I am not being funny when I say of Edward Wilson’s latest book that there are interesting and informative chapters on human evolution, and on the ways of social insects (which he knows better than any man alive), and it was a good idea to write a book comparing these two pinnacles of social evolution, but unfortunately one is obliged to wade through many pages of erroneous and downright perverse misunderstandings of evolutionary theory. In particular, Wilson now rejects “kin selection” (I shall explain this below) and replaces it with a revival of “group selection”—the poorly defined and incoherent view that evolution is driven by the differential survival of whole groups of organisms.

Gretchen Reynolds writes the New York Times’ “Phys Ed” column and has been a devotee of physical exercise — particularly running — for decades. In her work, she’s discovered that while inactivity can drastically shorten the healthy lifespan, most of the benefits of working out don’t require hours of effort or marathon-type training.

Russian novelist, playwright, short story writer, and essayist, whose famous anti-utopia My (1924, We) prefigured Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932), and inspired George Orwell's 1984 (1949). The book was considered a "malicious slander on socialism" in the Soviet Union, and it was not until 1988 when Zamyatin was rehabilitated. In the English-speaking world My has appeared in several translations.

Since Goldziher’s day, scholars have been actively pursuing his approach, deepening and developing it into a full-scale account of early Islamic history, one that disputes nearly every detail of Mohammed’s life as conventionally understood — born in a.d. 570, first revelation in 610, flight to Medina in 622, death in 632. But this revisionist history has remained a virtual secret among specialists. For example, Patricia Crone and Michael Cook, authors of the synoptic Hagarism (Cambridge University Press, 1977), deliberately wrote obliquely, thereby hiding their message.

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Now, however, two scholars have separately ended this secrecy: Tom Holland with In the Shadow of the Sword, and Robert Spencer with Did Muhammad Exist? As their titles suggest, Spencer is the bolder author, and so is my focus here.

Albert Campion is a fictional character in a series of detective novels and short stories by Margery Allingham. He first appeared as a supporting character in The Crime at Black Dudley (1929), an adventure story involving a ring of criminals, and would go on to feature in another 17 novels and over 20 short stories. Supposedly created as a parody of Dorothy L. Sayers' detective Lord Peter Wimsey,[1] Campion established his own identity, and matured and developed as the series progressed. After Allingham's death her husband Philip Youngman Carter completed her last Campion book and wrote two more before his own death.

Hard Times - For These Times (commonly known as Hard Times) is the tenth novel by Charles Dickens, first published in 1854. The book appraises English society and is aimed at highlighting the social and economic pressures of the times.

King Canute has had a raw deal from history. He took his throne down to the beach in order to show his servile courtiers that not even a king could control the waves (that was in God’s power alone). But, ironically, he is now most often remembered as the silly old duffer who got soaked on the seashore because he thought he could master the tides. When, for example, Ryan Giggs tried last year to use a super-injunction to stop the swell of news about his private life, he was hailed as ‘the King Canute of football’.

For Aloys Winterling, the Emperor Caligula offers another case of the Canute problem. He has generally gone down in history as a mad megalomaniac: so mad that he gave his favourite horse a palace, lavish purple clothing, a retinue of servants, and even had plans to appoint it to the consulship, the highest political office below the emperor himself. In fact (so Winterling argues) his extravagant treatment of the animal was a pointed joke. Caligula was satirising the aims and ambitions of the Roman aristocracy: in their pursuit of luxury and empty honours, they appeared no less silly than the horse.

This web site is intended to provide an extensive free library of written content to everyone on the Internet, eventually containing a comprehensive collection of high-quality books and periodical issues.

Since all this content is intended to be permanently and transparently available, students, academics, and journalists may freely use this valuable content, perhaps producing additional writings hyperlinked to these important source materials. This content is provided, in part, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.

A written index for a book or a periodical is merely the precursor of a search-engine; a footnote in a book or article is merely the precursor of a hyperlink. This web site might ultimately allow an unlimited amount of previously produced written content to be easily enhanced with these new capabilities.

Sincerely,

Ron Unz, Chairman
UNZ.org

You may think that guidebooks put out by museums to highlight their most prized possessions should be on the endangered list too. Or maybe not. Consider a new one for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Equipped with a soft but durable cover and about the dimensions of a middleweight novel, “The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide” (distributed by Yale University Press, $24.95) displays in 449 pages images and brief descriptions of 600 of the Met’s nearly two million works.

A Cultural History of Physics is a grand monument to the life of its author. Karoly Simonyi was teacher first, scholar second, and scientist third. His book likewise has three components. First a text, describing the history of science over the last four thousand years in a rich context of philosophy, art and literature. Second, a collection of illustrations, many of them taken from Hungarian archives and museums unknown to Western readers, giving concrete reality to historical events.Third an anthology of quotations from writers in many languages, beginning with Aeschylus in "Prometheus Bound", describing how his hero brought knowledge and technical skills to mankind, and ending with Blaise Pascal in "Pensées", describing how our awareness of our bodies and minds remains an eternal mystery. Different readers will have different preferences. For me, the quotations are the most precious part of the book. Dip anywhere among these pages, and you will find a quotation that is surprising and illuminating.

