Articles, Research Notes, photographs, conversations, and sources from across the Reading Desk. Browse the latest additions or return to a particular day, category, or tag.
A bright red rectangular sign with the white text “OOOWWWEEE” is mounted against a wall of unfinished plywood. The raw wood grain, knots, seams, and rough opening at right create a stark, tactile contrast with the sign’s crisp color and playful typography.
Greg Woolf reviews Stephen L. Tuck’s Escape from Pompeii and Jess Venner’s The Lost Voices of Pompeii, arguing that both replace the romanticized image of Pompeii as a city frozen in time with a messier account of evacuation, survival, and loss. Tuck uses material evidence and names found in neighboring communities to build a cautious case that many inhabitants escaped and blended into nearby towns, although such names cannot conclusively identify refugees. Venner reconstructs seven Pompeians from inscriptions, graffiti, financial records, objects, and urban remains through “critical fabulation,” producing vivid but necessarily less secure biographies, especially of enslaved people. Together, the books suggest that leaving the city did not ensure safety: some survivors returned or resettled, while others died beyond the walls awaiting rescue.
In an interview published on August 14, 2026, Dr. Eliot Koretney introduces Lue Elizondo as the first guest on a podcast from the Project on UAP Studies and International Security at the Ralph Bunche Institute, Graduate Center of the City University of New York. The conversation centers on the dramatic shift in U.S. government discourse around UFOs, now called UAP, especially since 2017, when figures such as Elizondo and others helped bring previously secretive government attention to the issue into public view. Koretney frames UAP through an international relations lens, especially securitization theory, asking whether UAP are moving from taboo or curiosity into an officially recognized national and international security concern. Elizondo argues that this securitization is already underway, citing reports to Congress, UAP-focused offices and programs, law enforcement and intelligence interest, taxpayer-funded investigations, and international activity involving Japan, China, Russia, Latin America, and possible United Nations-linked initiatives. The discussion broadens into UAPs as a possible non-human intelligence issue rather than merely a conventional science problem. The speakers discuss Ronald Reagan’s 1987 United Nations speech, the possibility that some presidents may have been briefed on UAP realities, and the idea that humanity often unites only when facing a shared threat. Elizondo emphasizes that advanced technologies are neither inherently good nor bad; human intent determines whether they become tools for public benefit, cooperation, arms racing, or harm. The conversation closes on the ethics of contact: UAPs may be studying humanity as humanity studies them; they appear associated with nuclear technologies and large bodies of water; aggressive attempts to lure or attack them could be dangerous; and humanity should approach unknown intelligences with caution, readiness, goodwill, love, and neighborliness.
Emily A. Bernhard Jackson reviews new editions of Irene Clyde’s Beatrice the Sixteenth and Susan Ertz’s Woman Alive as evidence that women and gender-nonconforming writers have a deeper history in science fiction and literary utopia than is often recognized. She finds Clyde’s women-only Armeria imaginatively and materially distinctive but fundamentally conservative, especially in its monarchy, rigid class hierarchy, child barter, and unchallenged slave labor. Ertz’s novel has a more preposterous premise—a games mistress becomes the last surviving woman and Queen of England—but Jackson argues that it succeeds through its attractive vision of technological and social reform, psychological insight, intrigue, and romance. Their republication recovers neglected feminist speculative fiction, though the two works offer sharply different social visions.
Andrew Hadfield assesses George Chapman as an enigmatic poet whose difficult, learned writing combines esoteric and neo-Platonic interests with irony, humour, and acute awareness of poetic artifice. In The Shadow of the Night, apparently exalted invocations of darkness and divine inspiration coexist with striking absurdities, while Ovid’s Banquet of Sense leaves unresolved whether sensual experience leads toward higher love or matters chiefly in itself. Hadfield therefore questions editor Zenón Luis-Martínez’s consistent interpretation of Chapman as a convinced neo-Platonist offering readers a window onto the divine, arguing that occult philosophy did not necessarily define or constrain Chapman’s imagination. Nevertheless, he judges the edition extraordinarily detailed and helpful, crediting its extensive introduction, section summaries, and full notes even where its governing interpretation remains debatable.
