We used to know how to know. We got our answers from books or experts. We’d nail down the facts and move on. But in the Internet Age knowledge has moved onto networks. There’s more knowledge than ever, of course, but it’s different. All the nails have been pulled up, topics have no boundaries, and […]
Firebrand of Liberty tells the story of the black and white Union soldiers and civilians who in 1863 carried out a daring expedition deep into enemy country to try to liberate slaves—an episode now nearly forgotten, but which changed the course of the Civil War. It was, by any reckoning, a curious military expedition. There was […]
How do new things come about in biology? Darwin’s theory of natural selection explains what happens once innovations arise—to preserve and propagate those adaptations that are helpful. But it doesn’t tell us how those innovations come to be in the first place. In the absence of a good explanation, we’ve defaulted to attributing evolutionary change […]
As the twentieth century closed, Fred Adams and Greg Laughlin captured the attention of the world by identifying the five ages of time. In The Five Ages of the Universe, they demonstrate that we can now understand the complete life story of the cosmos from beginning to end. Adams and Laughlin have been hailed as the […]
Carole Emberton is an award-winning author and Associate Professor of History at the University at Buffalo (SUNY), where she specializes in the history of the Civil War and Reconstruction. She is the author of Beyond Redemption: Race, Violence, and the American South after the Civil War published by the University of Chicago Press. The book received […]
Amir Alexander is a writer, historian, and mathematician living in Los Angeles. He teaches history at UCLA. He is the author, most recently, of Infinitesimal: How a Dangerous Mathematical Theory Shaped the Modern World, published by Scientific American Books/Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Named a Wall Street Journal Best Science Book to Give for the Holidays and a Library Journal Best Science Book of 2014, it was called “a triumph” by Nature. Amir’s next book, The Science of Certainty also will be published by Scientific American Books/Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
James Bessen, an economist, is the Executive Director of the Technology & Policy Research Initiative at the Boston University School of Law. He has done research on the impacts of automation, how information technology has contributed to rising industry concentration, whether patents promote innovation, and how technology affects jobs, skills, and wages. His research first documented the large economic […]
In the tradition of E. F. Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful, renowned economist Clair Brown argues persuasively for a new economics built upon equality, sustainability, and right living. She believes that there is something very wrong with GDP. An economist at the University of California at Berkeley, she has long been troubled by the fact that classical economics […]
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 […]
We have made great steps toward eliminating poverty around the world – extreme poverty has declined significantly and seems on track to continue to do so in the next decades. Jim Yong Kim of the World Bank estimates that extreme poverty can be eliminated in 17 years. This is clearly cause for celebration. However, this […]
Even before the Civil War, Richmond, Virginia was a prominent and distinctive city. The most industrialized city of the South, and one of the largest and most ethnically diverse, it managed to be entrepreneurial and forward looking in a way that belied the stereotype of the old South while remaining thoroughly committed to slave-holding and […]
Adam Segal is the Maurice R. Greenberg Senior Fellow for China Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). An expert on security issues, technology development, and Chinese domestic and foreign policy, he leads the Cyberconflict and Cybersecurity Initiative. Adam is the author of A Hacked World Order: How Nations Fight, Trade, Maneuver, and Manipulate in a Digital Age which was published by Public Affairs. The Wall Street Journal wrote, “[Adam Segal] gives us plenty of reasons to wonder how long global powers will keep from going ânuclearâ in cyberspace.” His previous book, Advantage: How American Innovation Can Overcome the Asian Challenge, was a look at the technological rise of Asia.
Paul Freedman is the Chester D. Tripp Professor of History and Chair of the History Department at Yale University. He specializes in medieval social history, the history of Spain, and comparative studies of the peasantry. Paul Freedman taught for eighteen years at Vanderbilt University before joining the Yale faculty in 1997. At Vanderbilt, he was awarded […]
Samuel Brown is Assistant Professor of Pulmonary and Critical Medicine at the University of Utah/Intermountain Healthcare, where his scientific focus is life-threatening infections and the ethical and humanistic implications of critical care. A faculty member of the Division of Medical Ethics and Humanities, Dr. Brown has published widely in medical, ethics, and history journals. He […]
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 […]