Sue Halpern, in The New York Review of Books: What you get is the war without the war story. Freed from those conventions -- from the demands of plot, from the typically false dichotomy between good guys and bad guys, and unburdened of ambiguity, of bravado, of cant, there is only one thing in sight, and that is consequence. The brutal honesty of these cases demands a brutally honest response. It is no wonder that the military censors tried hard to keep this book from commercial release.
From the archive: Postmodernists believe language is a circular self-referential trap, while pragmatists believe it lends insight into what reality is. Pinker’s book seems to posit that that is a false dichotomy, not because both claims are false, but because both are fundamentally true.
From a review of a book by Roger Penrose: "What a joy it is to read a book that doesn't simplify, doesn't dodge the difficult questions, and doesn't always pretend to have answers."
Have you seen Happy-Go-Lucky? The film opens with her visiting a bookshop and fingering a copy of Roger Penrose's book, The Road to Reality. "Don't want to go there," she mutters to herself. Meanwhile, outside, her bicycle is being stolen.
The War We Don't Want to See | 
