Reading about Newton

Isaac Newton

   I’ve subscribed to the New York Review of Books since it came into existence during a New York Times strike many long years ago. I don’t think there were many issues that I read from cover to cover (I’ve long since stopped following fiction and poetry was never one of my arts), but I have read substantial chunks of most copies that came into my house.

   But recently I have become aware of a curious fact. While many an article has led me to books I then read, that was often not because the review itself, but rather because my attention was drawn to it by appearing in a NYReview article without there actually being much referred to. The NYReview article alerted me to the book’s existence, but frequently it took checking out a more conventional review to get me to read it. I wonder whether the editors of the NYReview are aware of this role they play.

  These long-winded reflections now led me to conjure into my Kindle a long and very scholarly-sounding book about Isaac Newton that should take me well beyond the foundations of modern science—if I find the determination to stick to it all the way through. Nous verrons