PENGUIN CLASSICS THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON
JAMES BOSWELL (1740-95) was born in Edinburgh and studied law at Edinburgh University and at Utrecht. At the insistence of his domineering father he practised as an advocate, but he was greatly...
The narrative describes the life of an Englishman, stolen from a well-to-do family as a child and raised by Gypsies who eventually makes his way to sea. One half of the book concerns Singleton’s crossing of Africa and the later half concerns his...
As Kelvin Throop once observed, a lot of humanity’s troubles are caused by fluids going where they’re not wanted or not going—or staying—where they’re...
Ted Chiang has made his bones in SF as a master of the short story, so a much longer work than is customary comes as a surprise. "The typical science-fiction depiction of AI is this loyal, obedient butler; you simply flip a switch, turn it on and...
The Light and the Dark is the second in the Strangers and Brothers series. The story is set in Cambridge, but the plot also moves to Monte Carlo, Berlin and Switzerland. Lewis Eliot narrates the career of a childhood friend. Roy Calvert is a...
The crowning achievement of any professional writer is to get paid twice for the same material: write a piece for one publisher and then tweak it just enough that you can turn around and sell it to someone else. While it’s specious to accuse...