Search

Somewhere in a cave in the north of Spain there is a prehistoric painting that appears to move. This uncanny phenomenon was described by Francis Bacon in a recorded conversation [...]

ON NOT BEING SOMEONE ELSE Tales of our unled lives ANDREW H. MILLER 232pp. Harvard University Press. 23.95 [pounds sterling] (US $29.95). MOST ADULTS THINK, more or less frequently, of [...]

GOOD HUSBANDRY Growing a family on a community farm KRISTIN KIMBALL 304pp. Granta. 14.99 [pounds sterling]. My father, who farms cattle , is also an academic. My uncle, who grows [...]

Leah Price WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT BOOKS 224 pp. Little, Brown. 20 [pounds sterling]. 978 0 465 04268 5 Over the past two decades, the demise [...]

MARY BEARD John Williams's novel Stoner became a must-read rediscovery of 2013. I'm afraid I resisted. But I am intending to sit down this summer with the last of his [...]

This article examines the presentation of humans as a subject of ecological and behavioral study in academic biology textbooks and essay collections. It aims to expand a channel of inquiry into the ways in which human relationships with other species are articulated in scientific discourse during an era of anthropogenic climate change (the Anthropocene). Both humans and nonhumans are subjects of behavioral ecology because they undergo evolutionary adaptation. However, the notion that biologists can use evolutionary adaptation to explain human behavior has been much disputed. The article uses literary analysis to argue that a range of behavioral ecology publications, which all use evolutionary adaptation to explain biological processes, employ a variety of textual strategies to situate the human in relation to other species. Rather than arguing that any single approach is particularly appropriate, the focus is on variety as a sign of the complexity of contemporary human and nonhuman identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Werner Herzog SCENARIOS Translated by Martje Herzog and Alan Greenberg 368pp. University of Minnesota Press. Paperback, 16.45 [pounds sterling] (US $22.95). 978 1 5179 0390 9 Roger Ebert HERZOG BY [...]

Tessa Hadley THE PAST 368pp. Cape. 16.99 [pounds sterling]. 978 0 224 10169 1 Four middle-aged siblings, Harriet, Roland, Alice and Fran, with a crew of partners, children and an [...]

Akhil Sharma FAMILY LIFE 224pp. Faber. 14.99 [pounds sterling]. 978 0 571 31426 0 US: Norton. $23.95. 978 0 393 06005 8 Ajay is eight years old when his family [...]

Deborah Kay Davies REASONS SHE GOES TO THE WOODS 256pp. Oneworld. 14.99 [pounds sterling]. 978 1 78074 376 9 Pearl is a little girl. She is clever, brutal, brave, and [...]

Erik Orsenna THE INDIES ENTERPRISE Translated by Anthea Bell 320pp. Haus. 17.99 [pounds sterling]. 978 1 906598 93 8 Erik Orsenna is a French Academician who has, during his time [...]

In 1678 a committee of Fellows of the Royal Society was appointed to oversee the production of an ‘English Atlas’ in co-operation with the printer Moses Pitt. The new atlas was to be large and grand, published in eleven volumes with hundreds of maps. It was, as the official proposal put it, no less than ‘a new and Accurat description of the World’. However, it was never brought to completion. This article examines unpublished mathematical papers which document John Pell’s attempts to devise a projectional model in accordance with the published proposals for the atlas. Proposals and advertisements for potential collaborators, composed and circulated by the committee, put forward a representation of idealised cartographic practice. However, when it came to calculating the projection, Pell struggled to accommodate these idealised practices. Pell’s mathematical papers, previously unexamined, afford an unusual perspective on the Royal Society’s methods, and suggest that failures, as well as successes, influenced the developing identity of the scientific community. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]