Can Galileo’s literary preferences teach us about “the unusual and creative features of his physics?” John L. Heilbron thinks so.
Galileo’s Taste; Galileo’s Work; Galileo’s Life
Occupy and Occupy!
As the various Occupy protests endure another week, Todd Gitlin‘s excellent piece in the LA Review of Books is an eloquent exploration of what the movement means. Across the country, Brooklyn-based n+1‘s ambitious gazette, Occupy!, is available for free download (PDF).
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College Football, Academics, and Great Journalism
College football season is upon us, and I’d be remiss not to highlight the recent flood of fantastic writing on my favorite televised sport. Most striking is Pulitzer Prize-winner Taylor Branch‘s Atlantic article “The Shame of College Sports.” It’s accompanied by several other takes on the issue. In regards to academia, this New York Times piece on the University of Chicago’s football team demonstrates that tension between educators and football fans is nothing new. (A sentiment the paper illustrated in a 2006 piece on Ivy League football.) However, as Gregg Easterbrook notes, major football programs can also demonstrate success in the classroom as well. Finally, and on a purely emotional level, I will always seize any opportunity to share this fantastic ESPN story by Eric Adelson.
Is There Life on Pallas?
John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar isn’t the only vintage science fiction novel making waves this week. Andrew Joron takes a look at “German fantasist” Paul Scheerbart’s Lesabéndio – a 1913 novel that was recently reissued by the folks at Wakefield Press.
Travelogue
Recommended: Year in Reading alumna Sheila Heti on her time at the Cuirt Literary Festival.
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“Poems Are Unimportant”
“Poems are unimportant,” said Boris Pasternak, author of Doctor Zhivago, though Kate Angus and our own Nick Ripatrazone certainly disagree.
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“In such circumstances, how could there fail to be a swarm of ghosts?”
Recommended Reading: People Who Eat Darkness author Richard Lloyd Parry’s stunning essay on Reverend Kaneda, a Japanese monk performing exorcisms to solve his region’s “ghost problem.”
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