The Music Instinct: How Music Works and Why We Can’t Do Without It
Philip Ball
Bodley Head, 451pp, £20
Combining technical knowledge with an illuminating style, the science writer Philip Ball argues for the centrality of music to human culture, taking in philosophy, mathematics, history and neurology.
Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?
Mark Fisher
Zero Books, 92pp, £7.99
The 2008 financial crash has failed to reinvigorate progressive politics, although many hoped that it would. The critic and academic (and NS contributor) Mark Fisher explains why this is so. His brief but compelling polemic shows how three decades of Thatcherism have left us unable to imagine a better society — and saddled with a dysfunctional market state.
Read Hard: Five Years of Great Writing from the Believer
Edited by Ed Park and Heidi Julavits
McSweeney’s, 389pp, £16.99
The American literary journal the Believer, part of Dave Eggers’s McSweeney’s empire, celebrates its fifth birthday with this collection of essays and interviews. An eclectic range of topics (from W G Sebald to Dungeons and Dragons, from urban blight to 1930s crime scandals) is covered by writers including Rick Moody, Jonathan Lethem, Tom Bissell and Richard Powers.
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