“... at Grunwick in the 1970s, for instance, or the mass campaign to get justice for the family of Stephen Lawrence in the 1990s. It’s easy to single out the excesses of campus politics and go on to depict anti-racism as an elite project – or its opposite, a form of mob rule. It would be harder to do the same with, say, the campaign to ensure that the ...”

“... took root in the public imagination. But it also set some eyes rolling. Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould were critical, and scientists across the board argued that Gaia smacked of teleology or even new-age mysticism. Can we really say a planet is an organism? What if life just evolves and there’s nothing that actually ‘seeks’ to keep it all ...”

“... and Black Triangle.Pring’s book memorialises some of the lives lost. On a university visit, Stephen Carré buys ‘a large, beautiful bear’ for his older sister. Aged seven, Jodey Whiting brings a stray goat back to her grandmother’s house, insisting she wants to adopt it. Errol Graham works on his ‘prized black Mongoose mountain bike, building it ...”

“... like a stock Yiddish character. It is never entirely clear what he is up to. We know that as a young man he moved to Moscow because he was a Communist. But he may have been involved there in something more sinister than tailoring; he may be mad; he may have intended to murder the fashion magnate and fled from a bad conscience. Two American couples are also ...”

“... of the 19th-century counter-Enlightenment – the sadistic reactionary, Joseph de Maistre, the young-Hegelian egoist, Max Stirner, and the masochistic Catholic, Léon Bloy. With these maniac accomplices, the policeman may begin to suspect that Calasso is less the innocent gathering flowers than the underground man who snatches the innocent away. How does ...”

“... boom. In 1982, post-secondary institutions did not need new humanities faculty because of all the young hirings they had made in the early Seventies. Today, there should be numerous vacancies arising from end-of-career retirement, but some 50 per cent of public, four-year institutions are currently imposing a hiring freeze on full-time faculty members, with a ...”

“... some poignant contributions: the broken dreams of Communism reported by former believers; Rabbi Stephen Wise addressing an anti-Nazi rally; John Galsworthy’s protest about planes being used for war – ‘For the love of the sun, and stars and the blue sky, that have given us all our aspirations since the beginning of time, let us leave the air to ...”

“... the cosmic. It seems that Mr Levin’s life was changed by discovering Moby Dick. Mr Johnson, as a young man, found it ‘unintelligible’. Now of course Mr Johnson in some sense took over from Mr Levin at what one is tempted to call the late London Times. He was a little worried, following on in this line: ‘Politics was my trade, not the universe.’ No ...”

“... in which Posner is prepared to advocate a market in parental rights provided those traded are very young children who have not yet bonded. But non-monetary costs and benefits do shape institutions like marriage and cohabitation, especially when partners are freely chosen, and they go a long way in explaining resort to substitutes. The main merit of Posner’s ...”

“... that most offshore fishermen are not driven by the romance of the open sea: ‘By and large, young men from Gloucester find themselves at sea because they’re broke and need money fast.’ The work can pay off. On his only previous trip – also on the Andrea Gail – Bobby made $4,537 in a month on the Grand Banks, and Captain Billy Tyne made ...”

“... his own characteristic way a great man. His son acknowledged this in the wry admiration with which Stephen Dedalus, asked by a friend to define him, speaks of his father in A Portrait of the Artist: ‘A medical student, an oarsman, a tenor, an amateur actor, a shouting politician, a small landlord, a small investor, a drinker, a good fellow, a ...”

“... of money was shown by Quentin Matsys in The Money Changer and His Wife (1514), which depicts a young, smooth-faced woman distracted from her devotions to the Virgin by the glint of the coins her husband is busy weighing out. In his study of early modern genre painting in the city, Larry Silver cites a ballad from 1524:All the world used to be filled with ...”

“... affable front man for the Texas Rangers. ‘You know how it is with those Latin players,’ the young Bush told Sonny with his trademark smirk. ‘The first thing they do when they get that big contract, they go out and buy their wives a new set of titties.’ In another story, Fountain describes 1960s Southern hairdos as looking like ‘heavily shellacked ...”

“... already attracted to the dangerous sport of jousting – was surrounded by a dubious group of young bloods; and all this time Suffolk’s brother, Richard de la Pole, remained out of reach in Aachen. But Henry had done his work well and fate was kind to him: he died in April 1509; the more experienced councillors stitched up Empson and Dudley and managed ...”

“... and obscenities will have to wait for Caro to finish – if they live long enough. Well before Stephen Ambrose got blindsided a few months ago by the plagiarism police, he produced solid biographies of Eisenhower in two volumes (1983-84) and Nixon in three (1987-91). And though William McFeely won a Pulitzer Prize for his Grant (1981), that did not deter ...”