Arts and Humanities Commons^™

"Climatologists drill core samples from rock, soil, and ice, seeking evidence of the most fleeting of natural phenomena: ancient weather. Perhaps it is no coincidence, then, that each of the four sections in Forrest Gander’s Core Samples from the World opens with a poem titled “Evaporation” that simultaneously orients and disorients the reader to what follows." -- From the opening paragraph.

"The difference between utopia and dystopia is awfully — some might say, fatally — thin. Often the difference is only a matter of perspective. Francis Spufford’s Red Plenty contains many instances of double vision that capture both the aspirations and horrors of the Soviet Union..." -- From the opening paragraph.

"Eddie Vedder tore apart a hotel room when he found out Kurt Cobain had killed himself. “Then I just kind of sat in the rubble, which somehow felt right . . . like my world at the moment,” he later told a reporter. Pearl Jam happened to have a visit to the White House scheduled the following day, so on April 9, 1994, Vedder dusted himself off and appeared in the Oval Office. Fearing a rash of copycat suicides, President Clinton pulled the lead singer aside and asked whether he should address the nation. Vedder wisely counseled against it: such …

"Swimming has appeared from time to time in Western literature, often as a test of manly endurance. Odysseus swam for two days in the wine-dark sea, while Beowulf made it for seven, wearing a suit of armor and battling sea monsters along the way. Ben Franklin stripped down, leapt into the Thames, and demonstrated his aquatic expertise all the way from Chelsea to Blackfryars ... Yet Swimming Studies may be the first literary book entirely devoted to the grueling agonies and occasional ecstasies of competitive swimming." -- From the opening paragraph.