James Le Fanu
The Topography of Infection
Disease Maps: Epidemics on the Ground
By Tom Koch
University of Chicago Press 368pp £29
By themselves solitary statistics may be dreary things but when aggregated together they can reveal, with unarguable precision, phenomena or patterns of events that would otherwise be concealed from view. Tom Koch’s Disease Maps examines the particularly persuasive instance of the value of the statistical method when used to condense a mass of data into a single arresting ‘portrait’ of a disease.
Thus a sequence of maps depicting the rising number of cases of the AIDS epidemic in the United States throughout the 1980s captures its deadly toll and massive concentration in metropolitan New York on the east coast and San Francisco on the west. More recently, in 2009, when
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Under its longest-serving editor, Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair was that rare thing – a New York society magazine that published serious journalism.
@PeterPeteryork looks at what Carter got right.
Peter York - Deluxe Editions
Peter York: Deluxe Editions - When the Going Was Good: An Editor’s Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines by Graydon Carter
literaryreview.co.uk
Henry James returned to America in 1904 with three objectives: to see his brother William, to deliver a series of lectures on Balzac, and to gather material for a pair of books about modern America.
Peter Rose follows James out west.
Peter Rose - The Restless Analyst
Peter Rose: The Restless Analyst - Henry James Comes Home: Rediscovering America in the Gilded Age by Peter Brooks...
literaryreview.co.uk
Vladimir Putin served his apprenticeship in the KGB toward the end of the Cold War, a period during which Western societies were infiltrated by so-called 'illegals'.
Piers Brendon examines how the culture of Soviet spycraft shaped his thinking.
Piers Brendon - Tinker, Tailor, Sleeper, Troll
Piers Brendon: Tinker, Tailor, Sleeper, Troll - The Illegals: Russia’s Most Audacious Spies and the Plot to Infiltrate the West by Shaun Walker
literaryreview.co.uk