Advice to the US civil servants who are living through what the writer likens to the Gleichschaltung or "coordination" phase of Nazification undertaken in 1930s Germany. The aim of funding freezes and contradictory commands is paranoia. To resist is to create a collective atmosphere of courage, where agencies can be quietly decoupled from each other to prevent the spread of the contagion (3,500 words)
Jake Coyle | Associated Press | 12th February 2025
Report from an impromptu Paul McCartney gig in New York City, capacity 575. Tickets sold out in half an hour. At 82 years old and playing on only one rehearsal with his band — he said — McCartney still rocks his way very effectively through Beatles, Wings and solo hits. He won't play for too long anymore, though, or commit to future tours. "Some of us need to get some sleep, you know" (1,000 words)
One of Hong Kong’s oldest districts with merchant trade dating back to the 19C, Sheung Wan is known for its array of dried seafood shops. It is even more well-known for its feline guardians. Dried seafood is an expensive delicacy in Hong Kong, and one that is really attractive to rats. Lounging on billing counters and shelves in the traditional shops, the cats help keep the rats away (1,100 words)
Julia Jorati | Philosophers’ Magazine | 16th February 2025
What reparations proposals can learn from activists who made their case on the eve of the American Revolution. One 1773 petition asked the provincial government to give all enslaved people some unused, vacant land as a settlement. Another group argued for a tax exemption on the grounds that they weren’t allowed to vote, using the revolutionaries’ cherished principle: no taxation without representation (3,600 words)
US policy has long questioned the legitimacy of China’s political system, based on the notion that democratic processes are the only truly legitimate way that governments earn their right to rule. China was supposed to grow wealthier through market reforms and democratise. Yet something else has happened: China’s development has proven to be a “profound rupture in the American self-conception” (6,400 words)
Dan Williams | Conspicuous Cognition | 16th February 2025
Reflections on Karl Popper’s warning about the dangers of “manifest truth”, the optimistic view that humans can readily perceive the truth. It makes truth seem like the default and “creates the need to explain falsehood” when the inverse is often the case. It also gives rise to the “conspiracy theory of ignorance”, the idea that nefarious powers conspire to keep people ignorant of the truth (3,300 words)
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Five Books features in-depth author interviews recommending five books on a theme. You can read more interviews on the site, or sign up for the newsletter.
There are times in life when it pays to be dynamic, relentless, determined. But we also need to learn when to cut ourselves and our friends, family, and colleagues some slack, argues clinical psychologist Dr Ross White. Here, he recommends five books that help us reflect on being kinder to ourselves and others. Read more
The art of biography has been a work in progress down the millennia. These days, leaders are no longer celebrated for the number of enemies killed in war, nor are we as impressed with territorial conquests. Here's a roundup of all the biographies recommended on Five Books about ancient Greeks and Romans, from contemporary accounts to more recent works. Read more
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Everything you could ever want to know about signposts, beginning with the standing stones erected by the Romans and ending with the roadside LED panels erected in the 21C. Changing solutions to an enduring problem. From the earliest times not getting lost has been an important factor in moving from one place to another: long-distance travellers could easily die if they missed their way (3,200 words)
Kathryn Hughes | Public Domain Review | 12th February 2025
Profile of an extinct tradesperson, "who pushed a cart of cheap offal and horsemeat around residential streets while calling out something that sounded like 'CA-DOE-MEE!'". In the 19C, it was a good job, if a highly territorial one. With a good "walk", one could even build up savings. This peculiar economic role has always been "a gift to investigative journalists of an anthropological turn" (2,300 words)
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Podcast: Service Denied | The Black Hum. In 1914, Canadian recruiting offices turned away Black Canadians who answered the call for all able-bodied men to enlist for military service. Why did Canada not want a so-called "checkerboard army"? (19m 38s)
Curator's film about a quintessentially American artist who in 1881 moved to Tyneside in England and found fresh inspiration among the fishing industry there.
