Sophie Roell, Editor

In science, the word ‘nuclear’ refers to anything to do with the atomic nucleus, whether you’re using it to generate power or create weapons of mass destruction. Here, physicist and science educator Richard Wolfson recommends five books relating to things nuclear, from a book of graphic nonfiction about the Curie family to how fusion can save the planet.

Space travel may be the stuff of science fiction but some of it is getting closer and closer to becoming reality. What’s more, we have a duty to pursue it, says Christopher Mason, Professor of Genomics, Physiology, and Biophysics at Weill Cornell Medicine and author of The Next 500 Years, a blueprint of how to set about leaving our solar system. Here, he recommends his favourite science fiction about space travel, and an essential philosophy book.

Vietnam has had a tumultuous history and its literature is one powerful way of trying to understand it better. Journalist, author and publisher Sherry Buchanan—who has spent two decades introducing Vietnam’s culture to English-speaking audiences—talks us through the best Vietnamese novels available in English, spanning the years from French colonialism to the 2016 Pulitzer Prize.

Convenient as it is to blame our political woes on the polarizing effect of social media, echo chambers, interference by foreign powers or other shadowy operators, the truth is that human nature and our search for identity and status are more likely culprits. Sociologist Chris Bail, a professor at Duke University and director of its ‘Polarization Lab’, talks us through what social science has to say about the connection between social media and political polarization.

There are so many fantastic audiobooks being produced at the moment, across so many genres, that it’s hard to know where to start listening. Fortunately, every year, the judges of the Audie Awards pick out some of the very best. Here, Michele Cobb, Executive Director of the Audio Publishers Association, talks us through some of the 2021 winners, including the ‘audiobook of the year.’

When you listen to presidential memoirs as audiobooks, you can often hear an American president telling you their own story. Veteran audiobook reviewer Robin Whitten, editor of Audiofile magazine, recommends the best audiobooks about US presidents, and explains the crucial role of professional narrators in bringing big books to life.

With Valentine’s Day only days away, it’s time to get in the mood for love—and what better way than listening to an audiobook about two people who at first don’t get along but then fall madly in love? Emily Connelly, assistant editor of AudioFile magazine, recommends her favourite romance audiobooks.

Reading the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt reveals much about the worldview of a civilisation that rose to prominence 5000 years ago and flourished for thousands of years. Here, intellectual historian Diane Greco Josefowicz—whose book, The Riddle of the Rosetta, co-written with Jed Buchwald, tells the story of how the meaning of the hieroglyphs was deciphered in 19th century France—recommends the best books to learn more about hieroglyphics.

The trial of Galileo by the Roman Inquisition was one of the most public confrontations between the new science emerging in the 17th century and the Catholic Church but, nearly 400 years later, there’s still a lot of scope to argue what it was about. Here historian of science Paula Findlen, a professor at Stanford University, explains the endless fascination of Galileo Galilei, the Renaissance man who turned a telescope to the sky and took the world by storm, and recommends the best books to start learning more about him.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, Vienna had a vibrant intellectual and cultural life, embraced and at times led by key figures in its large Jewish community. All that would disappear with the rise of anti-Semitism and the Anschluss. Many Jews fled or committed suicide. Others were deported to concentration camps. After the war some went back, but Vienna would never be the same. Here Brigid Grauman, whose father’s family were assimilated Jews from Vienna, recommends books that evoke that poignant, tragic period that ended with World War II.