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Articles on Books

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Are contemporary insults as witty as the scorn of the past? Ollyy/www.shutterstock.com

Review: the fine art of scorn from Twain to Trump

Scorn has a long and humorous history. But a new book on the subject, featuring quotes from Kanye West, Christopher Hitchens and of course, Donald Trump, rather lacks contemporary wit.
Montaigne: his free-ranging essays were almost scandalous in their day. Étienne Dumonstier/Wikimedia Commons

Guide to the classics: Michel de Montaigne’s Essays

Montaigne anticipated much of modern thought, and was profoundly shaped by the classics. His Essays, so personal yet so urbane, continue to challenge and charm readers.
New forms of entertainment and consumption abound. And yet the book endures. Swikar Patel/AP

The myth of the disappearing book

E-book sales are falling, even though many said they would “kill” print books. Computers and television were also supposed to spell the book’s demise. At one point, people even feared the phonograph.
When did past simple tense become passé, I ask myself. Tekke/Flickr

Getting tense (about tense in fiction)

Writers, over the last decade, have been waxing lyrical about the rise of the present tense in English fiction. But this morning I read something entirely new – for me, at least. I read a manuscript written…
As soon as we defined physical boundaries in buildings, we created the burglar who breaches them. Shutterstock

The burglar as architectural critic?

A new book, A Burglar’s Guide to the City, strays into risky moral territory by lionizing the burglar as an urban and architectural trickster.

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