Word: jagoe
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...fitting, in an ironic sense, that BBC journalist Lucy Jago chose Kristian Birkeland for the subject of her first book. Birkeland unlocked the secrets of the aurora borealis, and it was the British that scoffed at Birkeland’s theories and dismissed his work in the early 1900s. The Northern Lights recounts Birkeland’s life-long journey through the still-fledgling fields of electromagnetism and solar astronomy. Jago’s book, although well-written and interesting, fails to rise to the level of “thrilling” that the publisher touts...
...relationship to the auroras, the so-called northern lights. At the end of the nineteenth century, the setting of Jago’s account, the northern lights were still a mystery—heralded by some as messages from the gods and by others as signals from the dead. Jago manages to successfully transport the reader to Birkeland’s world, where adventurers still dreamed not of faraway planets, stars and moons, but of uncharted mountains, desolate frozen poles and the Dark Continent of Africa. Birkeland’s native Norway was “chafing” under...
...Jago digs deep into Birkeland’s life in a narrative style made classic by VH1’s “Behind the Music.” As the young professor’s academic work took off, his personal life fell apart, resulting in a drinking and drug problem, a wrecked marraige, lost friends and, finally, after several paranoid episodes, a sad death caused by a drug overdose half-a-world away from home...
...think I recognize the source of Jago's wrongheadedness of this matter. It originates from a very poor reading--if he has actually read it, and is not merely regurgitating received ideas--of the novel Les Mandarins. In this novel, there is a dispute between two characters: Henri and Dubreuilh. It is in this novel, and within it alone, that the dispute between the characters centered on the question whether or not to publish a report on Stalin's labor camps. In viewing this novel as a roman a clef, there has been a temptation in certain quarters to identify...
...really too much to hope that Mr. Jago should make the effort to be well-informed on subjects about which he pontificates? Azinna Nwaior Assistant Professor of Afro-American Studies...