What We Are Reading Today: Soul and Substance

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Updated 08 March 2023
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What We Are Reading Today: Soul and Substance

Author: Jay Wright 

Jay Wright is widely recognized as one of the most important American poets of the past half century. But in recent years, he has also written a series of unconventional essays that he calls “examination papers,” which he defines as “designated inquiries to myself.”

In these linked essays, most of which resemble prose-poems, with only a few lines set on each page, Wright explores abiding artistic and philosophical concerns, including language, aesthetic form, knowledge, time, and death. “Soul and Substance” presents these pieces for the first time.


What We Are Reading Today: ‘An Introduction to General Relativity and Cosmology’ by Steven A. Balbus

Updated 28 January 2026
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘An Introduction to General Relativity and Cosmology’ by Steven A. Balbus

General relativity has entered a new phase of its development as technical advances have led to the direct detection of gravitational radiation from the merging of single pairs of stellar-sized black holes.

The exquisite sensitivity of pulsar signal timing measurements has also been exploited to reveal the presence of a background of gravitational waves, most likely arising from the mergers of supermassive black holes thought to be present at the center of most galaxies.

This book demonstrates how general relativity is central to understanding these and other observations.