https://arab.news/b6g4n
Author: Laura Poppick
Laura Poppick’s “Strata” decodes the epic stories of our planet’s 4.54-billion-year history that are written in strata — ages-old remnants of ancient seafloors, desert dunes, and riverbeds striping landscapes around the world.
Strata allows us to observe how the planet has responded to past periods of environmental upheaval, and shows how Earth’s ancient narratives could hold lessons for our present and future.
Reading “From Here to the Great Unknown” by Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keough, published in October 2024, feels like being invited to their party and lingering after the music stops — absorbing the messy chaos and raw, unvarnished truth.
Lisa Marie, the only child of Elvis and Priscilla Presley, begins by asking a valid question: why would anyone care about her story? In some ways, she is right.
But her tabloid-heavy yet oddly private life is impossible to ignore: a seemingly spoiled rich kid often kicked out of boarding schools, seeking attention and affection, sent to rehab as a minor, drifting across continents, and navigating a turbulent relationship with her strong-willed Scientologist mother.
She started the memoir but died before finishing it. Riley, her eldest, posthumously completed it, adding her own notes to some of the same stories.
We all know how Elvis died. Lisa Marie was 9, and it shaped her identity — she spent her life chasing that same intensity in every relationship.
Her first marriage, to Danny Keough, a musician, produced her two eldest children: Riley, her co-writer, and Benjamin “Ben Ben,” her only son, who tragically died at 27 in 2020.
The book also explores her second marriage to Michael Jackson — steeped in irony, as she wanted “a quiet life” yet married one of the world’s most famous men.
Her father was the King of Rock & Roll, Jackson the King of Pop, and she again found herself caught between talented but obsessive men — and immense fame. She moved her children from Elvis’ Graceland to Jackson’s Neverland Ranch.
After their divorce, Jackson eventually died of an overdose, as addiction ravaged him — just as it had her father.
Her son Ben Ben, sensitive and playful, also struggled with addiction. On the day he hosted a birthday party for his girlfriend, he quietly went upstairs and died by suicide while guests celebrated below.
The loss shattered both his sister and mother. Because California law was more permissive, Lisa Marie legally kept him in dry ice at home for two months, mourning him — she could not let him go.
History kept repeating, haunting the family.
Riley, now a successful actress and mother of two via surrogate with her husband — also named Ben — offers a lyrical, poetic presence that softens the story’s edges. Her sections were my favorite.
Priscilla, who had a tumultuous relationship with Lisa Marie throughout her life, published her own memoir in September 2025.
She was accused of removing her 54-year-old daughter from life support in 2023 to regain control of the Elvis estate, which Riley had been overseeing as sole heir. The headlines were ugly, but the lawsuit between grandmother and granddaughter has recently been settled.
All the women in the story are deeply hurt and neglected, anchored by charismatic yet troubled men. Each battled addiction and profound grief in one form or another.
The story is messy and raw. Perhaps 30 percent less would have sufficed, but it still offers valuable insight.
My hope is that families who have lost loved ones to addiction see themselves in these pages — and begin to heal.
By telling these stories, Riley and her now 17-year-old younger twin sisters, along with Riley’s own children, may help Elvis, Michael Jackson, Lisa Marie, and their beloved Ben Ben finally rest.
Authors: Christina Hueschen and Rob Philips
In recent decades, the theory of active matter has emerged as a powerful tool for exploring the differences between living and nonliving states of matter.
“The Restless Cell” provides a self-contained, quantitative description of how the continuum theory of matter has been generalized to account for the complex and sometimes counterintuitive behaviors of living materials.
Christina Hueschen and Rob Phillips begin by illustrating how classical field theory has been used by physicists to describe the transport of matter by diffusion, the elastic deformations of solids, and the flow of fluids.
Science is the basis of our assumptions about ourselves and our world, from ideas about our evolutionary past to our conceptions of the vast expanses of space and the smallest particles of matter. In this panoramic book, acclaimed historian of science Peter Dear uncovers the roots of such beliefs, revealing how they constitute a natural philosophy that has been developed and refined over the course of centuries—and how the world as we have come to know it was by no means inevitable.
In a sweeping, multifaceted narrative, Dear describes some of the most breathtaking accomplishments in the advance of human knowledge, such as Isaac Newton’s laws of motion and gravitation, Carl Linnaeus’s taxonomy, Antoine Lavoisier’s new chemistry, Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, and Albert Einstein’s theories of relativity. Challenging the notion that science is only about “making discoveries,” he shows how our world has been formed by people, institutions, and cultural assumptions, giving rise to disciplines ranging from biology and astrophysics to electromagnetism and the social sciences.
With its rich biodiversity, astounding wildlife, and breathtaking animal migrations, Serengeti is like no other ecosystem on the planet.
“A Place like No Other” is Anthony Sinclair’s firsthand account of how he and other scientists discovered the biological principles that regulate life in Serengeti and how they rule all of the natural world.
Blending vivid storytelling with invaluable scientific insights from Sinclair’s pioneering fieldwork in Africa, “A Place like No Other” reveals how Serengeti holds timely lessons for the restoration and conservation of our vital ecosystems.
Authors: Dan Sinykin & Johanna Winant
Close reading — making an argument based in close attention to a text — is the foundation of literary studies. This book offers a guide to close reading, treating it as a skill that can be taught and practiced.
It first explains what close reading is, what it does, and how it has been used across theoretical schools. It then presents a series of master classes in the practice, with original contributions by scholars from a range of different institutions.
Finally, it provides practical materials, worksheets, and suggested activities for instructors to use in the classroom.
