Chicago -
By Rusty Blazenhoff/Boing Boing
Known for his distinctive ink-spatter style and contributions to “gonzo journalism,” counterculture cartoonist Ralph Steadman’s career is examined in a new 368-page hardcover book. Ralph Steadman: A Life in Ink ($60) is available now.
Posted on November 30, 2020
By Elizabeth Svoboda/Undark
In 2015, Megan Rosenbloom traveled to Harvard University’s Houghton Library in search of a book called Des destinées de l’âme (“Destinies of the Soul”) by the French author Arsène Houssaye. This copy of Houssaye’s masterwork had a singular distinction: At the time, it was the only book on the planet proven to be bound in human skin.
For Rosenbloom, a librarian at UCLA, the trip served as her entrée into a field she’d studied for years: “anthropodermic bibliopegy,” the practice of binding books in human epidermis.
It’s easy to assume this topic is too restricted or too gruesome for a book of its own, but Dark Archives: A Librarian’s Investigation Into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin proves that assumption wrong. As Rosenbloom crisscrosses the globe to confirm the purported origins of skin-bound books – a cracking detective story in itself – her journey offers unusual insight into what defines informed consent, what separates homage from exploitation, and how power disparities can breed casual inhumanity.
Posted on November 22, 2020
By W. Joseph Campbell/The Conversation
Polling is hardly a flamboyant field that attracts a lot of colorful characters. It is a rather reserved profession that now finds itself under siege in the aftermath of yet another polling surprise in a national election.
The field is buffeted by intense criticism – by even extreme claims that it may be doomed – following mischaracterizations in national polls that Joe Biden was bound for a blowout victory.
Many pre-election polls suggested it was to be a “blue wave” election in which Biden would easily take over the White House, while fellow Democrats would sweep to control in the Senate and fortify their majority in the House of Representatives.
The 2020 election was closer and more complex than most national polls indicated, and it marked the second successive polling surprise in a U.S. presidential election. In 2016, polls in key Great Lakes states underestimated support for Donald Trump, states that were crucial to his winning the White House.
In its troubled hour, polling could use a prominent, outspoken and irreverent character who knows the profession’s intricacies and whose default isn’t to defensiveness. Such a figure could place polling’s latest misstep in useful and plausible perspective, and do so candidly, without seeming too haughty or arcane about it.
Posted on November 17, 2020
By Wikipedia
When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World is a classic work of social psychology by Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter published in 1956, which studied a small UFO religion in Chicago called the Seekers that believed in an imminent apocalypse and its coping mechanisms after the event did not occur. Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance can account for the psychological consequences of disconfirmed expectations. One of the first published cases of dissonance was reported in this book.
Posted on November 11, 2020
By Susan Cosier/Undark
Roughly 123,000 years ago, oak, elm and hazel forests grew across Europe. Macaques swung from branches and aurochs and horses grazed on grasslands. Hippopotamuses swam in deep lakebeds in what is now Yorkshire, England. Small bands of Neanderthals, who had already existed for more than 200,000 years, frequented lakes and springs and hunted in the forests.
The continent was remarkably warm – even warmer than it is today – and the period marked a point of Neanderthal culture that we don’t often associate with the species, according to Rebecca Wragg Sykes in her compelling new book, Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art.
Long portrayed as a cave-dwelling Ice Age species, Neanderthals persisted for about another 80,000 years, living through many frigid glacial periods in an epoch of vast and sudden climate change before eventually giving way to modern humans.
Posted on November 8, 2020
By Jennifer Shanahan/Chicago Literary Hall of Fame
A quarantine classic.
Posted on November 4, 2020
