Where Underpants Come From

Where Underpants Come from: From Checkout to Cotton Field – Travels Through the New China
by Joe Bennett

Reviewed by Adam Fleisher

It is probably safe to say that most consumers are awed by how inexpensive everyday household items have become. Of course, a sense that stuff is cheap thanks to China is good enough for most of us — we don’t have a second thought about our discount shopping.

But Joe Bennett is not most people. While perusing the underwear section in his local department store, Bennett, a New Zealand travel writer, …

More In: Read

More So

by Todd Boss

Whoever they are, these friends of ours
seem not the least self-conscious
sharing the indiscreet details
of how they met and how they courted

half as long ago as …

Before the Big Bang

Before the Big Bang: The Prehistory of Our Universe
by Brian Clegg

-Reviewed by Jodie Liu

From hypothetical dark energy to spacetime-contorting black holes, the universe confounds astrophysicists trying to divine its …

Mitch Horowitz on Occult America

Mitch Horowitz, a longtime publisher and editor, is the author of Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation, on which he’ll be speaking here in Los …

The Sleeping

by Lynn Emanuel

I have imagined all this:
In 1940 my parents were in love
And living in the loft on West 10th
Above Mark Rothko who painted …

Naming Nature

Naming Nature: The Clash Between Instinct and Science
by Carol Kaesuk Yoon

Reviewed by Jodie Liu

When Carol Yoon became a biologist, she prepared herself to see for the first time “a …