“... luck, especially in the department of narrative satisfaction. And at least parts of these books may predate No Country and The Road. In his 2017 study of McCarthy’s influences, Books Are Made Out of Books, Michael Lynn Crews writes that a draft of The Passenger has been under seal at Texas State University for years. The New York Times reported that the ...”

“... who just won’t do what we’re told. That’s probably a good thing, though future events may of course provide exceptions to that general rule.Even if​ Daston can sometimes make us seem less pre-modern in our thinking than we are, this is nonetheless a book for our times. It reminds us that developed societies within wide and uniform territories ...”

“... deal of everyone’s time. Previous technologies have expanded communication. But the last round may be contracting it. The eloquence of letters has turned into the unnuanced spareness of texts; the intimacy of phone conversations has turned into the missed signals of mobile phone chat. I think of that lost world, the way we lived before these new networking ...”

“... and show this by their conduct. This is indeed an element in being an independent being, and it may be worth while to have a word to mark it. The core of Regan’s argument is, then, this concept of an independent, conscious being. Reversing the traditional approach, he puts the burden of proof on those who claim that some such beings do not matter – that ...”

“... a weight of psychological and religious investment to be abandoned with impunity. But, as Galileo may or may not have whispered after his 1632 recantation, things do in the end move: for Romans the (imaginary) Rhipaean Mountains retreat further and further as exploration forces back the boundaries of the unknown; the Earth ...”

“... it was almost always necessary to have led troops in combat; but he suspects that personal factors may also have played a part. Austin was unfailingly courteous and supportive to those inferior to him, but prickly and often rude to superiors. Once, with Eisenhower present, in response to an American lieutenant general who expressed doubt during one of his ...”

“... of science is winners’ history. The last proponents of geocentric astronomy or phlogiston may no longer be dismissed as irrational or pigheaded, but their evidence and arguments receive considerably less attention from academics than those of their ultimately successful opponents. And almost no one suggests that the likes of Tycho Brahe or Joseph ...”

“... cast of martyrs – became their supreme reference. This changed rather abruptly after 1891, when May Day parades, whose political origins lay in demonstrations in favour of an eight-hour working day, were endorsed by the Second International as a global working-class festival. The anniversary of the Commune, 18 March, was gradually replaced as the main ...”

“... Last Poemi.m. Derek MahonWe value them, the voicesthat need us least, who speakwith honest subtletyto ironies beyond us,who slip our grasp and gowhistling down endlesscelestial colonnadesof – no, not astral planeswhere the dream-soul wanders,but airport corridors,bus stations, the Gare du Nord,a beach house in Goa,testing posteritywith promises to break ...”

“... life overlooking the Camley Street Nature Reserve. In 1974, in their original spot, the gasometers may have been taken to represent work-to-rule Britain. Or perhaps that’s how we like to think of them now. Others saw them differently, nostalgically, a bit of the North in a place where the train from the actual North met its final stop. The building facing ...”

“... A snake, if a man’s spittle Falls upon it, will wriggle And writhe in frenzied contortions, and may even gnaw Itself to death; and there are certain Trees, should you ever drift off to sleep In their shade, you’d wake clutching your throbbing head as if an axe Had been buried there. The blossom, I’ve heard, of a type of rowan That flourishes in the ...”

“... calceolarias, sure to come back breathless … It’s all set up. Strangers at a concession may find they missed the onion maze phase of the celebrity mash-up. The open system showing its age, they ...”

“... To the pigeons crowding around him in the park, Could they be the same person? The blind woman who may know the answer recalls Seeing a ship as big as a city block All lit up in the night sail past their kitchen window On its way to the dark and stormy Atlantic. All Gone into the Dark Where’s the blind old street preacher led by a little boy Who said the ...”

“... and canyons, down to the picture of this very day, fresh as a haircut, puzzles minds. The year may not remember the hurt, but the hurt does, hidden among lobes of the augur plant or phrasing in the sky. Blown off course, but the course remains, faded watermark, shadow of all resilience, to be found once summer has ended, a random sarcophagus viewed from ...”

“... You’re fastened in a heavy collar of ice. The water slakes its thirst on your blood-warmth. That may not be weed brushing your thigh. Under this green lid, a lost topography of caves and thickets, tenanted by ancients. The drowned swimmer the locals speak of, still clutching his letters of introduction. Perfect sky: low and smoky with rain. The lake bruised ...”