What We Are Reading Today: ‘Elephants and Their Fossil Relatives’

Short Url
Updated 07 April 2025
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: ‘Elephants and Their Fossil Relatives’

Authors: Asier Larramendi & Marco P. Ferretti

Today, only three species of elephants survive—the African savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana), the African forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis), and the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus).

However, these modern giants represent just a fraction of the vast and diverse order of Proboscidea, which includes not only living elephants but also their many extinct relatives. 

Over the past 60 million years, proboscideans have evolved and adapted across five continents, giving rise to an astonishing variety of forms.

 


Book Review: ‘Hope in the Dark’ by Rebecca Solnit

Updated 21 May 2025
Follow

Book Review: ‘Hope in the Dark’ by Rebecca Solnit

In an era of climate collapse and political upheaval, Rebecca Solnit’s “Hope in the Dark,” first published in 2004 and later updated in 2016, redefines hope not as naivete, but as a radical act of defiance.

Part manifesto, part historical corrective, the book resurrects forgotten victories to prove that progress is often invisible, nonlinear, and collective.

Solnit, a historian and activist, dismantles the myth of powerlessness by spotlighting movements that reshaped history despite seeming futile in their moment.

The Zapatista uprising of 1994, she argues, redefined revolution not as a single explosive event but as a “slow conversation” across generations. The fall of the Berlin Wall — unforeseen by experts — she wrote exposes the fragility of oppressive systems when met with sustained dissent.

Her 2016 update weaves in Black Lives Matter and the Standing Rock protests, framing them as modern iterations of this “subversive hope.”

Central to Solnit’s thesis is the metaphor of darkness, rejecting apocalyptic fatalism: “The future is dark … like the darkness of the womb.”

Hope, for her, is the audacity to act without guarantees, a lesson drawn from anti-nuclear campaigns of the 1980s and post-Katrina mutual-aid efforts like the Common Ground Collective.

Stylistically, Solnit merges lyrical prose with critical urgency. She chastises media narratives that equate activism with failure if immediate victories are not won, noting that the eight-hour workday and abolition of slavery were once deemed impossible.

Her chapters unfold as interconnected essays, blending memoir (her 1980s anti-nuke protests) with global dispatches (Chile’s democratic revival, Ukraine’s Orange Revolution).

Critics may crave more policy prescriptions, but Solnit’s goal is philosophical: to reframe activism as a practice of storytelling, where every protest rewrites the dominant narrative.

The book is not a roadmap but a compass, guiding readers through despair with historical proof that “the impossible is inevitable.”


What We Are Reading Today: ‘How Birds Evolve’ by Douglas Futuyma

Updated 20 May 2025
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: ‘How Birds Evolve’ by Douglas Futuyma

“How Birds Evolve” explores how evolution has shaped the distinctive characteristics and behaviors we observe in birds today. Douglas Futuyma describes how evolutionary science illuminates the wonders of birds, ranging over topics such as the meaning and origin of species, the evolutionary history of bird diversity, and the evolution of avian reproductive behaviors, plumage ornaments, and social behaviors.

In this multifaceted book, Futuyma examines how birds evolved from nonavian dinosaurs and reveals what we can learn from the “family tree” of birds.


What We Are Reading Today: The Great Escape by Angus Deaton

Updated 19 May 2025
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: The Great Escape by Angus Deaton

The world is a better place than it used to be. People are healthier, wealthier, and live longer. Yet the escapes from destitution by so many has left gaping inequalities between people and nations.

In The book tells the remarkable story of how, beginning 250 years ago, some parts of the world experienced sustained progress.


What We Are Reading Today: ‘Addiction by Design’ by Natasha Dow Schull

Updated 18 May 2025
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: ‘Addiction by Design’ by Natasha Dow Schull

Drawing on 15 years of field research in Las Vegas, anthropologist Natasha Dow Schüll shows how the mechanical rhythm of electronic gambling pulls players into a trancelike state they call the “machine zone,” in which daily worries, social demands, and even bodily awareness fade away.

Once in the zone, gambling addicts play not to win but simply to keep playing, for as long as possible—even at the cost of physical and economic exhaustion.

“Addiction by Design” is a compelling inquiry into the intensifying traffic between people and machines of chance, offering clues to some of the broader anxieties and predicaments of contemporary life.


What We Are Reading Today: The Aesthetic Cold War by Peter J. Kalliney

Updated 17 May 2025
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: The Aesthetic Cold War by Peter J. Kalliney

How did superpower competition and the cold war affect writers in the decolonizing world? In “The Aesthetic Cold War,” Peter Kalliney explores the various ways that rival states used cultural diplomacy and the political police to influence writers.

In response, many writers from Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean — such as Chinua Achebe, Mulk Raj Anand, Eileen Chang, C.L.R. James, Alex La Guma, Doris Lessing, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and Wole Soyinka — carved out a vibrant conceptual space of aesthetic nonalignment, imagining a different and freer future for their work.