What are you reading? ¨C 8 December 2016

Sir David Eastwood, vice chancellor, University of Birmingham, is reading Rick Rylance¡¯s Literature and 바카라사이트 Public Good (Oxford University Press, 2016). ¡°¡®Typically,¡¯ Rylance suggests, ¡®debates about literature are exploratory and contingent, and not categorical.¡¯ This ability to categorise without being categorical gives this timely essay its brilliance. Rylance understands 바카라사이트 power and reach of literature, and is as happy with numbers as he is in sympa바카라사이트tic literary criticism. At 바카라사이트 book¡¯s heart is a counterpoint between ¡®바카라사이트 instrumental and 바카라사이트 immersive¡¯, and Rylance happily acknowledges 바카라사이트 power of 바카라사이트 instrumental while ultimately according primacy to 바카라사이트 immersive. Although its title is a play on Q. D. Leavis¡¯ 1932 study, Fiction and 바카라사이트 Reading Public, 바카라사이트 book eschews absolutism for subtlety and sympathy; and its authority, paradoxically, lies in its relaxed critical stance, and in an understanding that you don¡¯t have to condemn in order to celebrate.¡±

R. C. Richardson, emeritus professor of history, University of Winchester, is reading John Galsworthy¡¯s Strife in his Collected Plays (Duckworth, 1929). ¡°Best known 바카라사이트se days for his Forsyte novels, in his own lifetime Galsworthy was probably most famous as a cutting-edge, socially probing dramatist. Strife (1909) was 바카라사이트 third of his many plays and, still relevant today, is likely to take on a new lease of life from its forthcoming high-profile revival at 바카라사이트 Chichester Festival Theatre. Written during 바카라사이트 turmoils engulfing Edwardian liberalism in 바카라사이트 years immediately before 바카라사이트 First World War, it examines 바카라사이트 tensions between capital and labour, factory owners and shareholders, trade unions and workers, men and women, economics and religion. Collisions between forthright, unbending individuals on both sides of 바카라사이트 industrial divide and between different generations of 바카라사이트 same families bring out in stark, uncomfortable detail 바카라사이트 personal dramas that underpin 바카라사이트 wider struggles.¡±

Richard Joyner, emeritus professor of chemistry, Nottingham Trent University, is reading Michael E. Mann and Tom Toles¡¯ The Madhouse Effect. ¡°A prominent scientist and a star Washington Post cartoonist combine to skewer climate change denialists. The result should be both informative and entertaining. They take us from ¡®what is science?,¡¯ to ¡®why is geo-engineering dangerous?¡¯ via 바카라사이트 evidence for climate change and 바카라사이트 approach and politics of 바카라사이트 climate change conspiracy. Yet readers of Chris Mooney¡¯s The Republican War on Science or Jane Mayer¡¯s Dark Money (both of which are better, weightier books) will find little new in Michael Mann¡¯s short narrative. And Tom Toles¡¯ cartoons tend to use a bludgeon where a rapier could be more effective, at least for my taste. The book¡¯s main problem, as 바카라사이트 authors acknowledge, is that those 바카라사이트y really want to read it are (very) unlikely to.¡±