and the giant tuna (brought back from Madeira on a perilous sea crossing in 1846), to the first described dinosaur bones & a meteorite from the planet Mars. Each item tells a unique story about natural history & the history of science—giving a unique insight into the extraordinary wealth of information & the fascinating tales that can be gleaned from these collections, both from the past & for the future. ($50, HB)
Cosmos Magazine: #79 Winter 2018 ($15, PB)
Inflammation—the source all evils: Dyani Lewis—Cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, even ageing itself all point the finger of blame at a chronically irritated immune system. Jupiter revealed: Richard Lovett—Juno has been in a weird orbit around Jupiter since July 5th, 2016. Its transmissions are sketching an entirely new picture of the mysterious planet. For starters, its red spot seems to be bottomless—and there are two newly discovered radiation belts. Time to rethink Dark matter and Dark Energy? Graham Phillips —They’re an attempt to explain the weirdness of our universe. Galaxies are too light to hang together so there must be dark matter, and the entire universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, ergo dark energy is pushing it apart. Some physicists say these dark theories have not delivered, and it’s time for a rethink.
Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 & the Astronauts who made Man’s First Journey to the Moon by Robert Kurson ($35, PB)
In early 1968, the Apollo programme was on shaky footing. President Kennedy’s end-of-decade deadline to put a man on the Moon was in jeopardy, and the Soviets were threatening to pull ahead in the space race. By August 1968, with its back against the wall, NASA decided to scrap its usual methodical approach and shoot for the heavens. With just four months to prepare, the agency would send the first men in history to the Moon. Focusing on three heroic astronauts and their families, this gripping tale shows anew the epic danger and singular bravery it took for Man to leave Earth for the first time—and to arrive at a new world.
The Re-Origin of Species: A Second Chance for Extinct Animals by Torill Kornfeldt ($35, PB)
From the Siberian permafrost to balmy California, scientists across the globe are working to resurrect all kinds of extinct animals, from ones that just left us to those that have been gone for many thousands of years. Their tools in this hunt are both fossils & cuttingedge genetic technologies. Some of these scientists are driven by sheer curiosity; others view the lost species as a powerful weapon in the fight to preserve rapidly changing ecosystems. It seems certain that these animals will walk the earth again, but what world will that give us? And is any of this a good idea? Science journalist Torill Kornfeldt travelled the world to meet the men & women working to bring these animals back from the dead.
Face to Face by Jim McCaul ($35, PB)
Much of your identity & sense of self is vested in the face you see in the bathroom mirror every morning—imagine that face being so ravaged by cancer, an accident, a fall, a beating, a car crash or a gunshot wound that it is barely recognizable. Maxillofacial surgeon Jim McCaul has helped countless individuals after catastrophic injury or disease, and his book follows the stories of some of these patients. In Face to Face he takes the reader on a journey which includes the most high-tech and complex of microsurgical procedures as well as the facial reconstruction techniques pioneered during the First World War. But at the book’s heart are the human stories of the patients for whom this treatment is often quite literally a matter of life and death.
The Wonderful Mr Willughby by Tim Birkhead
Francis Willughby lived in the midst of the scientific revolution of the 17th century. Along with his Cambridge tutor John Ray, he was determined to overhaul the whole of natural history & impose order on its complexity. Yet before he & Ray could complete their monumental encyclopaedia of birds, Ornithology, Willughby died. In the centuries since, his contribution has been obscured. In his short life, he finessed the differentiation of birds though identification of their distinguishing features & asked questions that were centuries ahead of their time. His discoveries and his approach to natural history continue to be relevant and revelatory today. Tim Birkhead celebrates how Willughby’s endeavours set a standard for the way birds and natural history should be studied. Rich with glorious detail, Birkhead’s book is a fascinating insight into a thrilling period of scientific history & a lively biography of a man who lived at its heart. ($38, HB)
