The First Anthology: 30 Years of the New York Review of Books

Literature & Fiction

Silvers, Robert B.

Essays & Correspondence

New York Review of Books

First Anthology: Thirty Years of the New York Reviews of Books

United States

In a wonderfully readable collection of original essays, five eminent writers Oliver Sacks, Jonathan Miller, Stephen Jay Gould, Daniel J. Kevles, and R.C. Lewontin explore forgotten and neglected aspects of the history of science. No index. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Hidden Histories of Science

Science & Math

History & Philosophy

The author's critique of Freudian psychoanalyis and the "recovered memory" movement, first published in 1993 in The New York Review of Books to a storm of controversy, is presented along with twenty-five responses. IP.

The Memory Wars: Freud's Legacy in Dispute

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Frederick Crews

Psychology & Counseling

In these essays, Jonathan Miller, Oliver Sacks and Daniel Kevles show how and why some discoveries and insights in science emerge with great promise, only to be discarded or forgotten, then re-emerge years later as important. Richard Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould suggest deep and largely unacknowledged distortions in the way scientists and popularizers alike conceive the sturcture of the world and its natural history. Illustrations.

OLIVER SACKS

STEPHEN JAY GOULD

Jonathan Miller

Richard C. Lewontin

Daniel J. Kevles

robert-b-silvers

Biology makes the headlines practically every few weeks as geneticists claim they have accounted for yet another human trait or ailment. However out of complex research have come exaggerations and misunderstandings about what biology, especially genetics can tell us. In this collection of essays from The New York Review of Books, Lewontin demystifies some of the most controversial issues in the life sciences today. On topics ranging from Darwin to Dolly the sheep, including genetic determinism, heredity and natural selection, evolutionary psychology and altruism, sex surveys, cloning and the Human Genome project, he offers both sharp criticisms of the "overweening pride" of scientists and lucid expositions of the exact state of scientific knowledge. In each case he casts an ever-vigilant and deflationary eye on the temptation to overstate the power of biology to explain everything we want to know about ourselves.

It Ain't Necessarily So : The Dream of the Human Genome and Other Illusions

Lewontin, Richard

Evolution

Contempt is a brilliant and unsettling work by one of the revolutionary masters of modern European literature. All the qualities for which Alberto Moravia is justly famous--his cool clarity of expression, his ex acting attention to psychological complexity and social pretension, his still-striki ng openness about sex--are evident in this story of a failing marriage. Contempt (wh ich was to inspire Jean-Luc Godard's no-less-celebrated film) is an unflinching exam ination of desperation and self-deception in the emotional vacuum of modern consumer society. 
Molteni, the narrator, aspires to be a man of letters, but has taken a job as a screenwriter in order to support his beautiful wife, Emilia. Frustrated by his work, he becomes convinced that she no longer loves him--that in fact she despises him--and a s he relentlessly interrogates her about the true nature of her feelings, he makes h is deepest fear (or secret desire) come true.

Contempt (New York Review Books Classics)

MORAVIA, ALBERTO

Contemporary

The novels that the great Italian writer Al berto Moravia produced in the years following the World War II represent an extraord inary survey of the range of human behavior in a fragmented modern society. Boredom, the story of a failed artist and pampered son of a rich family who becomes dangerou sly attached to a young model, examines the complex relations between money, sex, an d imperiled masculinity. This powerful and disturbing study in the pathology of mode rn life is one of the masterworks of a writer who, as Anthony Burgess once rema rked, was always trying to get to the bottom of the human imbroglio.

Boredom (New York Review Books Classics)

ALBERTO MORAVIA

The Argentine writer Julio Cortázar, called by Carlos Fuentes the Simon Bolivar of the Latin American novel, was one of the scintillating geniuses of twentieth-century literature—a writer of sly wit and immense sophistication with a keen eye for character and the workings of social life. The Winners is the story of a luxury cruise, bound for an unknown destination, which runs terribly amok. Funny, frightening, lyrical, and humane, it is a deeply satisfying philosophical novel about crossed lives and wayward love, as well as a brilliant meditation on the myth of the New World.

The Winners (New York Review Books Classics)

CORTAZAR,JULIO

Literary

The papers given at the conference and collected in this volume concentrate on three aspects of Berlin's concept of pluralism. Aileen Kelly, Mark Lilla, and Steven Lukes trace the development and consequences of his distinction between "hedgehogs," thinkers who have a single, unified theory of human action and history, and "foxes," who believe in multiplicity and resist the impulse to subject humanity to a universal vision. Ronald Dworkin, Bernard Williams, Thomas Nagel, and Charles Taylor examine how liberalism can be sustained in the face of Berlin's insight that equally legitimate values, such as liberty and equality, may come into irreconcilable conflict. Avishai Margalit, Richard Wollheim, Michael Walzer, and Robert Silvers take up Berlin's advocacy for the State of Israel and his hopes for it as a place where the often contrary values of liberalism and nationalism might find harmonious resolution.

The Legacy of Isaiah Berlin

Biographies & Memoirs

Professionals & Academics

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