Screen by Jessica Helfand — She Saw the Wreckage Before the Crash
Twenty-three essays. Two hundred pages. Published in 2001, when most people were still calling the…
Fearsome Fauna: A Field Guide to the Creatures That Live in You — Roger M. Knutson
Pick this book up and the cover alone does something to you. Illustrated parasites curl…
The Confidence-Man by Herman Melville — The Con Is the Country
Every April Fools’ Day, a stranger boards a Mississippi steamboat. He changes his face, his…
The Religions of the Oppressed by Vittorio Lanternari — When the Powerless Invent Their Own God
Desperation is the mother of theology. That’s what I kept thinking as I worked through…
The Old Régime and the French Revolution by Alexis de Tocqueville — The Revolution That Already Happened
Revolutions don’t begin with the first shot. They begin long before anyone picks up a…
Descartes’ Error by Antonio Damasio — The Body Was Never Separate from the Mind
A review of Antonio Damasio’s Descartes’ Error — the neuroscience book that dismantled 350 years of mind-body dualism and proved emotion is the engine of reason.
