Wow, wow, wow! The current issue of The New York Review of Books, December 3, 2020, has not less than seven essays that look really, really interesting/promising:
- "Suffering, Unfaltering Manet," Manet and Modern Beauty: The Artist's Last Years, art exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago and the J. Paul Getty Museum, 384 pp, $65. I assume it's one of those coffee-table art catalogues.
- "Cartographers of Stone and Air," Listening to the Wind: The Connemara Trilogy: Part One; and, Heaven's Breath: A Natural History of the Wind, Lyall Watson, each about 400 pages long; each paper back; each about $19.
- "In The Soup," The Genesis Quest: The Geniuses and Eccentrics on a Journey to Uncover the Origin of Life on Earth, Michael Marshall, 360 pp, $26.
- "The Power Brokers," Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power, Pekka Hämäläinen, 530 pp, paperback; $22.
- "The Devil Had Nothing To Do With It," several books on Robert Johnson reviewed.
- "Life, Death, and the Levys," Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century, Sarah Abrevaya Stein, 317 pp, paperback, $28.
- "Dudes Without Heirs," Beowulf, translated from the Old English by Maria Dahvana Headley, 138 pp, softcover, $15.00 Yes, yet another translation of Beowulf. One wonders how many of these translations started out as / were theses for PhD candidates? Essay by Irina Dumitrescu, professor English Medieval Studiss at the University of Bonn.
I was most curious about Pekka Hämäläinen. His abbreviated wiki bio:
Pekka Johannes Hämäläinen is a Finnish professor of history. His prize-winning book, The Comanche Empire, was published in 2008. Since 2012, he has been the Rhodes Professor of American History at the University of Oxford. He was formerly in the History Department at University of California, Santa Barbara.
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Notes On The Above After Reading The Essays
"In The Soup." It appears there is nothing new in the book that I have not read in the books in my library on the origin of life. It appears the only new advancement is the movement from alkaline vents in the depths of oceans to pools on land that moved back and forth between wetting and drying. It was not mentioned in the article, but this would take us to tidal pools dependent on the moon but more likely researchers are talking about pools that become much drier than tidal pools become. This is important because many scientists argue that life on earth would not have been possible without the earth's moon. I won't be buying this book simply because it seems that 90% of the book is a re-hash of what has gone before.
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Amazon Announces New Fulfillment Center: OKC
Link here, press release. Data points:
- Oklahoma City, OK
- anticipated to launch in 2021
- will create 500 new full-time jobs
