No books hold so many hostages to fortunes as those about national character. They leave themselves open to charges of crude essentialising and inevitable incompleteness. Counter examples will be brandished like trumps and gripes aired about some crucial overlooked behaviour or attitude that supposedly encapsulates a people. But in the case of the French, as […]
Jonathan Fenby ends his history of France from the Revolution to the present day on a fashionably gloomy note: The level of unhappiness two centuries after the Revolution and the empire had ended … was, at base, rooted in a determination to stick to an image of the French nation which had been outpaced by […]
‘What a novel my life has been!’ Patrice Gueniffey opens this magisterial and often exhilarating biography with Napoleon’s words, uttered in conversation with Emmanuel de Las Cases during his exile on St Helena. They go far to explain the emperor’s continued appeal to scholars and the general public alike, but they also hint at one […]
Napoleon was not a modest man. He had no doubt of his genius, or that it was innate. He was successful because of ‘the special gift I received at birth … Everywhere I have been, I have commanded … I was born for that.’ Luck and good fortune were important, but not decisive: No sustained […]
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Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm