Gin and Secrets

It may be thought that the notorious Cambridge spies – the majority of them members of the Apostles, that university’s secretive, elitist society – had been written out. But, as Stalin’s Apostles makes clear, such is not the case. Most of the books on what the KGB later called their ‘Magnificent Five’ – Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross – have dwelt on their early lives, how they were recruited by Soviet talent spotters and through their individual networks, and how they were allowed to spy, undetected, for so long. Antonia Senior’s message in this carefully researched and well-written book, rich in anecdotes and insights, is indicated by the subtitle. Senior, a former student of Christopher Andrew, the pioneering Cambridge historian of Britain’s security and intelligence agencies, concentrates on the lasting damage that the Cambridge spies inflicted by providing Stalin with crucial information about the Western allies’ strategy and priorities (as well as the development of the atom bomb) when it was becoming evident Germany was losing the war. Richerd Norton-Taylor, Literary Review

spie, Russia e Gran Bretagna: recensione a: Antonia Senior, The Soviet Network. Stalin’s Apostles: The Cambridge Five and the Making of the Soviet Empire (Hodder & Stoughton). 

 

Who Gets Guggenheims?

In recent years, the number of awards has stabilized to roughly 170 to 200 fellowships per year. The Guggenheim awards fellowships that fall into four broad categories: the creative arts, humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences. Since the 1950s, the foundation has gradually increased its share of funding to the creative arts, with the largest reduction coming from fellowships in the natural sciences. Dominique J. Bake, Christopher T. Bennett, Public Books

un articolo lungo e interessante che mette in evidenza anche la diminuzione dei premi assegnati alle Humanities. 

Thinking in the Margins

During our time together, I never saw Oliver annotating a book, and he never spoke about the habit; I don’t think he gave it a second thought. This was just the kind of reader he was: He would spontaneously jot down his reactions, his inner thoughts, in the margins—left, right, bottom, top—or on the endpapers or title pages, often using colored felt pens (red, green, purple, blue), sometimes switching colors on the same page. Oliver’s annotated books began piling up in tower after tower on the floor; ultimately, I found around 500 of them. I felt like I had uncovered a beautiful secret; I knew that I must be the first person (other than Oliver himself) to be reading these long-forgotten thoughts and ideas. Sometimes a book was filled with annotations, cover to cover, and sometimes just a few lines prompted him to take pen to page. To my delight, the public and scholars will be able to discover, decipher, and interpret these “secrets,” too: The New York Public Library now holds Oliver’s annotated books as a complement to its extensive Oliver Sacks archive, acquired in 2024. Bill Hayes, The American Scholar

in questo bell'articolo il partner di Oliver Sacks parla dell'abitudine di Sacks di annotare i libri a margine.

Nonfiction Publishing, Under Threat

The layoffs followed what New York Times publishing reporter Elizabeth A. Harris called a “difficult year” for nonfiction—a year in which only one of the 10 strongest-selling nonfiction books was a new book: the Kamala Harris campaign memoir 107 Days. “The decline in sales of new nonfiction might reflect a changing information ecosystem,” Elizabeth Harris observed. “People looking for information can now easily turn to chatbots, YouTube, podcasts and other free online sources.” Last December, The Guardian cited NielsenIQ figures indicating a one-year drop of 8.4 percent in nonfiction book sales (twice that of fiction) and quoted a writer who had “heard publishers have soured on any nonfiction that isn’t ‘Hollywood friendly.’” Paul Elie, New Republic

On Satire

For as long as there has been satire there has been an effort to explain what exactly it is. A vast critical literature chews over matters of definition and classification. But the task has never fallen only to critics and theorists. [...]

