Film review: The Salt of the Earth

              Look at the work of Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado and you’ll see all of humanity’s folly and suffering. He depicts a vast open goldmine teeming with desperate men – a distant relative of Hieronymous Bosch’s masterwork The Last Judgement; refugees from the Sahel who are nothing but skin…

Many Thousand Gone: New Orleans 10 years on

When the levees broke in New Orleans in 2005, so did the veneer of racial harmony in the United States. Black families were left stranded on roofs, appealing to the heavens because no relief was coming from federal helicopters. Bodies floated down the streets. The Superdome – an arena made for dreams – became a…

RIP Oliver Sacks (1933-2015)

We knew him as a writer who bridged the worlds of science, art, and philosophy more dazzlingly than anyone before him. In works such as The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat and Awakenings, he made neurology accessible for the general reader. Not only accessible, but funny and human. It was only with…