https://arab.news/mjxzp
Edited by John McMurtrie
Extending to the ends of the earth and spanning from ancient Greece to today, “Literary Journeys” is an enthralling book that takes you on a voyage of discovery through some of the most important journeys in literature. In original essays, an international team of literary critics, scholars, and other writers explore exciting, dangerous, tragic, and uplifting journeys in more than 75 classic and popular works of fiction from around the world.
The ways that statisticians and governments measure the economy were developed in the 1940s, when the urgent economic problems were entirely different from those of today.
In “The Measure of Progress,” Diane Coyle argues that the framework underpinning today’s economic statistics is so outdated that it functions as a distorting lens, or even a set of blinkers.
When policymakers rely on such an antiquated conceptual tool, how can they measure, understand, and respond with any precision to what is happening in today’s digital economy?
Author: James Baldwin
James Baldwin’s 1953 essay “Stranger in the Village,” from his seminal collection “Notes of a Native Son,” is a searing exploration of race, identity, and the weight of history.
Baldwin juxtaposes his experience as the first Black man in a remote Swiss village — where villagers gawk, children shout racial epithets, and his presence sparks both fascination and fear — with the entrenched racism of America.
Through this contrast, he dissects the paradox of being perceived as an exotic “stranger” in Europe while remaining an oppressed outsider in his homeland.
Baldwin’s narrative transcends mere anecdote, evolving into a meditation on the legacy of Western colonialism and slavery.
In Switzerland, the villagers’ “innocent” othering lacks the violent history of American racism, yet Baldwin reveals how both contexts dehumanize Blackness.
He argues that white America, built on the subjugation of Black people, cannot escape its past — a past that distorts both the oppressor’s and the oppressed’s sense of self.
“People are trapped in history,” he writes, “and history is trapped in them.”
The essay’s power lies in Baldwin’s ability to weave personal reflection with incisive social critique. His encounters in the village mirror the broader African American experience: the exhaustion of being perpetually “seen but not seen,” and the rage born of systemic erasure.
Yet Baldwin resists despair, asserting that acknowledgment of this shared history is the first step toward liberation, even as he questions whether true equality is achievable.
Stylistically, Baldwin’s prose is both lyrical and unflinching, blending vivid imagery with philosophical depth.
The essay’s enduring relevance lies in its piercing examination of otherness and its challenge to confront uncomfortable truths.
Published over seven decades ago, Baldwin’s call to reckon with history’s ghosts remains urgent, a testament to his unparalleled vision and moral clarity.
Authors: Asier Larramendi & Marco P. Ferretti
Today, only three species of elephants survive—the African savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana), the African forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis), and the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus).
However, these modern giants represent just a fraction of the vast and diverse order of Proboscidea, which includes not only living elephants but also their many extinct relatives.
Over the past 60 million years, proboscideans have evolved and adapted across five continents, giving rise to an astonishing variety of forms.
Author: DAVID ARCHER
In “The Long Thaw,” David Archer, one of the world’s leading climatologists, reveals the hard truth that these changes in climate will be “locked in,” essentially forever.
If you think that global warming means slightly hotter weather and a modest rise in sea levels that will persist only so long as fossil fuels hold out (or until we decide to stop burning them), think again.
Archer predicts that if we continue to emit carbon dioxide we may eventually cancel the next ice age and raise the oceans by 50 meters.
A human-driven, planet-wide thaw has already begun, and will continue to impact Earth’s climate and sea level for hundreds of thousands of years.
Authors: Jean Jouzel, Claude Lorius and Dominique Raynaud
From the Arctic Ocean and ice sheets of Greenland, to the glaciers of the Andes and Himalayas, to the great frozen desert of Antarctica, “The White Planet” takes readers on a spellbinding scientific journey through the shrinking world of ice and snow to tell the story of the expeditions and discoveries that have transformed our understanding of global climate.
Written by three internationally renowned scientists at the center of many breakthroughs in ice core and climate science, this book provides an unparalleled firsthand account of how the “white planet” affects global climate.
