The German philosopher and sociologist Theodor Adorno (1903-1969) remains famous today for his Marxist critiques of popular culture as well as for a prose style as intricately knotty as a macrame vest. Among his most characteristically memorable pronouncements was this: “The critique of culture is confronted with the last stage in the dialectic of culture […]
Walking the streets, the young narrator proclaims, “I come from the City of Jasmine…where sweet scents dance in the wind, filling air, calming hearts.” Statements that begin with the phrase “I come from” introduce descriptions of other locations, among them the Umayyad Mosque, Qala’at Dimashq (the Citadel of Damascus), and the oasis of Ghouta—all of […]
Aulkendale City, known as “the Sore of the Southern Continent,” is home to drinking establishments, wealthy nobles, and a red tent community of vagrants and outcasts. Phyllis, who later goes by Phillip, has an uncanny, unexplained ability to snatch people’s body parts without killing them. The angsty 17-year-old usually runs around with Lucent, a nearly-400-year-old […]
Karl Marx, historian Hartman writes, was fascinated by the U.S. as “the nation most committed to the economic and social systems formed by capitalism.” He had fleeting hope that his concept of freedom as encompassing economic independence would find a home in the U.S., even as Abraham Lincoln—who, casual readers might not know, was the […]
Industrialization has ravaged Earth, and the Concerns (i.e., corporations) that govern the planet are desperate for resources and locations to colonize. Everyone or everything must be of use to the Concerns, or they’ll be discarded. So the scientific team in orbit around Shroud, a moon with an extraordinary amount of electromagnetic radiation and what actually […]
Rocco Vittori, a fallen star of Formula 1, is desperate to reclaim his place on the podium. Nico Angelini, a fiercely talented and trailblazing driver, is determined to rise to the top of a sport that’s long shut out women like her. The pair’s rivalry kicks off in the public arena of social media and […]
An unseen narrator reminds Alpaca to “pack-a a snack-a.” Then Alpaca and Mom walk to the bus stop and wait. (Mom will be fine while Alpaca’s at school, the narrator reassures readers.) At school, the sounds of footsteps going “click-clack-a” reverberate through the hallways; Principal Quack-awelcomes everyone. Alpaca’s a bit worried—will the teacher, Miss Yak-a, […]
Holt, a journalist who has written several books about overlooked women in history, here turns her attention to an odd gap in the world of natural history—namely, the lack of any formal record of the giant panda, “whose whereabouts, habitat, and behavior were still unknown” other than by anecdote outside China. Indeed, when Kermit and […]
In her fourth book set in a region unknown to many readers, Kassabova examines the threats facing one of the few remaining nomadic peoples in modernity: the Karakachans, “Greek speakers of mysterious origin” whose homeland is “impossible to know.” Moving their animals in search of fresh pasture, they have spent centuries breeding ancient races of […]
In humanity’s space-colonizing future, would-be Mars settler Michelle Arensen tries to put the suicide of her father behind her, working with her husband and brother to build a lasting Red Planet base. Suddenly, a bizarre phenomenon engulfs Michelle and other women on the expedition who find themselves held prisoner by faceless, noncommunicative humanoids. After a […]