Emma Smith’s Portable Magic is a conversational meander through the use and abuse of books in history
Smith guides readers through almost six centuries in which the technology of the codex has remained relatively unchanged.
Tell me a story: Two recent books examine the human impulse toward narrative, for better and worse
"Never trust a storyteller," Gottschall warns, although he also points out that we do, all the time, and it's probably inevitable.
Get smart: John Lorinc and Josh O’Kane examine the limits of smart city technology and Sidewalk Labs’s disastrous Toronto experiment
Taken together, Dream States and Sideways comprise a particularly incisive look at the theory and practice of smart cities.
In It Came from the Closet, queer writers reflect on the horror movies that have influenced, enticed, or repelled them
Together, these essays provide a justification and rationale for queer readings of what may in fact turn out to be one of the queerest genres around.
Harold R. Johnson and Tomson Highway invoke Indigenous knowledge and the Trickster figure in books that seek to recapture connection to the land and ourselves
The two Indigenous authors offer different ways of thinking about the stories we tell ourselves and providing suggestions for how to rewrite those stories to our benefit.
The chain saw and the shark: Cultural critic W. Scott Poole examines the twin poles of American horror in Dark Carnivals
Poole's extended argument about the dominance of American empire and the ways horror filmmakers (and, to a lesser extent, novelists) have responded to it is potent and challenging.
Faith and family are central to Wayne Johnston’s new memoir of growing up sickly in rural Newfoundland
The twin poles of scientific reason and religious faith animate this vibrant and surprisingly funny memoir.
In The Chaos Machine, Max Fisher identifies the social media algorithms that are causing our societies to crumble
There are no good solutions to the problems Fisher isolates in his book, but this frightening text highlights the importance of confronting these issues regardless.
New Yorker journalist Ken Auletta comes full circle with a book on disgraced mogul Harvey Weinstein that has been twenty years in the making
Auletta employs the benefit of hindsight to produce a portrait of a brash, egotistical Hollywood outsider whose power allowed his monstrous side to flourish without consequence for too long.
“Peeking behind the curtain of Oz”: Joshua Whitehead talks about his new book of essays, the limitations of genre, and the rigidity of the English language
"If I could go back, I might tell younger me, 'Don't do this.' "