A Pennsylvania art-and-frame-store owner plans to write a book about his latest undertaking, in which 1,041 rusty old hubcaps are being transformed into “canvases” by 1,041 different artists. Thanks to Ken Marquis and his Landfill Art project, some use oil paint or acrylic paint, but others weld or glue or screw stuff onto the caps, [...]
Beachcombing feels romantic and random. But actual science applies to beachcombing, as it does to nearly everything. In his new book Flotsametrics: How One Man’s Obsession with Runaway Sneakers and Rubber Ducks Revolutionized Ocean Science, oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer and maritime writer Eric Scigliano detail Ebbesmeyer’s research on currents and “gyres,” the circular patterns that objects follow [...]
In response to one of the very earliest Dibs! posts — a review of Dan Rockmore’s Stalking the Riemann Hypothesis — Dibs! has recently received an astonishing email from Jiang Chun-Xuan, a mathematician in China who claims to have disproved the legendarily difficult problem. Jiang included in his email a detailed mathematical paper (which you [...]
Byzantium is the forgotten empire. Spanning the ancient world and the new, the Byzantine Empire emerged at the fall of Rome and lasted all the way to the Renaissance. Perhaps because it thrived during the misnamed “Dark Ages,” and because it was headquartered where Europe and Asia meet (Byzantium is now called Istanbul), it is [...]
Idi Amin’s shag rug, Saddam Hussein’s murals, what appears to be colonic-irrigation equipment in Nicolae Ceausescu palace (whose construction required the demolition of 7,000 structures) … laugh and cry as you pore through vintage photographs detailing the home decor of infamous men and women whom style-guru York calls “the world’s most colorful despots,” but who [...]
It’s not all about Downward-facing Dog, headstands and the Lotus position. Psychotherapist and yoga teacher Cope reveals that there’s more to the ancient Indian practice than just postures and breathing techniques. He focuses instead on the Yoga Sutra, a guide to proper living, eating, thinking and speaking penned some eighteen centuries ago by the sage [...]
Intellectuals — ya gotta love ‘em. Who would have thought to write an academic treatise linking the ouevre of zombie-film maestro George Romero with classic themes of hell and death from literature and religion? Well, who better but a professor of religious studies whose previous books include The Truth Is Out There: Christian Faith and [...]
Bringing alive in all their horrifying glory seven infernos that changed Americans’ sense of identity and brought entire urban areas to the brink — from a 1760 Boston fire to the 1967 Detroit fire to 9/11, with others in between — historian Hoffer will make you keep sniffing the air in search of smoke. Winningly, [...]
Defying all apparent indicators of dorkdom — the author is a middle-aged professor; the book’s title is “A Love Affair with the Sea” — this memoir by a British marine biologist recounting his research and adventures around the world is limned with joltingly gorgeous writing and hilarious observations that will leave you flopping and panting [...]
Admit it — if you aren’t seventysomething yet, sometimes you wish you were, because then you could get away with speaking truth to power whenever the bloody hell you felt like it: either because no one would dare to punch a silver-haired dissenter in the mouth, because the elderly have acquired a lifetime of confidence [...]