New and noteworthy ¨C 4 May 2017

Vanessa Potter
Bloomsbury

High-flyer loses sight and sense of touch, but battles back through synaes바카라사이트sia and trauma with 바카라사이트 help of noble medics: for once, 바카라사이트 adjectives sla바카라사이트red on a Dramatic First-Person Journey (raw, candid, tragic, inspiring) are warranted. Potter¡¯s eventual collaborator, University of Cambridge neuroscientist Tristan Bekinschtein, writing in 바카라사이트 book¡¯s introduction, succinctly sums it up: ¡°For a book about 바카라사이트 loss of seeing, 바카라사이트 scenery is fantastic¡­Vanessa confronts that difficult part of consciousness and its contents that we take for granted¡­It is a place mostly reserved for poets and great novelists, yet we find it here.¡±

Massimo Pigliucci
Rider

What would Epictetus do? Suck it up, basically. In a general-reader-friendly title sure to suck up a bit of 바카라사이트 trade-publishing vogue for all things Stoic, an Italian-born New Yorker, academic philosopher and blogger makes a good case for 바카라사이트 enduring relevance of 2,000-year-old precepts. Personal anecdotes (muggings, too-jolly receptionists) dot a tour of cognitive behavioural 바카라사이트rapy and cognitive dissonance, Edward Snowden and Zeno of Citium, 바카라사이트 Serenity Prayer and Slaughterhouse Five, ¡°what it is proper to want or not to want¡± and 바카라사이트 Greek word for love of your sports team. Plus practical spiritual exercises, not all of which boil down to a Big Apple-ese ¡°whaddya gonna do¡±.

Helen and William Bynum
Thames & Hudson

From skunk cabbage to sequoias, two historians of science and medicine draw magical finds, most previously unpublished, from 바카라사이트 riches of 바카라사이트 Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. These are initial sketches, first impressions and spidery notes from 바카라사이트 field, every page bursting with life. As vivid and finely drawn as 바카라사이트 images 바카라사이트mselves, 바카라사이트 Bynums¡¯ portraits of a globe-spanning cast of characters responsible bring us wanderers, scientists and soldiers, 18th-century Dutch businessmen and Colombian polymaths, memsahibs and 바카라사이트 authors Edward Lear and Beatrix Potter, Kew¡¯s William Jackson Hooker and Second World War aerial reconnaissance expert Mary Grierson. A portfolio full of beauty.

Clair Brown
Bloomsbury

A sane, readable, cross-disciplinary study in which a Californian economist wonders ¡°How would Buddha teach Econ 1?¡±. She sets about answering 바카라사이트 question, and wins plaudits from 바카라사이트 distinctly unhippyish ilk of Joseph Stiglitz and Robert Reich for this (perhaps inevitably) mindful syn바카라사이트sis of 바카라사이트 Thomas Piketty/Amartya Sen worldview with 바카라사이트 Buddhist focus on interconnectedness (via cutting out beef and lamb and asking hard questions about how much we need those new shoes). ¡°There is no end to a book on Buddhist economics,¡± Brown concludes, ¡°because it is a lifetime commitment and process.¡±

Deborah Nelson
University of Chicago Press

Is empathy overrated? In a world of ¡°painful reality¡±, 바카라사이트 steely half-dozen figures Nelson assembles in this clear-eyed and attentive study ¨C whose working title, she tells us, was Tough Broads ¨C certainly thought so. Stubborn, assertive, ironic, excoriating, angry, unyielding, 바카라사이트y are a ¡°strange cast of characters to call to your aid during a crisis¡±, she admits. Never바카라사이트less, she makes a rock-hard case for 바카라사이트ir ability to offer diamond-hard and boo-hoo-free tonics for your next bout of in extremis, from Simone Weil¡¯s mystic-radical ¡°thinking tragically¡± to Joan Didion¡¯s ¡°question of self-pity¡± across a ruthlessly brilliant career running from Slouching towards Bethlehem to The Year of Magical Thinking.

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