Physics prof Chad Orzel (via Kevin Drum and Glenn Reynolds) discovers that of the 100 Notable Books for 2007 according to the New York Times, none are about science. That's not the half of it. Religion & Philosophy, Business, Law, Economics, and Military works are also absent, showing up only tangentially, jumping-off points for the main categories of Biography (15 titles), Memoir (10), History (9), and Cultural Criticism/Politics (11).
Those four are not just the main categories. They are the only categories. Every non-fiction work falls into one of those four groups. Even the softer sciences of psychology, sociology, and anthropology show up only fuzzily, without any discipline or rigor. The memoirs and biographies loll about the heated pools of the social sciences, waggling a foot in the water from time to time or even plunging in for a refreshing dip, but no swimming.
Take a few moments to click through the link above (NYT registration required) and scroll down to the non-fiction section. The common thread is living vicariously through others' experiences. That is, these are essentially romance novels for people who like their romance poignant and bittersweet, who like their exotic locales to be politically correct, and who require that their heroes and especially their heroines be as socially unlike the usual characters of romances as possible. Romances which celebrate how free they are from romances.
There are exceptions. There is a history The Day of Battle about the Italian campaign of WWII. The military information is almost entirely inapplicable today, but it's something. A second book is about the theme of honor, using the literature read at West Point as its foundation. Science sort of sneaks onto the list with How Doctors Think, though much of that is cultural commentary, and The Invisible Cure, about the reduction of AIDS in Uganda. Religion makes cameo appearances in The Stillborn God, which traces the history of separation of church and state, and Easter Everywhere, a memoir of a minister's daughter who observes her own spiritual rootlessness.
Religion does get one unmixed title, A rabbi's account of How To Read The Bible. Of Business, nothing. Economics, nothing. Law, nothing.
The fiction titles only increase the impression that Times readers are seeking little more than Alternative Romance. Naughty girls and bittersweet sex, poignant gay sex, searches for peace with dead relatives, stories of suffering and oppression. Reflections on reflecting, and on the reflective life. Just the safe excitement of other people's interesting lives. Romances of a different brand.
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