Books

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Book of the week: Great writing can enlighten and encourage dialogue between disciplines, says Gary Morson

Do ancient cultural ideas drive the insistence that Greece pay all its bills in full? asks Emma Gee

James Stevens Curl on a tome that emphasises the physician/naturalist’s role in transforming cabinets of curiosities into major institutions of the Enlightenment

Free market ideology has contributed to ‘vaccine hesitancy’, endangering us all, says Harry Collins

A study of one of Europe’s leading thinkers on sexuality contends that brutality is a force behind much queer activism and political thinking

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Book of the week: Bryan Cheyette straddles truth and fiction in observer accounts of anti-Semitic persecution

Gender still matters, even for Angela Merkel; the future of education and Moocs; religion and terrorism; sports fandom; and the rise of the coroner

Language is key to making sense of people, finds Martin Cohen, but beware words’ flexible meanings

A study of snakebite gives a good overview of the development of the written scientific method, says Geoffrey Cantor

To properly appreciate a work of art we must judge it, not simply adhere to the modern paradigm of explaining it in context, contends Gary Day

Enduring popularity of flesh-eating monsters is a response to real threats, says Marcus Leaning

Book of the week: Behind a veneer of amiability, Randy Malamud finds discord, cruelty and a ‘cultural charade’

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Matthew Reisz wonders how nature’s polymorphous perversity will win support for the political cause of sexual equality

‘Archive fever’, the desire to know one’s lineage, is a focus of this judicious study, says Devorah Baum

Joanna Bourke on a powerful meditation on the politics of mourning focusing on the Women in Black of Belgrade

Bibliophiles in the 1700s liked soundbites and sharing. Are we so different, asks Valerie Sanders

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Peter J. Smith on a study of the interrelationship between visual culture and the theatre in 16th- and 17th-century England

The professor of history discusses the ‘crisis of multiculturalism in Europe’

Book of the week: A cancerous, consumer-driven capitalism has weakened higher education, says David Wheeler

The notion that only the ‘left-behind’ poor are xenophobic is a myth, Eliane Glaser learns

Steven Yearley considers the argument that metropolitan centres, not nation states, hold the power to take the lead on climate change

Quislings who joined Nazis to survive were erased from Russian history, observes Jonathan Mirsky

Catherine Clinton enters the beguiling lost world of a complex literary figure and seeker of truth

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Muslim superheroes, the language and literature of clouds, painterly prose and myths about rings

Book of the week: Human actions have killed off some species but may be kick-starting new ones, writes Jules Pretty

‘Nice’ kids are still being told not to do ‘it’, setting off a dangerous dissembling, says Angelia Wilson

A study of female NGO workers and the migrants they interact with examines the relationship in all its complexity, says Emma Rees

Even scientists may be unmoved by evidence on how to make teaching better, finds Jennifer Rohn

Richard Joyner enjoys a tour of the novel substances that might give tomorrow its form, including a substance seven times less dense than air

Two books use graphic formats to address the big questions in physics and the gaps in our knowledge, cross-examining Einstein et al and musing over love handles and farts. Matthew Reisz writes

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Book of the week: Apps are taking us places, fast – but do we always want to go? John Gilbey considers the value of rapidly changing tech

Scholars and senior sector figures reveal the books they’ll be reading over the summer break – for work or pleasure or both – in part two of our annual round-up of holiday reads

Takeovers of empty properties reveal different conceptions of community, Clare Griffiths writes

Lisa Mckenzie on the property speculation that extracts profit from a global city by pushing out the working classes

It was cheap reprints that took modernism from niche to popular, says Rebecca Bowler

What’s in a book cover? Grace Lees-Maffei examines a history of graphic design in Russian fiction

Book of the week: Sharon Wheeler investigates how mystery writers play a guessing game with their reader-sleuths

The professor of English and author of Epistrophies discusses the literary works that sing out to him

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

A slim volume masters a millennium’s worth of material, but women fall away, says Rachel Moss

Lincoln Allison confronts the objectives of an anecdotal and argumentative narrative

When considering what exactly makes one creature equal to another, John Shand finds that an animal’s potential holds the key

James Stevens Curl heaps praise on a fascinating study and pays tribute to the scholarly tenacity that it is built on

Cultivating climate-friendly habits, a masculine discourse on devilry, how to power up and power through scholarly writing, and Black Power’s push into the centre

Book of the week: Tom Stafford on an account of how social activity, not brilliant individual deduction, leads to truth

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

A divided nation where the rich rule the working poor is not limited to fiction, finds Nicola Ingram

For those interested in imagining the kind of world we want to live in, Guy Standing’s case for providing all citizens with a basic income makes a convincing read, says Lorenza Antonucci

An actor’s eye and ear brings fresh insight to aspects of the Bard’s works, says Lisa Hopkins

Shahidha Bari follows the historical trail to see how the author of Pride and Prejudice became the celebrity figure we know today

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Book of the week: Joanna Bourke on the gruelling truths faced by injured soldiers, and their carers and families

In his new column that will focus on unusual books and interesting developments in academic publishing, Matthew Reisz considers a strange and mind-bendingly entertaining book