For more than a century, neuroscientists believed that the brains of humans and other mammals differed from the brains of other animals, such as birds (and so were presumably better). This belief was based, in part, upon the readily evident physical structure of the neocortex, the region of the brain responsible for complex cognitive behaviors. … Read more

Too much modern fiction is dreary, slow-moving and downright boring, argues Harry Mount. People have been declaring the death of the novel ever since the first novelist, Petronius, held the first launch party 2,000 years ago, in Rome. The latest doom-monger is Lee Siegel, a witty columnist on the New York Observer – one of … Read more

Languagehat on “America”: I presume we all know about the first appearance of the word America on the Waldseemüller map of 1507; what I, at any rate, didn’t know was that the text of the map and accompanying book, and hence the coining of the word, is thought to be the work of Waldseemüller’s friend … Read more