Its 234 pages contained some 38,000 words, but not one of them was readable. The book’s unnamed author had written it, likely with a quill pen, in symbols never before seen. Did they represent a natural language, such as Latin? A constructed language, like Esperanto? A secret code? Gibberish? Scholars had no real idea. To Davis, however, the manuscript felt alive with meaning.
Global average surface temperatures have risen by about 1.1°C (2°F) since the pre-industrial era, with most of this warming occurring in the past 40 years. Ice is melting; seas are steadily rising; storms are – well, you know this story. And yet, most frequently, it is still a story of the world out there: the world outside of us. The narrative of climate change is one of meteorological extremes, economic upheaval and biodiversity losses. But perhaps it is worth taking a maybe-mad Ruskin seriously. What of our internal clouds? As the climate crisis warps weather and acidifies oceans and shatters temperature records with frightening regularity, one is tempted to ask if our minds are changing in kind.
My father had few enthusiasms, but he loved comedy. He was a comedy nerd, though this is so common a condition in Britain as to be almost not worth mentioning. Like most Britons, Harvey gathered his family around the defunct hearth each night to watch the same half-hour comic situations repeatedly, in reruns and on video. We knew the “Dead Parrot” sketch by heart. We had the usual religious feeling for “Monty Python’s Life of Brian.” If we were notable in any way, it was not in kind but in extent. In our wood-cabinet music center, comedy records outnumbered the Beatles. The Goons’ “I’m Walking Backward for Christmas” got an airing all year long. We liked to think of ourselves as particular, on guard against slapstick’s easy laughs—Benny Hill was beneath our collective consideration. I suppose the more precise term is “comedy snobs.”
Still, the missing person drama is the meat of this story. Though not exactly a thriller, there’s more than enough plot, and quite a few twists, to keep readers quickly turning the pages. Just don’t turn them so quickly you miss the central messages Porter is delivering. The rich people may get to go away, but we should really work towards a more equitable society so that they don’t feel like they have to.
Sophie Brickman has teased a light, summer read, but delivered a satire of the American ruling class. Underneath the petty, Gossip Girl-like promise of a catty, back-stabbing novel, Plays Well With Others is actually a deep criticism of class and wealth mocking the fintech rulers who walk among us.
As director of the Carl Sagan Center for Research at the SETI Institute, astrobiologist Nathalie A. Cabrol’s work is focused on answering the question of whether we’re alone in the universe.
In “The Secret Life of the Universe: An Astrobiologist’s Search for the Origins and Frontiers of Life,” readers won’t walk away with a clear-cut answer to that question. But they’ll have a newfound appreciation for the massive scientific undertaking that is moving closer toward finding one.