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Sir Martyn Poliakoff, professor of chemistry, University of Nottingham, is reading Marco Fontani, Mariagrazia Costa and Mary Virginia Orna¡¯s The Lost Elements: The Periodic Table¡¯s Shadow Side (Oxford University Press, 2014). ¡°Unusually, you¡¯ve caught me reading a chemistry book for relaxation! But it¡¯s a fascinating one. Many people, including me, are intrigued by the hunt for new elements and how they are named. It¡¯s a very live issue. Seven new names have been added to the periodic table since 2008; four this year. What this book describes is all the mistakes that have been made by researchers who wrongly believed that they had isolated new elements. And there are a lot of such researchers ¨C it¡¯s a fat book! Best of all is the comprehensive index that lists hopeful, unused or erroneous names from Accretium to Zunzenium via Gnomium and Mussolinium.¡±

Angie Hobbs, professor of the public understanding of philosophy, University of Sheffield, is reading Elena Ferrante¡¯s My Brilliant Friend (Europa Editions, 2012). ¡°This, the first of Ferrante¡¯s Neapolitan novels, depicts with both affection and unflinching clarity the comforts, frictions and labyrinthine complexities of a long friendship between two women in a time of great social change. We first meet Lila and Len¨´ as children in the 1950s backstreets of a city pulsating with sensuous life, but where danger and death are also always present. I used to live in Naples, and Ferrante wonderfully evokes the visceral allure and idiosyncrasies of the place. She handles a large cast of characters with skill, humour and compassion, while never losing sight of the two intertwined stories that form the heart of the work.¡±

Richard Howells, professor of cultural sociology, King¡¯s College London, is reading Claire Fox¡¯s ¡®I Find That Offensive!¡¯ (Biteback, 2016). ¡°Whichever way you look at it, Fox¡¯s short, sharp book makes for a white-knuckle read. It is a polemic for free speech and against safe spaces, no-platforming, ¡®generation snowflake¡¯ and the politics of being offended. Other targets include ¡®competitive victimhood¡¯, trigger warnings and censorious claims that there is ¡®nothing to debate¡¯. Fox¡¯s book is especially relevant to higher education today, and comes (importantly yet unpredictably, perhaps, given her argument) from a public intellectual with a distinctly left- rather than right-wing background. The cause of any consequent knuckle-discoloration will depend on whether or not the reader agrees with her. For the record, I (mostly) do. Those on the other side of what Fox calls the ¡®offence wars¡¯, of course, are much more likely to be offended.¡±