When a couple plans for a child today, every moment seems precious and unique. Home pregnancy tests promise good news just days after conception, and prospective parents can track the progress of their pregnancy day by day with pregnancy apps that deliver a stream of embryonic portraits. On-line due date calculators trigger a direct-marketing barrage […]
In Origins of Existence astrophysicist Fred Adams takes a radically different approach from the long tradition of biologists and spiritual leaders who have tried to explain how the universe supports the development of life. He argues that life followed naturally from the laws of physics — which were established as the universe burst into existence at the […]
The transformation that cyberspace is bringing to world affairs is profound, and managing the challenges are the strategic imperative of the twenty-first century. At the same time, economic, political, and technological decisions made by governments, corporations, and individuals are continually shaping and reshaping the Internet, sometimes for the greater good and others for narrow if […]
When Abraham Lincoln helped create the Republican Party on the eve of the Civil War, his goal was to promote economic opportunity for all Americans, not just the slaveholding Southern planters who steered national politics. Yet while visionary Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower shared Lincoln’s egalitarian dream, their attempts to use government to […]
Kenneth Neil Cukier is the Data Editor of the Economist and writes widely about what is happening in the big data arena. He is the author, with Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, of Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think, published by Eamon Dolan Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Big Data has been translated into more than a […]
Maria Kefalas is Associate Professor of Sociology at St. Joseph’s University and a Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Violence Research and Prevention. She earned her MA and Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago and completed a Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests include qualitative methods/ethnography, urban and community […]
Steven Stoll is Associate Professor of History at Fordham University, where he teaches environmental history and writes about agrarian society in North America. He is a contributor to Harper’s Magazine, writing on subjects as diverse as Haiti, economic growth, and the Little Ice Age. Steven is the author of Ramp Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia, published by […]
Shaun Ossei-Owusu is a Presidential Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania, and a scholar of the history of the legal profession. He was previously the Kellis E. Parker Teaching Fellow at Columbia Law School. Shaun received his JD and PhD in African American Studies from the University of California, Berkeley and practiced […]
The second world war would see an unlikely band of librarians, archivists, and scholars travel abroad to aid the Allies’ cause. Galvanized by the events of the war into acquiring and preserving the written word, as well as provide critical information for intelligence purposes, they set off on missions to collect foreign publications and information […]
From the early exploits of Teddy Roosevelt in Africa to blockbuster films such as March of the Penguins, Gregg Mitman’s Reel Nature reveals how changing values, scientific developments, and new technologies have come to shape American encounters with wildlife on and off the big screen. Whether crafted to elicit thrills or to educate audiences about […]
In the 1930s, a fierce struggle over the rights of workers was waged in the agricultural fields of California. Infuriated by the increasing militancy of workers during the Great Depression, California growers and their allies responded with mob assaults and official repression. Carey McWilliams used the term “farm fascism” to describe the response of corporate […]
Patrick Carr is the Program Director of the Program in Criminal Justice, and Associate Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University. He is also an Associate Member of the MacArthur Foundationâs Research Network on the Transitions to Adulthood and Public Policy. He earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago and his research interests […]
Virginia DeJohn Anderson, is Professor of History at the University of Colorado, where she has taught early American history since 1985. She is the author of Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America, published by Oxford University Press, the winner of the 2005 Phi Alpha Theta History Honor Society book award. Most recently, she is the author of The Martyr and the Traitor: The Perilous Lives of Nathan Hale and Moses Dunbar, also published by Oxford University Press.
An interdisciplinary scholar of the indigenous and colonial past, James F. Brooks is professor of history and anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has previous been a member of the faculty at the University of Maryland, UC Santa Barbara, and UC Berkeley, and has held fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study in […]
G. Derek Musgrove is Assistant Professor of history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. His new book, Chocolate City: Race and Democracy in Our Nation’s Capital from George Washington and Frederick Douglass to Marion Barry and Michelle Rhee, which he is writing with Chris Myers Asch, is a history of race and democracy in Washington, DC. It will be published by the University of North Carolina Press.