What We Are Reading Today: ‘Liquid Empire’

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Updated 13 July 2024
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘Liquid Empire’

Author: COREY ROSS

In the 19th and 20th centuries, a handful of powerful European states controlled more than a third of the land surface of the planet.

These sprawling empires encompassed not only rainforests, deserts, and savannahs but also some of the world’s most magnificent rivers, lakes, marshes, and seas. “Liquid Empire” tells the story of how the waters of the colonial world shaped the history of imperialism, and how this imperial past still haunts us today.

 


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.