I have a vivid memory of my one meeting with the author. I came with his son Charles Simonyi to visit him in his home in Budapest. He had an amazing collection of books that had survived centuries of turbulent history. Several of them had bullet holes from the various battles that were fought in the neighboring streets. Many of them were historically important relics from the early days of printing. He proudly showed me these treasures, and even more proudly showed me the German edition of A Cultural History of Physics, which he had recently translated from the Hungarian original. I had only a few minutes to explore the beauties of this work, but I recognized it at once as a unique and magnificent achievement. Now it is finally available in English, and we can enjoy it at our leisure.

The story revolves around five wealthy and ambitious American girls, their guardians and the titled, landed but impoverished Englishmen who marry them as the girls participate in the London Season in search of a titled English gentleman for matrimonial purposes. As the novel progresses, the plot follows Nan and her marriage to the Duke of Tintagel.

It is a story of the morals held by fashionable society at the time, when it was considered more important to marry for social position than for romantic love. The novel is also a poignant example of art imitating life, since one of the stories resembles the ill-fated marriage of heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt and the Duke of Marlborough, as well as Lady Randolph Churchill's marriages, to some extent.

Silicon Valley, Singapore, Tel Aviv--the global hubs of entrepreneurial activity--all bear the marks of government investment. Yet, for every public intervention that spurs entrepreneurial activity, there are many failed efforts that waste untold billions in taxpayer dollars. When has governmental sponsorship succeeded in boosting growth, and when has it fallen terribly short? Should the government be involved in such undertakings at all? Boulevard of Broken Dreams is the first extensive look at the ways governments have supported entrepreneurs and venture capitalists across decades and continents. Josh Lerner, one of the foremost experts in the field, provides valuable insights into why some public initiatives work while others are hobbled by pitfalls, and he offers suggestions for how public ventures should be implemented in the future.

Discussing the complex history of Silicon Valley and other pioneering centers of venture capital, Lerner uncovers the extent of government influence in prompting growth. He examines the public strategies used to advance new ventures, points to the challenges of these endeavors, and reveals the common flaws undermining far too many programs--poor design, a lack of understanding for the entrepreneurial process, and implementation problems. Lerner explains why governments cannot dictate how venture markets evolve, and why they must balance their positions as catalysts with an awareness of their limited ability to stimulate the entrepreneurial sector.

As governments worldwide seek to spur economic growth in ever more aggressive ways, Boulevard of Broken Dreams offers an important caution. The book argues for a careful approach to government support of entrepreneurial activities, so that the mistakes of earlier efforts are not repeated.

Josh Lerner is the Jacob H. Schiff Professor of Investment Banking at Harvard Business School, with a joint appointment in finance and entrepreneurial management. He is the coauthor of Innovation and Its Discontents (Princeton), The Venture Capital Cycle, and other books.

The passion of the teacher is often the inspiration for a student. This lively book illuminates how economics affects all walks of life, whether in the marketplace, voting booth, church, family, or any human activity. Boettke believes that economics is not merely a game to be played by clever professionals, but a discipline that touches on the most pressing practical issues at any historical juncture. The wealth and poverty of nations are at stake; the length and quality of life turns on the economic conditions individuals find themselves living with.

So teaching and learning economics are high stakes ventures. Along the way he introduces us to major thinkers: from Smith, Say, and Bastiat of the Classical School, to Neoclassical and Austrian scholars (Menger, Mises, Hayek, Kirzner, and Rothbard) on to New Institutional economists (Alchian, Coase, Demsetz, North, Ostrom and Williamson) and Public Choice theorists (Buchanan, Tullock, and others). This engaging and reasoned book is a must-read for economists, students, and everyone else who wishes to better understand economics.

"It is customary for many people to blame economics for being backward," Mises wrote in Human Action. "Now it is quite obvious that our economic theory is not perfect. There is no such thing as perfection in human knowledge, nor for that matter in any other human achievement. Omniscience is denied to man. The most elaborate theory that seems to satisfy completely our thirst for knowledge may one day be amended or supplanted by a new theory. Science does not give us absolute and final certainty. It only gives us assurance within the limits of our mental abilities and the prevailing state of scientific thought. A scientific system is but one station in an endlessly progressing search for knowledge. It is necessarily affected by the insufficiency inherent in every human effort. But to acknowledge these facts does not mean that present-day economics is backward. It merely means that economics is a living thing--and to live implies both imperfection and change."

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The Clay Sanskrit Library is a series of books covering a wide spectrum of Classical Sanskrit literature spanning two millennia. Bound in the convenient pocket size (4.5" x 6.5") in an elegant design, each work features the original Sanskrit text in transliterated Roman letters on the left-hand page with its English translation on the facing page.

Ruth Barbara Rendell, Baroness Rendell of Babergh, CBE, (born 17 February 1930), who also writes under the pseudonym Barbara Vine, is an English crime writer, author of psychological thrillers and murder mysteries.

The social scientist talks to Ed Luce about black-truffle pasta, blue-collar America, and why the Republican party’s candidates for the White House fill him with despair

In 1945, Vannevar Bush argued that the work of navigating the world’s information would one day fall to a professional caste of hardy souls “who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record.” Google rendered that profession unnecessary, but not obsolete; our current obsession with online curation has only begun to fulfill this prediction.

Experience books a new way by viewing all the people, places and things inside them. Choose any person, place or thing and discover everywhere it leads.