Subtitled: When Explorers Connected the World—And Globalization Began Valerie Hansen, the Stanley Woodward Professor of History at Yale University, came upon the idea for The Year 1000 when she reflected on the fact that Norse people landed at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland within a scant few years of when major Central Asian (the Karakhanids taking of Kashgar) and Chinese (Song and Liao dynasties) territorial expansions took place. Each of these important events were deeply influenced...
March 27, 2024
"One Hour of Fervor" by Muriel Barbery
Translated from the French by Alison AndersonAuthor Muriel Barbery combines a light touch with deep, enigmatic insights to propel a profound and moving story in One Hour of Fervor. It’s superb, another bravura performance from the novelist who enriched all our lives with The Elegance of the Hedgehog. She sets Fervor in Kyoto, a calm and beautiful city (in which Barbery has a residence), and the culture of this setting affects everything. It strips conversation and action to their essences, with...
March 13, 2024
"The Rise and Reign of the Mammals" by Steve Brusatte
Subtitled: A New History, From the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to UsA few hundred thousand years after the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs, a tiny individual primate called Purgatorius died in the Purgatory Hill badlands of Montana. Its tiny fossilized teeth led scientists to conclude that it was the species that broke away from its insect-eating cousins and was the first primate. Much, much earlier, in the Carboniferous period of Paleozoic Era, about 330 million years ago, the first...
Posts
