When done properly, covering science trains a writer to bring clarity to complexity, to embrace nuance, to understand that everything new is built upon old foundations, and to probe the unknown while delimiting the bounds of their own ignorance. The best science writers learn that science is not a procession of facts and breakthroughs, but an erratic stumble toward gradually diminished uncertainty; that peer-reviewed publications are not gospel and even prestigious journals are polluted by nonsense; and that the scientific endeavor is plagued by all-too-human failings such as hubris. All of these qualities should have been invaluable in the midst of a global calamity, where clear explanations were needed, misinformation was rife, and answers were in high demand but short supply.
But the pandemic hasn’t just been a science story. It is an omnicrisis that has warped and upended every aspect of our lives.
Sure, this little story is about software, but it’s also about how we accept and overlook the ways technology is remaking us. Eggers’ arm’s-length relationship with technological novelty gives him a level of insight most of us might not have.
Atticus Lish’s second novel, “The War for Gloria,” is a book about men. To say that about a book in 2021 implies certain things. That perhaps it’s a lyrical critique of machismo or a meditation on the sensitive inner lives beneath tough-guy exteriors.
Nope. “Meditation” isn’t in Lish’s vocabulary — his prose is too rooted in clear physical detail and plain speech for that. And though he’s interested in what makes men men, he approaches his story bluntly, fistwise. “Gloria” is a deeply immersive novel, steeped in tragedies — the chief one being characters who try to muscle their way through problems for lack of other ideas.
This surreal odyssey, propelled by maternal rage, may at times be alienating even to female readers, but it is unequivocally triumphant to witness Watkins writing for herself.
Search History by Eugene Lim charts the swerves that persist across our systems and ideologies. This novel, like Dear Cyborgs, addresses questions around living and thinking in relation to one another, mediated through the internet. And one of the practical results of these questions is a cascade of framing devices.
What sets Sedaris’s diaries apart from his essay collections is not that they’re more intimate (more wouldn’t be possible) or that they show a different aspect of the author or his life, but that the collections themselves are longer. Time passes. Sedaris ages 17 years, from 47 to 64. He watches his literary agent descend into dementia and his aged father discover Fox News. His younger sister Tiffany dies of suicide, and David and his family cope, over time, with layers of grief. Hugh’s hair turns silver.
For the longest part of our history, humans lived as hunter-gatherers who neither experienced economic growth nor worried about its absence. Instead of working many hours each day in order to acquire as much as possible, our nature—insofar as we have one—has been to do the minimum amount of work necessary to underwrite a good life.
This is the central claim of the South African anthropologist James Suzman’s new book, Work: A Deep History, From the Stone Age to the Age of Robots, in which he asks whether we might learn to live like our ancestors did—that is, to value free time over money. Answering that question takes him on a 300-millennium journey through humanity’s existence.
To read The Mirror and the Palette is to be reminded why art history is such a compelling subject. At its best, the field understands art’s place in the world by blending explorations of political and cultural history, religion and mythology, geography and language. Then there is the examination of the art itself, which offers opportunities for one-on-one communion with great works. In lively prose, author Jennifer Higgie touches on all of these bases, taking us through a varied terrain while advancing her illuminating thesis: women have always created self-portraits — regardless of whether the academies and exhibitions that validated the “real” stuff (aka men’s art) — barred the doors.
When she returns, we mostly sit in separate rooms, faces down
into our screens. I hear her leaving him
messages on WeChat. She won’t get out of bed, sleeps with her glasses on.
There is no gentle enough way to wake someone