Copies of Lingua Franca used to be hard to pin down in 快猫短视频鈥檚 offices: the first person to catch sight of this 鈥渨itty review of academic life鈥� would hoard it until they鈥檇 had time to enjoy it. When the magazine closed last year, its spirit lingered: people still searched for it on the desk of the usual suspect.
Happily for Lingua Franca addicts, its editor Alexander Starr has produced a compendium of the best bits of this 鈥渃ollective portrait of the American intellectual in its native habitat鈥� in Quick Studies (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $18). Sample Helen Epstein鈥檚 鈥淏onobos in paradise鈥�, Jim Holt on feuding philosophers in 鈥淲hose idea is it anyway?鈥�, and Emily Ekin鈥檚 鈥淗abeas corpus鈥�, celebrating the well-preserved Jeremy Bentham, still corporeally present at his 250th birthday party.
Missing? Well, everybody has a favourite. The essay on whether or not historians could count and the role of hearsay in their discipline was brilliant.
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