Profile of Mary Midgley, who famously remarked that philosophy had been shaped by bachelors who had no experience living with women or children. Descartes questioned the existence of his friends, family and everything external, concluding that his only certainty was, “I am thinking”. Midgley was unimpressed — “people leading a normal domestic life would not have fallen into this sort of mistake” (3,300 words)
The Medici of Florence suffered from a hereditary condition causing joint pain and restricted mobility — “it was agony to stand, walk or even hold a pen”. Florence was a merchant republic; the Medici men had to “perform humility” and could not be seen being carried by servants. They built a long ramp with a gentle incline, minimal turns, and stairs a horse could climb — a study in accessible architecture (3,000 words)
A retired stripper reminisces. First responders make for the best clients, “as no one appreciates a smiling professional party girl more than a person who regularly bears witness to the worst day of peoples’ lives.” Never trust your safety to guards who are usually overworked, under-slept and underpaid. Conduct a TSA-style search on clients — “a fun silly one that didn’t read as a search, but a search nonetheless” (2,500 words)
William Deresiewicz | Hinternet | 9th February 2025
“We read in, around, about, for, and against, but rarely is the preposition or the pretence dropped, the book actually read.”Can a new humanities emerge out of alternative institutions where people engage in reading that is “utterly non-instrumental” — “no papers, no grades, none of the habits that come with them”? “It would be just us and the book and what we could make of it” (7,200 words)
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Callie Petch | Little White Lies | 7th February 2025
There are too many bland music biopics, thanks to Hollywood's "toxic addiction to recognisable IP". Whether it is Timothée Chalamet's turn as Bob Dylan or Sam Mendes' planned quartet of films about The Beatles (one member per film), most are made to be safe and dull. Rejoice, then, in Better Man, in which singer Robbie Williams is played throughout by a CGI ape for no stated reason (1,400 words)
Tariffs can be a useful part of a national security strategy, protecting existing civilian industries that can then be quickly flipped into military production mode in a time of war. Highly targeted tariffs can also foster "national champions" and create world-leading companies in their niche. This also applies to nurturing new entrants to a market. Broad tariffs do nothing for these goals (2,500 words)
Five Books features in-depth author interviews recommending five books on a theme. You can read more interviews on the site, or sign up for the newsletter.
The history of Brazil is closely connected with the history of the slave trade, with nearly half the 12.5 million enslaved Africans transported to the Americas ending up there. Ana Lucia Araujo, a historian at Howard University and author of Humans in Shackles, talks us through the books that shed light on that history and how Brazil's past cannot be understood without also studying its connections with Africa. Read more
China's dramatic landscapes, rich culture, and tumultuous political history serves as a rich seam for historical novels. Here, we've drawn together a list of recommended titles, selected by and discussed with Five Books interviewees over the years. Read more
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Stern critique of the philosophy popular among Silicon Valley tech leaders. "In many ways, rationalism is the result of people with STEM educations attempting to tackle questions that had long been the purview of the humanities, guided by a stubbornly autodidactic conviction that definitive answers could be reached through a rigorous application of logic untainted by psychological biases" (3,700 words)
Open letter from a former CIA officer to JD Vance, imploring the US Vice President to stop wearing a device that "offers unique data collection and access for exploitation and even manipulation" — an Apple Watch. This expert would be "genuinely surprised" if other intelligence services haven't already hacked Vance's device, leaving it vulnerable to being transformed into a "hot mic" (1,300 words)
Alessandro Ford | Politico | 3rd February 2025 | U
…Coined by American physiologist Ancel Keys who studied working-class residents of Nicotera, a coastal Italian town. His research supposedly uncovered a mostly plant-based diet based on moderation, communal eating, negligible salt and sugar. A more iconoclastic theory claims that the diet was not discovered so much as invented. The Nicoterans’ leanness was because of a different reason: hunger (3,000 words)
Tariffs can be a useful part of a national security strategy, protecting existing civilian industries that can then be quickly flipped into military production mode in a time of war. Highly targeted tariffs can also foster "national champions" and create world-leading companies in their niche. This also applies to nurturing new entrants to a market. Broad tariffs do nothing for these goals (2,500 words)
Concert pianists are in a bind: should they risk severe muscular spasms with practice or let their skills atrophy? Perhaps try a robotic exoskeleton, a fingerless glove that can open and close the wearer's fingers individually up to four times a second. Expert pianists who practised with the exoskeleton reported an increase in playing speed – an ability which surprisingly transferred to the untrained hand as well (1,000 words)
Nail-biting yet beautiful footage of an expert downhill skateboarder reaching speeds of up to 100km/h on a mountain road in Switzerland.
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Concert pianists are in a bind: should they risk severe muscular spasms with practice or let their skills atrophy? Perhaps try a robotic exoskeleton, a fingerless glove that can open and close the wearer's fingers individually up to four times a second. Expert pianists who practised with the exoskeleton reported an increase in playing speed – an ability which surprisingly transferred to the untrained hand as well (1,000 words)
Timothy Taylor | Conversable Economist | 1st February 2025
The ancient Roman calendar only had 304 days. To sync it with the lunar calendar, king Numa Pompilius added January and February, and subtracted a day from the 30-day months. Why? The Romans considered even numbers unlucky. To get to the required 355 days, at least one month would have to have an even number of days. Numa chose February, the Roman month for honouring the dead (1,800 words)