In a discussion on August 18, 2026, Robert Bigelow and George Knapp cover a wide range of topics related to UAPs, from the decades-long government and corporate secrecy to the profound philosophical questions of communication. Bigelow argues for a pragmatic approach to disclosure, suggesting a "preemptive pardon" for the aerospace "gatekeepers" who have managed reverse-engineering programs in partnership with the government. He frames this as a national security imperative, necessary to foster cooperation and compete with adversaries like China and Russia. The conversation also explores specific phenomena at Skinwalker Ranch, which Bigelow interprets as "demonstrations" or a form of "gaming" by a non-human intelligence (NHI). These events, including cattle mutilations, the vaporization of dogs, and poltergeist-like activity, are presented as evidence of an intelligence that controls time, space, and perception, establishing rules of engagement where it is clearly in charge. The dialogue culminates in a deep dive into the feasibility and risks of communicating with these NHIs. Bigelow expresses grave concern over humanity's lack of "spiritual maturity," suggesting our species' propensity for conflict and self-destruction might make us unworthy of sustained contact. He fears that these advanced beings, who have demonstrated their trustworthiness by refraining from destroying us, might eventually "give up" on humanity and disappear -- an outcome he deems a terrible omen. The discussion touches on the recurring messages in past encounters, the dangers of using AI as an intermediary, and the universal law of free will that may prevent direct intervention. Ultimately, Bigelow concludes that while the NHIs control the engagement, it is incumbent upon humanity to elevate its collective consciousness and ethical behavior to prove we are worth the continued effort.
An Owl and a Pussy-cat sail to sea in a pea-green boat with honey and money, and the Owl serenades his companion beneath the stars. The Pussy-cat praises his song, proposes marriage, and identifies the lack of a ring as their obstacle, prompting a year-and-a-day voyage to the land of the Bong-Tree, where they buy a nose ring from a Piggy-wig for one shilling. A Turkey marries them the next day; after dining on mince and quince with a runcible spoon, they end their celebration dancing hand in hand by moonlight.
Dinah Birch reviews Melissa Harrison’s The Given World as a sombre novel about endings in Lower Eodham, an English village followed from early spring to autumn. Harrison links the inhabitants’ personal and economic losses to unstable weather, retreating wildlife, failing crops, and the decline of established rural patterns, while her knowledge of plants, animals, and agricultural labour gives the threatened landscape persuasive specificity. Birch finds this lament coherent and authoritative but argues that curses, ancestral wisdom, a river spirit, and other quasi-mystical elements distract from it. She concludes that the supernatural framing risks encouraging skeptical readers to dismiss the novel’s grounded account of damage to the English countryside as fantasy.
I have listened to and reviewed most of the available interviews with Robert Bigelow, whose decades-long fascination with “little green men” gradually gave way to an even greater passion: understanding consciousness and whether it survives bodily death. What follows are my field notes, opening with a brief sketch of the questions that seem to drive his work and the obsessions behind his spending.
Kate Macdonald uses 508 rediscovered letters from John Buchan’s early years at Thomas Nelson’s to illuminate his wide-ranging work as an editor, rights negotiator, marketer and architect of the cheap Sevenpennies series. The correspondence shows Buchan enthusiastically pursuing H. G. Wells’s fiction and, in 1908, urging Nelson’s to acquire Ann Veronica after reading it, while requesting that Wells revise a sexually explicit passage. Wells instead sold the novel to T. Fisher Unwin, which published his preferred text in 1909, prompting controversy that later made Buchan call it “indefensible.” Subsequent disputes over Wells’s publications and threatened litigation hardened the relationship, revealing both Buchan’s initial commercial optimism and Nelson’s growing concern about the reputational risks of publishing Wells.
Daniel Culpan reviews Pierre Guyotat’s Idiocy as a comparatively conventional but still stylistically intense memoir of his coming of age from 1958 to 1962, spanning his Paris dropout years, conscription into the Algerian War, interrogation, and imprisonment. Culpan argues that bodily degradation, sexual awakening, Catholic guilt, artistic ambition, and military humiliation converge in a narrator who rejects purity and stable moral identities rather than claiming innocence. Guyotat’s sympathy for Algerian independence and depiction of French colonial brutality coexist with scrutiny of his own compromised position, while art offers a means of psychic survival rather than escape. For Culpan, the memoir ultimately shows war and colonialism consuming claims to civilization, yet preserves a fragile faith in humanity and the possibility that life might be otherwise.
