Front Table 3/31/23

March 30th, 2023

On this week's Front Table, re-examines our relationship to history, the natural world, and our larger universe from a translation of the early gospels to one woman's complicated relationship to the South and our glorification of war after World War II, to explorations of black holes, our dangerous overreliance on phosphorous and its consequences, to the scientists who are responsible for inventions such as the microwave, TV, and the smartphone. Find the following and more at semcoop.com

Looking for the Good War 
(Picador USA)
Elizabeth D. Samet 

In Looking for the Good War, Elizabeth D. Samet reexamines the literature, art, and culture that emerged after World War II, bringing her expertise as a professor of English at West Point to bear on the complexity of the postwar period in national life. She exposes the confusion about American identity that was expressed during and immediately after the war, and the deep national ambivalence toward war, violence, and veterans—all of which were suppressed in subsequent decades by a dangerously sentimental attitude toward the United States’ “exceptional” history and destiny. As the United States reassesses its roles in Afghanistan and the Middle East, the time has come to rethink our national mythology: the way that World War II shaped our sense of national destiny, our beliefs about the use of American military force throughout the world, and our inability to accept the realities of the twenty-first century’s decades of devastating conflict.

The Gospels
(Modern Library) 
A new translation by Sarah Ruden 

Since nearly two millennia ago, the first four books of the New Testament have been formative texts for the modern world. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John tell of the life and ministry of Jesus. Faithfully pointing the reader back to the original Greek, this masterful new translation from the renowned scholar and acclaimed translator Sarah Ruden is the first to reconsider The Gospels as books to be read and understood on their own terms: grounded in contemporary languages, literatures, and cultures, full of their own particular drama, humor, and reasoning, and free from later superimposed ideologies. The result is a striking and persuasive reappraisal of the accounts of these four authors, and presents a new appreciation of the ancient world as the foundation of our modern one. This robust and eminently readable translation is a welcoming ground on which a variety of readers can meet, and a resource for new debate, discussion, and inspiration for years to come.

South to America
(Ecco Press)
Imani Perry 

 South to America is the story of a Black woman and native Alabaman returning to the region she has always called home and considering it with fresh eyes. Her journey is full of detours, deep dives, and surprising encounters with places and people. She renders Southerners from all walks of life with sensitivity and honesty, sharing her thoughts about a troubling history and the ritual humiliations and joys that characterize so much of Southern life. Weaving together stories of immigrant communities, contemporary artists, exploitative opportunists, enslaved peoples, unsung heroes, her own ancestors, and her lived experiences, Imani Perry crafts a tapestry unlike any other. With uncommon insight and breathtaking clarity, South to America offers an assertion that if we want to build a more humane future for the United States, we must center our concern below the Mason-Dixon Line.  

The Devils Element
(W. W. Norton) 
Dan Egan 

The story of phosphorus spans the globe and vast tracts of human history.  Over the past century, phosphorus has made farming vastly more productive, feeding the enormous increase in the human population. Yet, as Egan harrowingly reports, our overreliance on this vital crop nutrient is today causing toxic algae blooms and “dead zones” in waterways from the coasts of Florida to the Mississippi River basin to the Great Lakes and beyond. Egan also explores the alarming reality that diminishing access to phosphorus poses a threat to the food system worldwide—which risks rising conflict and even war. In this major work of explanatory science and environmental journalism, Pulitzer Prize finalist Dan Egan investigates the past, present, and future of what has been called “the oil of our time.” 


Black Holes: The Key to Understanding the Universe
(Mariner Books) 
Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw 

Today, across the universe, at the heart of every galaxy, and dotted throughout, mature black holes are creating chaos. They have the power to wipe out any of the universe's other inhabitants, but no one has ever seen a black hole itself die. But 1.8 billion light years away, the LIGO instruments have recently detected something that could be the closest a black hole gets to death. Gravitational waves given off as two enormous black holes merge together. And now scientists think that these gravitational waves could be evidence of two black holes connecting to form a wormhole - a link through space and time. It seems outlandish, but today's physicists are daring to think the unthinkable - that black holes could connect us to another universe. Join Professors Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw in exploring our universe's most mysterious inhabitants, how they are formed, why they are essential components of every galaxy, including our own, and what secrets they still hold, waiting to be discovered.


The Matter of Everything
(Knopf Publishing Group)
Suzie Sheehy 
 

In  The Matter of Everything, accelerator physicist Suzie Sheehy introduces us to the people who, through a combination of genius, persistence and luck, staged the experiments that changed the course of history. From the serendipitous discovery of X-rays in a German laboratory to the scientists trying to prove Einstein wrong (and inadvertently proving him right) to the race to split open the atom, these brilliant experiments led to some of the most significant breakthroughs in science and fundamentally changed our lives. They have helped us detect the flow of lava deep inside volcanoes, develop life-saving medical techniques like diagnostic imaging and radiation therapy, and create radio, TV, microwaves, smartphones--even the World Wide Web itself--among countless other advancements. Along the way, Sheehy pulls back the curtain to reveal how physics is really done--not only by theorists with equation-filled blackboards but also by experimentalists with hand-blown glass, hot air balloons and cathedral-sized electronics. Celebrating human ingenuity, creativity and above all curiosity, The Matter of Everything is an inspiring story of discovery and a powerful reminder that progress is a function of our desire to know.


The Curse of the Marquis de Sade
(Crown Publishing)
Joel Warner 

Described as both "one of the most important novels ever written" and "the gospel of evil," 120 Days of Sodom was written by the Marquis de Sade, a notorious eighteenth-century aristocrat who waged a campaign of mayhem and debauchery across France, evaded execution, and inspired the word "sadism," which came to mean receiving pleasure from pain. Despite all his crimes, Sade considered this work to be his greatest transgression. In 2014, the world heralded its return to France when the scroll was purchased for millions by Gérard Lhéritier, the self-made son of a plumber who had used his savvy business skills to upend France's renowned rare-book market. But the sale opened the door to vendettas by the government, feuds among antiquarian booksellers, manuscript sales derailed by sabotage, a record-breaking lottery jackpot, and allegations of a decade-long billion-euro con, the specifics of which, if true, would make the scroll part of France's largest-ever Ponzi scheme. The captivating, deeply reported true story of how one of the most notorious novels ever written landed at the heart of one of the biggest scams in modern literary history.

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