I've finished a number of skinny books recently, none of them altogether satisfying.
The attractively-designed
Schott's Original Miscellany, by Ben Schott, is helpful for its bits of Brit culture, like a mnemonic for the names of the British sovereigns and a collection of Cockney rhyming slang.
Paul Strathern's Kant in 90 Minutes is less than I was looking for, but does contain a simple two-paragraph explanation of the categorical imperative.
Slouching Towards Bethlehem, a collection of essays from the 1960s by Joan Didion, bears one of my favorite book titles, but there's not a lot of there there.
Tom Stoppard's latest published play, the three-part
The Coast of Utopia, is a dramatization of the lives of Russian revolutionaries
Mikhail Bakunin, Alexander Herzen, and others of their circle in the period 1833-1868. Marx makes brief appearances. Dear god, I hope it plays better than it reads: little humor, no tension, scarce lyricism, and all the dramatic events happen offstage.
posted:
8:26:37 PM
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