culture July 10, 2013

The Book of Barely Imagined Beings by Caspar Henderson

Even though we have not yet found proof of life beyond our planet, in recent years scientists have detected more and more places in the universe that could support life. It was only two decades ago that astronomers discovered the first planet orbiting a star other than the sun, and now they estimate that the Milky Way alone may be home to over seventeen billion Earth-sized worlds. What might life look like on those faraway planets, where conditions are drastically different from our own? Driven in part by the desire to answer this question, a range of scientists have sought out life-forms that

interviews January 08, 2013

Bookforum talks with Kurt Hollander

Twenty-three years ago, writer Kurt Hollander fled a rapidly gentrifying New York City and settled 2,500 miles south in Mexico City, As the burgeoning megacity’s art scene expanded, he edited the magazine Poliester, ran a pool hall and a bar in the neighborhood of Condesa, directed films, and published several books on Mexican popular culture, Then he got sick.

Twenty-three years ago, writer Kurt Hollander fled a rapidly gentrifying New York City and settled 2,500 miles south in Mexico City. As the burgeoning megacity’s art scene expanded, he edited the magazine Poliester, ran a pool hall and a bar in the neighborhood of Condesa, directed films, and published several books on Mexican popular culture. Then he got sick. I spoke with him over Skype about his new book, Several Ways to Die in Mexico City: An Autobiography, and how to survive in a city that all too often seems like it’s out to kill you.

Bookforum: At the beginning of your book, you allude

culture August 16, 2012

Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus by Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy

In the late nineteenth century, Louis Pasteur’s laboratory assistants made sure to always have a loaded gun on hand. Their boss, who was already famous for his revolutionary work on food safety, had turned his attention to rabies. Since the infectious agent—later identified as a virus—was too small to be isolated at the time, the only way to study the disease was to keep a steady of supply of infected animals in the basement of the Parisian lab. As part of their research, Pasteur and his assistants routinely pinned down rabid dogs and collected vials of their foamy saliva. The risk of losing

culture July 11, 2012

ThermoPoetics: Energy in Victorian Literature and Science by Barri J. Gold

While it is widely accepted that science influences literature, it is a much dicier proposition to suggest that literature influences the sciences. Even physicists, who frequently declare their equations as beautiful as poetry, are rarely willing to cop to being culture-bound. According to English professor Barri J. Gold, however, physics—and nineteenth-century physics in particular—is heavily indebted to literature, and vice versa. In ThermoPoetics: Energy in Victorian Literature and Science, Gold argues that some of the universal truths that eventually ended up codified as “the laws of

culture March 09, 2012

Physics on the Fringe: Smoke Rings, Circlons, and Alternative Theories of Everything by Margaret Wertheim

For fifteen years, science writer Margaret Wertheim has been collecting alternative theories of the universe. Some are poems, others include hand-drawn diagrams, and a few, at first glance, look like academic papers written by professional physicists. They have been sent to her from all over the world by people desperate to share insights about our universe that have either been rejected, or, more likely, ignored by the scientific establishment. Denis Nevin writes from Queensland, Australia, to inform her that the “Big Bang theory accepted by a majority of scientists constitutes the greatest

culture December 30, 2011

The Viral Storm by Nathan Wolfe

Nathan Wolfe is one of the last members of a dying breed: the adventurer scientist. As the founder and CEO of Global Viral Forecasting, he has spent much of his professional life in the jungles of Africa and Asia hunting down new viruses with the goal of stopping the next pandemic before it spreads. He shows off his potent combination of expertise and swagger in his new book, The Viral Storm: The Dawn of a New Pandemic Age, which gamely attempts to explain why humans are more at risk from pandemics than ever before and what we can do to stop them.

Wolfe is an undeniably compelling author—the

Lizzie Wade