THE PHYSICS OF SUPERHEROES
by James Kakalios
Duckworth £9.99
It’s dispiriting to know that Superman can’t move the Moon single-handedly, that The Atom can’t travel down a phone line by hitching a ride on an atomic particle, and that Spiderman will be lucky if he can jump one metre, maximum. Writers of superhero comics can defy the laws of fiction, but they can’t get away with violating the laws of science. It’s no fun debunking the superpowers of metahumans, so Kakalios, a physicist and comic books geek (that’s an oxymoron), analyses the hyperhuman abilities of Spandex-suited superheroes and gives credibility to some of their powers that can still save the world.
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SUBURBAN SHAMAN
by Cecil Helman
Hammersmith Press, £9.99
Helman (a London GP and social anthropologist) sets out his stall: “The art of medicine is a literary art. It requires of the practitioner the ability to listen in a particular way, to empathise and also to imagine . . . to understand the storyteller as well as the story.” He asks how medicine can be made more humane, less mechanistic. For answer, he looks to traditional (now known as ‘alternative’) healers whose holistic arts have been all but lost and suggests that modern medical carers can learn to work within, rather than oppose, their patients’ system of ideas.
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KILLING YOURSELF TO LIVE
by Chuck Klosterman
Faber, £12.99
How can you not love a guy who writes: “If ever there was a band doomed to die by the side of the road, it was the Allman Brothers.” And: “With the possible exception of Jim Morrison, Eric Clapton is (arguably) the most overrated rock musician of all time.” Klosterman is on a mission for Spin magazine to track the final moments of dead rock stars and stand for a moment where they last stood in their shoes. But it’s mostly about Chuck Klosterman ‘s three weeks on the road through the recent rocky recreational past of America.
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