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“It was a dark and stormy night.”
“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”
“He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.”
These are among the most famous opening lines in literature—but can you recall what books they are from? (No cheating.) Reply to this email to learn the answers, share your favorite opening lines or tell us what you think of the newsletter.
— Christopher Carduff, Books Editor
books@wsj.com
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A pair of pilots fly in a Westland Wapiti, ca. 1930, from Michael Napier’s glossy photographic essay ’The Royal Air Force: A Centenary of Operations’ (Osprey, 339 pages, $40).
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“We will fight them in the skies,” Winston Churchill famously declared at the start of World War II, as daring pilots fought off the Nazis during the Battle of Britain. But it was the country’s response to a German aerial invasion two decades before that truly revolutionized modern warfare. As zeppelins rained down destruction on British cities in the summer of 1917, the strategy devised by a forward-thinking South African general (and friend of Churchill) led to the creation of the Royal Air Force in 1918. “Within the space of a single decade,” writes our reviewer, “a new form of warfare had emerged to take its place alongside the struggles of armies and navies. . . . Nothing like this had occurred in all of history.”
Paul Kennedy reviews Richard Overy’s “RAF: The Birth of the World’s First Air Force” and other books on the RAF’s centenary. Read more
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The best sci-fi novel of the year: In Hannu Rajaniemi’s cerebral thriller “Summerland,” spiritualism is real, and 1930s Britain must defend a newly discovered region of the afterlife against Soviet subversion. Read the review
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She Has Her
Mother’s Laugh
By Carl Zimmer
You think you’re just one person, but are you? It turns out that twins swap DNA in the womb, and many mothers who give birth to sons end up with male chromosomes in their livers, lungs or brains. Read the review
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The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Stars
By Paul Broks
Neuropsychologist Paul Broks doesn’t believe in a soul, yet when he discovered his dead wife’s lost wedding ring, he did wonder if she was trying to contact him from beyond the grave. Read the review
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Brazil's greatest writer: The collected stories of Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, a mixed-race grandson of slaves, illustrates the refined pleasures and somewhat ungraspable nature of his art. Read the review
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Trendsetters & Tastemakers
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As Time Goes By
By Derek Taylor
When George Harrison paid his famous 1967 visit to San Francisco, singing “Baby You’re a Rich Man” on the streets of Haight-Ashbury, Beatles pressman Derek Taylor was there beside him. Read the review
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What to Read and Why
By Francine Prose
Contemporary readers think novelists ought to provide “relatable” characters, but it’s an author’s duty to tell us exactly who and what we are, in less-than-flattering terms. Read the review
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Out-there adventures: A 16-year-old girl tries to found a space colony in Lauren James’s “The Loneliest Girl in the Universe,” and a dreaded interstellar warrior gets a hilarious comeuppance in Adam Rex’s “Are You Scared, Darth Vader?” Read the review
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Artificial Intelligence—and Us
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The Future of Work
By Darrell M. West
Many who claim AI will kill jobs cite an infamous study classifying some odd professions as “automatable,” including school-bus driver—as if parents might lock unsupervised children into self-driving metal boxes. Read the review
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Army of None
By Paul Scharre
The Pentagon is currently the biggest player in robotics. Fully autonomous missiles and gun batteries will soon be a reality. But machines are only as wise as the humans who program them. Read the review
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| Five Best: Joyce Lee Malcolm on treason |
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The author, most recently, of “The Tragedy of Benedict Arnold,” selects books about other famous turncoats. Read more.
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Turncoats, Traitors & Heroes: Espionage in the American Revolution – By John Bakeless (1959)
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The Treason Trial of Aaron Burr – By R. Kent Newmyer (2012)
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The Killer Angels – By Michael Shaara (1974)
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Betrayal: The Story of Aldrich Ames, an American Spy – By Tim Weiner, David Johnston and Neil A. Lewis (1995)
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This War Without an Enemy: A History of the English Civil Wars – By Richard Ollard (1976)
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