For Dan Sperrin in State of Ridicule, the basic definition of satire is unambiguous: satire is political. It “offers interpretations of power,” though its point is never merely interpretive. It wants to intercede in matters of state and government, sometimes in support of the existing regime and frequently in opposition to it. For hundreds of years English satire has been consumed with recurring subjects and problems: the legitimacy of rule, the succession of dynasties, the ambition of prime ministers, the administration of government. Aaron Matz, The New York Review 

il libro di cui si parla è: State of Ridicule: A History of Satire in English Literature, di Dan Sperrin (Princeton University Press)

 

The Last Drop

How much of your life is spent waiting for the last drops of syrup, olive oil, or even bodywash to drip from a container? This routine test of patience is owed entirely to complex fluid dynamics. But thanks to physicists at Brown University, people no longer have to guess how long it may take to finally empty that bottle of ketchup—provided you are well-versed in the right math. Andrew Paul, Popular Science

in effetti, io ci sto sempre attenta, a consumare fino all'ultima goccia... 

A Very Cold Winter

A Very Cold Winter, by Fausta Cialente, translated from the Italian by Julia Nelsen (Transit). This novel, the first of the undersung writer’s books to appear in English, opens in 1946, just as winter is descending on Milan. An extended family of nine is preparing to hunker down in an attic apartment, a dilapidated space “divided up with curtains and partitions.” Though they share tight quarters, the family members—siblings, cousins, in-laws—are all preoccupied by disparate fixations. An omniscient narrator roves through the characters’ perspectives, illuminating their individual desires—to become an actor and a writer, to marry and to move out. Trapped “in the middle of a barren, frozen plain, without horizons,” a reality for which winter is not solely to blame, the family contends with what it means to move on in the aftermath of war. The New Yorker

The Dark Side of Kodak

In her new book, Tales of a Militant Chemistry, Alice Lovejoy ’01 tells a different kind of war story, about the role film companies themselves played in developing weapons of war. At the same time the United States was fighting Nazi Germany, her book reveals, film giant Kodak was fighting its chief rival, German film and chemical company Agfa, both contributing to their respective war efforts. [...]

Later, the U.S. military asked Kodak to help enrich uranium for the Manhattan Project using centrifuges at its chemical subsidiary, Tennessee Eastman. At the same time, rival Agfa was producing chemical weapons in Germany, using forced labor from concentration camps.

Kodak continued its relationship with the military after the war, helping photograph nuclear tests in Nevada. When radioactive particles showed up while developing film at company headquarters in Rochester, New York, Kodak became part of a secret network of sites to test the flow of harmful radioactive fallout in the atmosphere, even as the larger public was kept in the dark.

“You can see the tension that exists between producing these technologies and living with the consequences of them,” says Lovejoy. Those are questions we’re still grappling with, she says, adding that some factories involved in cell phone production use rare earth minerals from war-torn areas. “It’s part of a larger history about what produces media and what it might mean to make industries more ethical and sustainable.” Michael Blanding, The Brown Alumni Magazine

il libro di cui si parla è: Alice Lovejoy, Tales of a Militant Chemistry (University of California Press). 

 

Neighbors

For as long as we’ve had homes, we’ve had neighbors—which is to say, we’ve had neighbor problems. [...] 

This kind of conflict—heightened, in modern times, by the advent of the doorbell camera and the erosion of the social contract—is the stuff of “Neighbors,” a new documentary series on HBO created by Dylan Redford (grandson of Robert) and Harrison Fishman (ancestry unknown). The show focusses on disputes between homeowners that, in many cases, have evolved into debilitating, years-long feuds. Tyler Foggatt, The New Yorker

International Booker Prize 2026 Longlist

 “Many of the submitted books examined the devastating consequences of war, which is reflected in our longlist,” said judging chair and novelist Natasha Brown. “The list also features petty squabbles between neighbours, mysterious mountain villages, big pharma conspiracies, witchy women, ill-fated lovers, a haunted prison, and obscure film references. The page counts range from ‘pocket-friendly’ to ‘doorstopper’. And while the books’ original publication dates span four decades, each story feels fresh and innovative.” Ella Creamer, The Guardian