Twenty years after the end of apartheid, a new generation is building a multiracial democracy in South Africa but remains mired in economic inequality and political conflict. The death of Nelson Mandela in 2013 arrived just short of the twentieth anniversary of South Africa’s first free election, reminding the world of the promise he represented […]
In November 1977 more than thirty-five thousand people came to Houston, Texas. Twenty thousand visitors – mainly women – were there to celebrate the first and only national women’s conference to be sponsored by the federal government, and to endorse an agenda for women’s issues that would guide law and policy for the next decade. […]
When we think of the key figures of early American history, we think of explorers, or pilgrims, or Native Americans—not cattle, or goats, or swine. But as Virginia DeJohn Anderson reveals in this brilliantly original account of colonists in New England and the Chesapeake region, livestock played a vitally important role in the settling of […]
Adrian Johns is a professor in the Department of History and the Committee on Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science at the University of Chicago. He is the author of several books, most recently Death of a Pirate, published by Norton. Piracy, his history of intellectual piracy from the invention of printing to the Internet, was published by the University of Chicago Press and has been published in Italian, Spanish, French, and Czech. Piracy won the Book of the Year Award from the American Society for Information Science and Technology and was named an Outstanding Title by Choice Magazine.
Richard C. Francis is a freelance science writer and the author of Epigenetics, published by W. W. Norton & Co. Writing in the New Republic, Judith Shulevitz said, ““Mesmerizing stuff…Richard Francis provides an excellent non-technical introduction to the scientific underpinnings of this discomfiting new genetics.” His most recent book, Domesticated: Evolution in a Man-Made World, was also published […]
Gabriel Metcalf is the executive director of the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR), one of the leading urban planning organizations in America. A member-supported non-profit that promotes good planning and good government, SPUR develops solutions to urban policy problems in the fields of economic development, transportation, housing policy, urban design, climate change, and […]
Dan Berger has been writing about the history of twentieth century US social movements for almost two decades. An associate professor of comparative ethnic studies at the University of Washington Bothell and affiliate associate professor of history at the UW Seattle, he regularly contributes journalistic commentary on issues of policing, prisons, and activism. He blogs […]
In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then assistant secretary of labor for President Lyndon Johnson, penned the now infamous report, The Negro Family: A Case for National Action. Moynihan claimed that due to the sharp increase in out-of-wedlock childbearing—a condition affecting only a small fraction of white children but one in five African Americans at the time—the […]
Housing vouchers are a cornerstone of US federal housing policy, offering aid to more than two million households. Vouchers are meant to provide the poor with increased choice in the private rental marketplace, enabling access to safe neighborhoods with good schools and higher-paying jobs. But do they? The Voucher Promise examines the Housing Choice Voucher Program, colloquially known […]
Christopher Von der Ahe knew next to nothing about baseball when he bought the bankrupt St Louis Browns in 1882. Von der Ahe picked up the team for one simple reason—to sell more beer. Then, convinced that the preeminent National League was missing an opportunity, he and a band of saloonkeepers, brewers and distillers created […]
Difficult problems attract a host of different possible solutions – many of them turn out to be terrible, some are bit better, a few may be really good, and occasionally the process of creativity will produce something superb. But whether the goal is to create a molecule of carbon, an efficient shell shape, or a […]
Adrian Johns is a professor in the Department of History and the Committee on Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science at the University of Chicago. He is the author of several books, most recently Death of a Pirate, published by Norton. Piracy, his history of intellectual piracy from the invention of printing to the Internet, was published by the University of Chicago Press and has been published in Italian, Spanish, French, and Czech. Piracy won the Book of the Year Award from the American Society for Information Science and Technology and was named an Outstanding Title by Choice Magazine.
Edward Gray is the former editor of the interactive journal Common-place, and is the author of several books, including, most recently, Tom Paine’s Iron Bridge, published by W. W. Norton. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Kathleen DuVal called the book “fascinating and important.” Since 1999 he has taught courses in colonial and revolutionary-era American history and […]
Amy Elizabeth Smith teaches writing and literature at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. Her book, All Roads Lead to Austen: A Year Long Journey with Jane was published by Sourcebooks. Booklist called the book, “a fun twist on the fascination with all things Jane.” A lifetime member of JASNA (The Jane Austen Society of North America), she has been publishing scholarly articles for years, but this is her first venture into travel writing.
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 […]