Melville House Books

Literature & science

• Writers: Don’t sleep

  Kafka, Proust, James Joyce: just a few of many authors who preferred to write through the night. While you’re not going to pen the next Ulysses simply by starting after nightfall,… 3 / Read more »

• Henry David Thoreau, global warming activist

  Considering that we skipped right over winter this year in New York, everyone seems to be talking about climate change lately: “Can you believe this weather? Thanks, global warming!” But… Read more »

• The Edge Question 2012: Cognitive scientists explain how our brains sees the world in metaphors

  On Sunday, Edge posted 192 responses to their annual question. This year’s query, suggested by Steven Pinker, was “WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE DEEP, ELEGANT, OR BEAUTIFUL EXPLANATION?”  The responses—from CEOs,… 1 / Read more »

• Eureka! Secret book by Archimedes discovered

  In what can only be called an incredible feat of conservation technology, a 1,000 year old text by Archimedes is now on view at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.… Read more »

• "To live, to err": Bacteria's DNA misquotes Richard Fenyman, rips off James Joyce

  Last year geneticist Craig Venter made news when, according to Forbes, he “announced that he and a team at his eponymous institute have created a genetic code synthetically and inserted… Read more »

• Lucifer would have fallen down: How Dante's Hell inspired Galileo's science

  A Mount Holyoke College physics professor, Mark Peterson, argues that Galileo Galilei’s love of poetry and artistic impulses played a critical role in his revolutionary re-imagination of the cosmos. At… Read more »

• There are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn't advise you to try to invade . . .

  They’ve become, over the last six months, one of those bothersome things New York’s subway riders have learned to put up with: proselytizers for the Church of Scientology, “stationed at… Read more »

• The robots are coming . . .

  In his forthcoming book, The Singularity Is Near, Ray Kurzweil says “the inevitable next step in the evolutionary process,” an “end-of-humantime event” he calls The Singularity, will take place sometime… Read more »

• Scientists say Crichton's hot air is root cause of global warming . . .

  As The Guardian’s Patrick Barkham puts it, Michael Crichton is “most famous for his far-fetched tale of how dinosaurs could be brought to life with DNA from mosquitoes trapped in… Read more »

• Something goes right for book about things that go wrong . . .

  “For the second year running a work of non-fiction has won the Guardian First Book award,” as Michelle Pauli reports in a story from The Guardian itself. The winner of… Read more »