Love, Money, Sex and Death in the 21st Century by Louis Shalako
A mind-blowing series of essays concerning ten ethical and moral dilemmas facing modern science as well as the rest of humanity. The 21st Century is sure going to be interesting.
In 2022, there were just 42,000 nuns in America and the majority were elderly. For The Baffler, Lauren Fadiman spent some time with Benedictine sisters and explored the history and decline of religious life. "There was a time when the convent was the closest a woman could get to both the Lord and women’s lib," she writes. "The vow of chastity lifted the burdens of early marriage, bad sex, and potentially lethal childbirth; the habit released women from the obligations of beauty; and the requisite knowledge of Latin and a wide range of religious texts required that nuns be well-educated."
Things That Can and Cannot Be Said: Essays and Conversations by Arundhati Roy & John Cusack, 2024
An activist and an actor reflect on Edward Snowden and the surveillance state in this collection that “reads like a whistleblower’s travel diary” (Disorient). In late 2014, Arundhati Roy, John Cusack, and Daniel Ellsberg traveled to Moscow to meet with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Hilary Mantel’s posthumous ‘A memoir of my former self’ is of course of great interest to fans of her fiction, but every one of the disparate, beautifully written pieces in this book is worth reading on its own merits.
FIERY, UNSETTLING, INCISIVE collection of essays delves deep into history and cultural critique as well as the author’s life for a rigorous exploration of power and control, from racism and colonialism to misogyny and sexual violence. A MINUS
In this magnificent and often surprising collection of essays Barthes explores the myths of mass culture. Taking subjects as diverse as wrestling, films, plastic and cars, Barthes elegantly deciphers the symbols and signs embedded deep in familiar aspects of modern life, unmasking the hidden ideologies and meanings which implicitly affect our thought and behaviour.
Numbers and the World Essays on Math and Beyond by David Mumford
The three longest essays touch upon the foundations of mathematics, upon quantum mechanics and Schrödinger's cat phenomena, and upon whether robots will ever have consciousness.
Classic Krakauer Essays on Wilderness and Risk by Jon Krakauer
Spanning an extraordinary range of subjects and locations, these articles take us from a horrifying avalanche on Mt. Everest to a volcano poised to obliterate a big chunk of greater Seattle at any moment; from a wilderness teen-therapy program run by apparent sadists to an otherwordly cave in New Mexico, studied by NASA to better understand Mars...
Fighting Against Western Imperialism by Andre Vltchek compiles ten modified essays that were written during just a few months of the onslaught of the Western imperialism all over the world.
"We were the left edge of America, a refuge from some of its brutalities and conformities, a sanctuary for dissidents and misfits and a laboratory for new ideas. We’re still that lab, but we’re no longer an edge; we’re a global power centre, and what issues from here – including a new super-elite – shapes the world in increasingly disturbing ways."