Recommended Sunday Reading—June 18 

It’s the liver that runs the body

A healthy liver is the one organ in the adult body that, if chopped down to a fraction of its initial size, will rapidly regenerate and perform as if brand-new. Which is a lucky thing, for the liver’s to-do list is second only to that of the brain and numbers well over 300 items, including systematically reworking the food we eat into usable building blocks for our cells; neutralizing the many potentially harmful substances that we incidentally or deliberately ingest; generating a vast pharmacopoeia of hormones, enzymes, clotting factors and immune molecules; controlling blood chemistry; and really, we’re just getting started.

The latest in luxury on wheels

That eye-popping price tag gets you five-star hotel luxury including a marble-floored bathroom with claw-legged tub in the priciest suite, food prepared by gourmet chefs, and sumptuous lounges where you can sip cocktails as you take in the dramatic scenery through huge viewing windows.

Sleep, Einstein, naps and genius

According to apocryphal legend, to make sure he didn’t overdo it he’d recline in his armchair with a spoon in his hand and a metal plate directly beneath. He’d allow himself to drift off for a second, then – bam! – the spoon would fall from his hand and the sound of it hitting the plate would wake him up.

The British visa takes longer and costs more!

The applicant is encouraged to pay for a texting service that is meant to send his phone three messages tracking the progress of his application. With me and several others I know, the only text message we received was one telling us that we had submitted our application. This wasn't very useful; it didn't tell us anything we didn't already know given that we had personally submitted them. The other two messages never arrived because of a 'technical' problem. No refund for the SMS service was forthcoming. The final touch was the information that should we wish to collect our returned passports on a Saturday, that would be an extra Rs 500 per passport.

Is a China-US war inevitable? Two recent books tell the story

The reform-era strongman Deng Xiaoping advised China to “hide our capacities and bide our time” on this and many other issues. Hostility between China and Japan simmers in disputes over hierarchy, wartime apology and historical narrative, with the two “in a situation resembling galaxies locked in each other’s gravitational fields, destined to collide repeatedly only to sail past each other after wreaking their damage.” French shows convincingly that China’s goal is now to displace the American barbarians and correct historic humiliations imposed by those who dethroned China from its rightful position at the center of the world.