Recent Reviews

2 July 2009 (216 words)

Women in a River Landscape (Heinrich Böll)
A Novel in Dialogues and Soliloquies

22 June 2009 (130)

Hammerklavier (Yasmina Reza)
- a pointillist rumination on music, mortality and memory

21 June 2009 (863)

*The Last Imaginary Place (Robert McGhee)
A Human History of the Arctic World

12 June 2009 (564)

Proust and the Squid (Maryanne Wolf)
The Story and Science of the Reading Brain

7 June 2009 (318)

Faded Portraits (E. Breton de Nijs)
A Novel of the Indies

27 May 2009 (656)

Dangerous Sanctuaries (Sarah Kenyon Lischer)
Refugee Camps, Civil War, and the Dilemmas of Humanitarian Aid

24 May 2009 (245)

Women Without Men (Shahrnush Parsipur)
A Novel of Modern Iran

18 May 2009 (397)

Throwim Way Leg (Tim Flannery)
- a biologist's adventures in the New Guinea highlands

10 May 2009 (374)

The Social Amoebae (John Tyler Bonner)
The Biology of Cellular Slime Molds

29 April 2009 (180)

Guilt about the Past (Bernhard Schlink)
- the post-war German experience

26 April 2009 (526)

The Red and the Black (Stendhal)
A Chronicle of the 19th Century

23 April 2009 (343)

The Middle Path (Eric Lambin)
Avoiding Environmental Catastrophe

10 April 2009 (585)

Bills of Rights in Australia (Byrnes, Charlesworth, McKinnon)
History, Politics and Law

5 April 2009 (767)

*Medieval Islamic Medicine (Peter E. Pormann, Emilie Savage-Smith)
- origins, theory, practice, social context

29 March 2009 (893)

Snake Oil Science (R. Barker Bausell)
The Truth About Complementary and Alternative Medicine

24 March 2009 (619)

Mirror of the Indies (Rob Nieuwenhuys)
A History of Dutch Colonial Literature

21 March 2009 (401)

The Photographs of Baldwin Spencer (Allen, Batty, Morton)
- Aboriginal photographs from 1894 to 1923

5 March 2009 (1119)

**Debunking Economics (Steve Keen)
The Naked Emperor of the Social Sciences

4 March 2009 (458)

Epidemics Laid Low (Patrice Bourdelais)
- a history of public health responses in Western Europe

25 February 2009 (232)

*Black Parrot, Green Crow (Houshang Golshiri)
- short stories from modern Iran

19 February 2009 (571)

The Black Swan (Nassim Nicholas Taleb)
The Impact of the Highly Improbable

13 February 2009 (937)

Charles Darwin (Janet Browne)
Voyaging; The Power of Place

11 February 2009 (546)

DNA, Words and Models (Robin, Rodolphe, Schbath)
Statistics of Exceptional Words

27 January 2009 (869)

*A Natural History of Conifers (Aljos Farjon)
- evolution, systematics, biogeography, ecology, conservation

26 January 2009 (306)

Censoring Culture (Robert Atkins, Svetlana Mintcheva)
Contemporary Threats to Free Expression

12 January 2009 (337)

Iron Kingdom (Christopher Clark)
The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947

4 January 2009 (503)

The Turnpike Road System in England 1663-1840 (William Albert)
- development, administration, finance; repair and transport costs

3 January 2009 (218)

The Lecture (Lydie Salvayre)
- a comic extravaganza of a monologue

1 January 2009 (257)

*Aboriginal Art (Wally Caruana)
- brief description and analysis of 200 works, with photographs

23 December 2008 (458)

Lords and Lemurs (Alison Jolly)
Mad Scientists, Kings with Spears, and the Survival of Diversity in Madagascar

10 December 2008 (333)

War Trash (Ha Jin)
- the story of a Chinese prisoner-of-war in Korea

8 December 2008 (755)

Artificial Sunshine (Maureen Dillon)
A Social History of Domestic Lighting

29 November 2008 (346)

Outlaws of the Marsh (Shi Nai'an, Luo Guanzhong)
- an abridgement of the classic Chinese novel

21 November 2008 (278)

*Soul of the Desert (Philippa Nikulinsky, Stephen D Hopper)
- botanical and zoological illustrations from Australian deserts

15 November 2008 (521)

Development Economics (Debraj Ray)
- a textbook survey

10 November 2008 (454)

Much Sounding of Bugles (John Harris)
The Siege of Chitral, 1895

2 November 2008 (230)

Kipling Stories (Rudyard Kipling)
Twenty-eight Exciting Tales by the Master Storyteller

1 November 2008 (291)

Uncommon People (Eric Hobsbawm)
Resistance, Rebellion, and Jazz

22 October 2008 (623)

The Anatomy of Fascism (Robert O. Paxton)
- a historical approach

11 October 2008 (250)

The Truth About the Savolta Case (Eduardo Mendoza)
- violence and intrigue in 1918 Barcelona

2 October 2008 (361)

Violence in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1800 (Julius R. Ruff)
- a wide-ranging survey

28 September 2008 (274)

*Reads Like a Novel (Daniel Pennac)
- teaching and learning a love of reading

Full chronological listing (long)