March 11, 2021 Dear Senators Rubio, Hawley, Braun, and Lee, Thank you for your letter dated February 24, 2021. As a bookseller, we provide our customers with access to a variety of viewpoints, including books that some customers may find objectionable. Amazon works hard to ensure customers have a great shopping experience, and access to … Read more
SOCIETY The Interior Silence By Sarah Sands (Short Books £12.99, 256pp) Speed and judgment are the characteristics of our time,’ says Sarah Sands. And as editor of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme from 2017 to 2020, she found her life was dominated by both. Listeners were divided over Brexit and she describes Today as a lightning … Read more
MEMOIR The Wild Track by Margaret Reynolds with Lucy Reynolds (Doubleday £16.00, 320pp) Mothers frazzled, exasperated and (let’s be honest) often bored at the demands of looking after small children might have surveyed Professor Margaret Reynolds’s life with envy. She was — and still is — a leading academic, a writer and editor, a broadcaster, … Read more
BOOK OF THE WEEK LIFE AFTER GRAVITY: ISAAC NEWTON’S LONDON CAREER by Patricia Fara (OUP £25, 288pp) So who exactly was Sir Isaac Newton? Legend has it that he invented the catflap, although this is much argued over by historians. In his year as an MP, he spoke only once in the House of Commons, … Read more
‘I made the smelliest stink-bomb in history’: Natural History Museum scientist Richard Fortey pens evocative memoir charting his ‘obsession’ with nature which stems from childhood Distinguished scientist Richard Fortey has wrote a memoir about his childhood He is a world expert on trilobites but first found his obsession with nature as boy Fungi, fossils, wildflowers … Read more
UN chief accuses UK of ‘balancing the books on the backs of the starving’ by cutting aid spending to Yemen Mark Lowcock said UK cut to Yemen is ‘balancing books on back of the starving’ UN humanitarian official used to run Department for International Development UK announced aid spending trimmed to 0.5% of national income … Read more
MEMOIR ONE OF THE FAMILY by Nicky Campbell (Hodder £20, 240 pp) Every morning, nothing soothes my blood pressure like the performance of our poodle-cross, Fizzy, playing mother to a dirty sock. She digs one out of the laundry bin without fail after breakfast and nestles it in her dog basket, crooning as she pushes … Read more
FOOD SLOW RISE: A BREAD-MAKING ADVENTURE by Robert Penn (Particular £17.99, 240 pp) Is there any smell more delicious than that of freshly baked bread? No wonder supermarkets pump the aroma through their stores to entice shoppers to spend more. As a nation we love our bread, gobbling nearly 12 million loaves a day. Humans … Read more
WHAT BOOK would author Lionel Shriver take to a desert island? Author and journalist Lionel Shriver is reading Outside Looking In by T. C. Boyle She said that she would take Moby-Dick by Herman Melville to a desert island Books about horses gave Lionel the reading bug, as she was obsessed with them By Daily … Read more
The best things in life really ARE free: From tech entrepreneurs to the fashion industry, author reveals how modern life has ruined our perception of what is ‘truly valuable’ Stephen Bayley urges readers to search for what is truly valuable in a new book He has a hatred for the fashion industry, tech entrepreneurs and … Read more