Some interesting books/articles from the TLS this week:
Mark Synnott, The Third Pole: My Everest Climb to find the truth about Mallory and Irvine (Headline) [Reviewed by Jonathan Buckley. The historical quest provides an excuse for climbing a mountain that he didn’t want to climb, providing insights into our contemporary attitudes towards mountains and nature.].
Gordon Campbell, Norse America: The Story of a Founding Myth (OUP) [Reviewed by Jane Kershaw. An examination about what the myth of Norse discovery has meant for America, up to and including the recent storming of the capital].
Alice Oswald and Paul Keegan (editors), Gigantic Cinema: A Weather Anthology (Cape) [Reviewed by Nancy Campbell. An engaging collection of writing on the weather from around the world].
Lisa Taddeo, Animal (Bloomsbury Circus) [Reviewed by Beejay Silcox. An intense novel focused on the experiences of Joan, who is ‘trained in the art of sexual combat’, and describes herself as depraved. Taddeo was recently interviewed on Front Row].
Jessica Kilburn, Thomas Hennell: The Land and the Mind (Pimpernel Press). [Reviewed by Susan Owens. A life of the largely forgotten English landscape painter Thomas Hennell, who worked largely in the early C.20th].
Glenn Frankel, Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, Sex, Lonliness, Liberation, and the Making of a Dark Classic (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) [Reviewed by Keith Hopper. Sounds like a very interesting book that explores the making of the 1969 film Midnight Cowboy staring Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman. It was an important exploration of gay relationships and the only X-rated film to win best picture at the Oscars].
Kate Darling, The New Breed: How to Think about Robots (Allen Lane) [Reviewed by Regina Rini. Sociologist of robotics arguing that we should treat robots like animals. They are not going to take over the world just yet…. Regina Rini explores some of the problems with this and the power it gives to AI companies.].
Religion, Environment, History 