“... accounts of them regularly fill the review columns of the Sunday papers. But the idea of the self may be less simple than naive readers imagine; the writer of an autobiography may be not so much expressing a self as creating one in the process of writing his book, a point made in these two new studies of autobiography. It ...”

“... Scaramucci, Trump’s short-lived director of communications (whose main achievement in life may be his name), say that all this is a form of madness, speculating that Trump is either carrying out a very public suicide or exhibiting some weird genius for survival. But is it really either/or? We have wandered into a psychoanalytic wonderland. Elected ...”

“... The impact of Covid-19 has only made the situation more desperate. By the end of the third week of May, Libya had tested 4351 people and had 71 confirmed cases, including three deaths, though it’s likely that the real numbers are much higher, with many unrecognised cases among the hundreds of thousands of sub-Saharan migrants in the country. Unauthorised ...”

“... these “rights” require a substructure of things and materials and actions; and other people may have rights and entitlements over these.’ Now, almost thirty years later, we have another critique of equality of opportunity, another attack by a well-trained philosopher on this apparently moderate ideal. Matt Cavanagh’s attack is not the same as ...”

“... things, after all, might turn out to be less simple than he had assumed. Its short-term effect may be rather slight, in the sense that little will be set in motion by reading it, but the long-term effect may well be to alter, subtly but permanently, one’s vision of social theory and its object. As admirably brought out ...”

“... of them will read it in fearful anticipation of what they will learn and of the loss of hope it may entail. The author has a special responsibility to such readers. Yet, as the book shows, it is difficult, even for those treating cancer, to be calm and objective about the disease. Cancers are common, and often, but not always fatal. The disease inspires ...”

“... in or entering the country. The present system, sanctioned by legislation, is that the police may take and keep a DNA sample from everyone they arrest, whether or not the person is charged or convicted. This has the unfortunate effect of putting the innocent on a par with the guilty. It draws a not very logical line between innocent people who have and ...”

“... phase of the 1920s and 1930s. This joining of the festive with the lethal provokes thought. There may well be some long line in English culture that links the Christmas visit to The Mousetrap with a point at least as far back as that splendid moment in Medieval literature when the Green Knight, his head cut off, stoops to pick up the rolling object, and rides ...”

“... than under Tyrants. Everyone knows that democracies, though they clothe themselves in virtue, may get travestied by the inwardly vicious. Everyone also suspects himself, as Scott Fitzgerald noted, of possessing at least one cardinal virtue. Where politicians continually have to flatter a demos that sees them as clay-footed, each citizen, banjaxed and ...”

“... by Planned Parenthood of South-Eastern Pa. v. Casey, a 1992 decision which held that states may not place an ‘undue burden’ on women’s rights to abortion prior to foetal viability through the imposition of a ‘substantial obstacle’ to abortion access. Given that SB8 makes abortion unlawful in most cases, it seems to be, in the words of Justice ...”

“... aspect of the topic unexamined, tries to answer in his final pages. Peculiar to one profession it may be, but as this intelligent, and only from time to time laborious study frequently reminds us, the condition cannot be totally unrelated to other psychic distresses that do not express themselves as an inability to put pen to paper. So the scope of the book ...”

“... garbage-can of shattered loyalties, or a cemetery of projects without a future. There may be leaders who still believe that patience and courage can save the day for the sovereignties they claim to govern. In other cases, more numerous, governments without talent and politicians without conscience wade ever deeper into the miseries of failure. No ...”

“... the question of whether or not they should have been published at all. But such doubts as she may have had, and conquered, have apparently nothing to do with the amount of coverage her mother’s life needs or justifies. She obviously feels the subject is inexhaustible. Many readers might disagree. We already have Antonia White’s sequence of unashamedly ...”

“... long-awaited Life of Picasso will leave its readers waiting impatiently for Volume Two. Long may it go on. Meanwhile it is a special kind of pleasure to be able to praise the book of an old and close friend, and be confident that the praise has nothing to do with the friendship. Volume One has an extraordinary story to tell. We might have expected to ...”

“... many of the most fundamental and difficult ideas in contemporary science. To give a list, which may be meaningful only to scientists, they discuss the concepts of equilibrium, competition, natural selection, entropy and information, symmetry and group theory, pattern formation, and conservative and dissipative structures. At the same time, they apply these ...”