An upward-looking architectural photograph captures a modern glass-and-steel structure made of angled, triangular panes. The reflective surface layers blue sky, neighboring high-rises, construction elements, trees, and interior framework into an abstract collage, while a curving white staircase is visible behind the glass at lower left.
An open dictionary page, visibly worn and paint-splattered, becomes the ground for an expressive mixed-media composition. Thick swaths of deep blue and pink paint, along with several small sculpted pink and red forms, cover and interrupt the printed definitions; handwritten text at the bottom identifies the piece as “@sixteencats— 16/16.”
The sun sits low on the horizon beyond calm water, casting a bright golden path across Elliott Bay. At right, the Seattle Aquarium’s waterfront building and pier are warmed by the fading light, while dark, gently rippling water fills the foreground and distant shoreline silhouettes frame the sunset.
A low-angle street photograph focused on a used Starbucks paper cup standing on cracked pavement, with its plastic lid lying several feet away. The surrounding downtown scene falls softly out of focus: a white coach bus, storefronts, pedestrians, mature street trees, and a bright red building façade suggest a busy urban corridor.
A close telephoto view of Seattle’s Space Needle, centered against a cloudless blue sky. Modern high-rises, apartment towers, and office buildings fill the foreground and background, emphasizing the landmark’s distinctive saucer-shaped observation deck and slender white supports.
Alexander Voloshin’s 1953 rhyming mock epic Sidetracked: Exile in Hollywood traces the upheavals from the Bolshevik Revolution to Pearl Harbor through the precarious lives of Russian émigrés in Los Angeles. The writer connects the poem’s satire to Voloshin’s own itinerant career, including work as a Hollywood extra and taxi driver, and emphasizes its depiction of refugees who offered their labor and images to the film industry while struggling to survive. Judging Boris Dralyuk’s English translation brilliant, the writer argues that this publication should rescue Voloshin from obscurity and establish his reputation in the West.
Tim Parks uses a visit to Giacomo Leopardi’s house in Recanati to examine what happens when writers lose faith in their community of readers. Leopardi’s pursuit of truth led him from youthful scholarship to a bleak view of existence, yet he believed people still required consciously cultivated illusions, including his own hope for literary glory. Repeated disappointments persuaded him that original literature is recognized by only a tiny minority and that posterity offers no reliable consolation, a predicament Parks connects to other alienated authors and to the erosion of a shared vision between writers and readers. Recanati’s largely superficial commemoration of Leopardi sharpens the irony, while his imagined robotic companion prompts Parks’s closing suggestion that neglected writers may seek appreciative readers in AI.
Sophie Yeo praises Eloise Kane’s Wilderlands as a clear-eyed history of Britain’s long “dewilding” and a corrective to nostalgic ideas of an untouched natural past. Drawing on palaeoecology, recent scientific debates, and Kane’s fieldwork, the book traces how hunting, settlement, agriculture, and later development transformed the landscape from the post-Ice Age wildwood onward. Yeo especially values Kane’s caution in interpreting fragmentary evidence—from buried eagles to Seahenge—because modern ideas of wildness can distort what prehistoric people and places meant. That restraint gives the book contemporary force: archaeology, Yeo argues, must inform rewilding so future landscapes are not designed around nostalgia, guilt, marketable romance, or aesthetic preference alone.
Socrates argues that wrongdoing carries an unavoidable penalty not reducible to scourging or death: unjust people assimilate themselves to the godless and wretched pattern of life rather than to the blessed divine one. In his account, foolishness prevents such people from recognizing that their unrighteous acts make them resemble the worse of these two patterns, so their punishment consists in living among evils and people like themselves and, unless they abandon their unscrupulous “cleverness,” being excluded after death from the blessed place that is pure of evil. Socrates adds that they initially dismiss this warning as foolish talk, yet when compelled to defend their doctrines in sustained personal argument rather than escape through rhetorical maneuvering, they eventually become dissatisfied with themselves, their eloquence withers, and they appear no better than children. He then identifies this line of thought as a digression and begins to turn back to the main argument, which continues beyond the visible page.
