Cloud of Sparrows

Once in a great while a new novelist comes along who dazzles us with rare eloquence and humanity, with flawless storytelling and a unique understanding of another place and time. Takashi Matsuoka is just such a writer.

Do Sparrows Like Bach?

Science tells us grand things about the universe: how fast light travels, and why stones fall to earth. But scientific endeavor goes far beyond these obvious foundations. There are some fields we don`t often hear about because they are so specialized, or turn out to be dead ends. Yet researchers have given hallucinogenic drugs to blind people (seriously), tried to weigh the soul as it departs the body, and planned to blast a new Panama Canal with an atomic weapon. Real scientific breakthroughs sometimes come out of the most surprising and unpromising work.