LATEST ADDITIONS

David Murray has a new jazz album out. A decade or two ago, this wouldn’t be worth a shrug (though it would be worth a trip to Tower); he came out with two or three jazz albums every month. Those of us lucky to live in New York could also go see him lead his big band at the Knitting Factory every Monday night and see him play in a half-dozen other bands, as leader or sideman, at clubs all over the city. Then, in the mid-‘90s, he fell in love with a French woman, moved to Paris, broadened his musical palette (playing with Guadaloupean drummers, for instance)—all to nourishing effect, but the few times each year when he returned to New York and hooked up with a jazz quartet or octet again, it was a nearly always a spine-tingling experience (yes, a clich, but it really was).

Mistakes—we all make 'em. Why, just yesterday a kindly friend corrected my typo "Little Deuce Coop" before it appeared in print under my byline. But what if your oops involves a thermonuclear device?

A nuclear physicist reviews Plutonium: A History of the World's Most Dangerous Element, arguing that understanding the element could help us construct a rational policy for dealing with its dangers.