“... of white racism was already on its way to becoming gospel. But Turnbull called it as he saw it; he may have been wrong, he was certainly subjective, judgmental and naive. His personal life (as we say) added to the myth of the handsome, charming hero. He was born in 1924, the child of a distant Scottish father and an eccentric Irish mother, who, despite being ...”

“... On 23 May 1909, Jacques Deprat left France for Hanoi with his young family to start a career as a geologist in the Service Géologique de l’Indochine. His advancement had been won against the odds. His beginnings were humble, if respectable, and he had progressed by virtue of hard work. He had published brilliant papers on the geological structure of Corsica, which had eventually earned him the respect of a distinguished sponsor, Professor Termier at the Ecole des Mines in Paris ...”

“... millennium in which the championship was a two-horse race – and a very close race, so that there may never be a consensus lasting more than fifty years as to which of them was the winner. Nevertheless, there is a clear distinction in their greatness, one relating purely to its nature, not its degree. It’s that Matisse did not possess or need to possess ...”

“... this recovery of ‘circumstance’ has an invigorating effect on the myths Warner examines. It may be that historical time is richer in the contradiction and instability that keep myths vital than the unchanging Dreamtime or Time of Origins (‘illo tempore’) designated as the true locus of myth by Mircea Eliade. Or perhaps it is simply that Warner is ...”

“... not very left-wing – reforms: regional government had been introduced in the spring, and in May, the Statuto dei Lavoratori guaranteed a number of workplace rights. Most important, a few days before the Borghese coup, the Bill legalising divorce, passed in November 1969, became law. Spain, Greece and Portugal all had Fascist governments: democratic ...”

“... otherwise have been allowed to join the Union. I didn’t mind the question, though. Mormons may no longer be subject to extermination in Missouri (that legislation was rescinded in 1976), but the eleven million Latter-Day Saints – a little under half live in the US – are generally thought to be peculiar, when they are thought of at all. The Church ...”

“... it; and yet she has a thirst for the use of the tongue, and he to yawn with a crony; and they may converse, they’re not aware of it, more than the desert that has drunk a shower. So as soon as possible she’s away to the ladies and he puts on his Club. The resemblances between Meredith’s portrayal of wall-to-wall boredom and Davey’s chapters on ...”

“... those furthest from sea routes, were divided into small chieftaincies headed by men who may or may not have been direct descendants of the Mycenaean ruling elites. Agrarian wealth was limited and they secured their power by beating up the neighbours and helping themselves to flocks, crops and women. They ruled on ...”

“... Indeed, it turns out that quite a lot of perception works this way. ‘You see what you believe’ may be true; but it can’t be the whole truth. Accordingly, a couple of decades of cognitive psychology were invested in a search for ‘mental modules’. Enter the ‘massive’ modularity thesis that pretty much all cognitive processes are performed by ...”

“... entities active in occupied Palestinian territory from participation in bilateral agreements – may start considering other ways to nudge Israel towards the 1967 boundaries. Negotiations about nothing are designed to provide political cover for Israel’s policy of creeping annexation. Now that they’ve collapsed yet again, the strategic asset that is ...”

“... a book, but the gossip was that advances were up, perhaps because editors have money today and may not have any tomorrow. It was the week of Book Expo America, and basements and penthouses had been rented. The view of the halfway finished One World Trade Center was new, but the faces in the crowd were familiar. I spent 11 years in New York, and now I ...”

“... the judicial pendulum to the right, originalism, as Scalia’s diffidence about it foreshadowed, may well become an embarrassment. If it is now being discarded, Balkin has missed the party. The great political accident of Eisenhower’s nomination of Earl Warren to the post of chief justice in 1953 (in return for Warren’s clearing the way for ...”

“... his wartime service as an air-force bombardier, raining destruction out of the skies on Japan, he may have been in the grip of some great, unspecified gravity, as many GIs were. He spent the rest of his life wrestling with that gravity, puzzling to stay positive and afloat, making bad decisions that truly seemed good for a moment, but ultimately ...”

“... and citizens of the same state. Tel Aviv University showed the power of its imagination when, in May 2008, the student council decided to hold the fun and enjoyable annual Day of the Student on the exact day that Palestinians commemorate the Naqba. The excuse given by the student council was that ‘we were not told of the problematic timing of the ...”

“... had to make in order to raise taxes and fund their wars. As Richard Tuck has suggested, it may have been Charles himself who opened the door to democracy in England. Levying an ancient tax on coastal towns (ship money) to fund a naval expedition against the Dutch, the Crown made the claim that the people’s safety was the highest ground for political ...”