Browsing: books

The Wake of HMS ChallengerGillen D’Arcy Wood Princeton Univ. Press (2025)Similar to the global voyage of naturalist Charles Darwin on the HMS Beagle in the 1830s,…

February 19, 20263 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAmRobot libraries filled with tiny glass ‘books’ could store data for millenniaA Microsoft Research study suggests glass…

The prophet Ezekiel once claimed to have seen four beasts emerge from a burning cloud, “sparkling like the colour of burnished brass”. Each had wings and…

Legalised assisted dying should “gradually” be extended to dementia sufferers, the author Ian McEwan has said.McEwan was “shocked by the snow-drilling attempts” by those opposed to…

Myriad, Microscopic and MarvellousGeertje Dekkers Reaktion (2025)In 1674, microbiologist Antoni van Leeuwenhoek made “his most sensational discovery”, writes historian Geertje Dekkers in her revealing, finely illustrated…

Last night, the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, announced a £27.5m package for libraries. It’s the latest in a string of reading-focused government initiatives, the flagship being…

Islands in InfinityDerek Ward-Thompson et al. London Stereoscopic (2025)This spectacular book of photographs of the Universe is dedicated to the late astronomer and broadcaster Patrick Moore,…

GLENDALE, Ariz. — Carson Beck looked left, he looked right and then he saw a clear path out of the desert and back home.Nearly one year…

A girl on the cusp of adolescence gazes down at a book. Her left hand rests against her flushed pink cheeks, while her right clutches the…

Two years ago, I started learning Japanese on Duolingo. At first, the daily accrual of vocabulary was fun. Every lesson earned me experience points – a…