Like the cops who chase the gangsters across New York in the 1948 film noir Naked City, Sharon Zukin travels from district to district, describing "How Brooklyn became cool", "Why Harlem is not a...
It is more than 20 years since the United Nations' Brundtland Commission made the optimistic claim that "humanity has the ability to make development sustainable", and it has to be said that, at the...
Jeremy MacClancy is impressed by a study of the way performance can unite disparate groups
Faith and fun would not seem to share much. Faith suggests seriousness, fun lightheartedness. Faith seems to fit the tragic more than the comic. The exemplar of the opposition between faith and fun...
In this timely, well-written study, Sarah Gwyneth Ross charts the rise of secular, learned women in intellectual society in Italy and England from 1400 to 1680. She considers commonalities in "the...
Could there be life on another heavenly body? A study of the possibilities fascinates Lewis Dartnell
It is claimed that the first form of popular literature in the West was the "plague tract", a vernacular genre arising out of the Black Death of 1348, and remaining, so historians have assumed,...
This doorstopper is a magnificent study that is as timely as it is magisterial. Its author, Jonathan R. Cole, has worked with some of the best and brightest, including Robert K. Merton and Paul...
Reactions to 'evil' primate behaviour cast light on the politicisation of science, says Phyllis C. Lee
An overheard conversation in the corridor last week between two (young - aged about 19?) female undergraduates: "But how could you go out with him? I mean, he's so old!" "Yes, but he's sweet and very...
The decades surrounding 1900 were pivotal both for the relationship between abstract mathematics and practical science and changes in Victorian ideas of a gendered intellect. Claire Jones makes a...
A sprawling system needs more democracy and opportunities for graduates, Nayanjot Lahiri writes
LITERATURE- Last Looks, Last Books: Stevens, Plath, Lowell, Bishop, MerrillBy Helen Vendler, A. Kingsley Porter university professor, Harvard University. Princeton University Press, £13.95. ISBN...
CV-boosting encourages astronomically large lists of contributors, says ethicist. Matthew Reisz writes
It is one small step for a student, but a giant leap for the University of Sunderland.Starting in September, law students at the institution can choose to study space law as part of their...