Fernand Gobet has a new book out that, as a (very rusty) chess player, has piqued my interest. As a cognitive scientist and a highly skilled player himself, there are few (if any) better placed than Fernand to write on this topic. Visitors to this site might recall Fernand’s excellent essay on Herb Simon. Here is…
This film seems consistently to be garnering very warm reviews — NYT, The Observer, Variety, IndieWire and the LARB. austriaLiteratureStefan ZweigThe World of Yesterday
In The World of Yesterday, published in 1942, the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig wrote that in the years leading up to the Second World War, “I felt that Europe, in its state of derangement, had passed its own death sentence.” Only his timing was out. It would take several more decades before that death sentence…
“The greatest curse brought down on us by technology is that it prevents us from escaping the present even for a brief time. Previous generations could retreat into solitude and seclusion when disaster struck; it was our fate to be aware of everything catastrophic happening everywhere in the world at the hour and the second…
He died not so much a man without a country as a man without a world. Review in The Economist. George ProchnikStefan ZweigThe World of Yesterday
H/T to Paul Raymont’s wonderfully eclectic Philosophy, lit, etc. for bringing my attention to this review in the Literary Review. I paste in the text just in case it becomes available by subscription only. Another, though unrelated article on Zweig, can be found in Intelligent Life: Stefan Zweig is a writer readers either love or barely know.…
manwithoutqualities 