"The Twelfth Victim arises out of a 1950s Crime of the Century known as the Starkweather Rampage. Its namesake, Charles Starkweather, was hardly a poster boy for, well, a Most Wanted poster. He was a short, red-headed, bow-legged, nineteen-year-old from Lincoln, Nebraska. Nevertheless, during the space of two months he murdered eleven people in Nebraska and Wyoming, terrified the citizens of those states, and horrified the nation."
To say that the good Cosby has done outweighs the bad is, at best, to oversimplify matters and, at worst, to make a morally dubious statement. (Try saying that about a philanthropist who raped your sister, daughter, or wife.) It is of limited use, too, to say that we must always separate the artist from the art if we are to enjoy art at all. That is because, in this case, the person we took to be Cosby is—was?—his art. Maybe, maybe, it is possible to hang onto that persona, a positive force in the world, even as we know that it is the creation of that other Cosby; but between the two of them, they have broken my heart.
A lifelong devotee of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's famous book believes it was written as a means of catharsis, a format for working through the author’s angst and examining repressed memories. But perhaps it was also simply a means of escaping the horrors of man and instead immersing himself in the gentler, more innocent, world of children.
Two new children's books show us what most adults already know: that kids handle adolescence differently, and that growing up is by turns confusing, hilarious, and yes, sometimes scary. But in just the right light, and often only in retrospect, it is nothing short of an adventure.
Revolutionary Medicine offers a history of the lives of the rich and powerful, but also a window into how health and disease were experienced by ordinary folk in Revolutionary-era United States.
Respect science and the Nobel Prize. But we shouldn't lose our heads over it when past winners have clearly lost theirs.
The question of the origin of our moon may sound frivolous, but it's a serious question that could reveal much about life on Earth.
For some readers, this may be a new and exciting–even revolutionary!–perspective on the historical Jesus. Aslan certainly hopes so: he describes Zealot as the culmination of “two decades of rigorous academic research into the origins of Christianity.” For scholars, however, Aslan’s research is neither novel nor especially rigorous. It is clear that Aslan has indeed been fascinated by the historical Jesus since his teenage years, but he is not an academic specialist in the New Testament or in early Christianity, and he does himself a disservice by portraying himself as one.
"What is important in this volume is not necessarily Akin’s history of his career. Rather the book illustrates the key characteristics of many in the Christian right who make a difference at the ballot box. When there is such fundamental belief in certain tenets, political and societal division is inevitable and gridlock prevails."
Despite mockery of the suffix, scientifically-validated 'omics'—genomics, proteonomics, metabolomics—are becoming valuable tools for biomedical research.