What I discovered in Tulsa was that the Heartland encompasses the great middle of the country—not only in geographic terms but in societal, cultural, and even spiritual ones. For me, the Heartland represents midsize cities like Tulsa, middle-class citizens, and those striving to reach the middle class. “Whether the mythicalContinue Reading
Toshin Development meanwhile said the store is undergoing “a space reconfiguration to refine its book collection while incorporating a lifestyle element”. This is part of Books Kinokuniya’s “continued commitment to providing an enriching retail experience”. “This transformation includes the addition of a new cafe on the same level, offering customersContinue Reading
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Computer scientists often deal with abstract problems that are hard to comprehend, but an exciting new algorithm matters to anyone who owns books and at least one shelf. The algorithm addresses something called the library sorting problem (more formally, theContinue Reading
At the world’s most renowned meteorite show, in Ensisheim in France, I noticed there were many dealers from Morocco. Unlike most of the Europeans and Americans—who had display cases and labels and books—the Moroccan stalls were minimalistic. Perhaps a white sheet covered with lumps of reddish-brown rocks. A pair ofContinue Reading
Evolution, ethnography, epidemics—this is the soup from which Dengue Boy, a brilliantly strange new novel by the Argentine author Michel Nieva, emerges. The eponymous Dengue Boy is a mosquito–human hybrid who might be an experiment, a genetic mutant, or the result of some terrible corporate crime. He might be allContinue Reading
He was your best friend, and more focused on his ambition than you were, reading business magazines as a teenager. His accidental death at age 17 haunts this book, and your life. Kent helped shape me as a forward-looking person. And then Paul was reading about chip stuff, and heContinue Reading
In the five years since its launch, Bookshop.org has amassed quite the loyal following. The online retailer shares its sales revenue with bookstores around the US, and has become a popular destination for online customers who would rather help keep their local bookstore in business than send money to bigContinue Reading
Although fans of A Song of Ice and Fire might still be hankering for the long-delayed next book in the series, bestselling sci-fi/fantasy author George R.R. Martin has instead added a different item to his long list of publications: a peer-reviewed physics paper just published in the American Journal ofContinue Reading
