The Vikings maintain their grip on our imagination, but their image is too often distorted by medieval and modern myth. It is true that they pillaged, looted, and enslaved. But they also settled peacefully and developed a vast trading network. They traveled far from their homelands in swift and sturdy ships, not only to raid, […]
It is curious that while so many of our most important relationships are both promoted and protected by law and society – friendship is notably passed over. We go out of our way to accommodate the rights and privileges of the family, and special professional relationships, like the ones we have with our lawyers, doctors, […]
Backed by her landmark scientific work on mindfulness and artistic nature, bestselling author and Harvard psychologist Ellen J. Langer shows us that creativity is not a rare gift that only some special few are born with, but rather an integral part of everyone’s makeup. All of us can express our creative impulses—authentically and uniquely—and, in […]
We’ve all been taught that through biological inheritance we acquire traits from our parents and grandparents as a result of the individual genes that they pass along to us, unchanged, barring rare mutations. But what if your grandmother’s diet could affect your health? Obviously if we accept that inherited = genetic, this doesn’t make sense. […]
David J. Silverman is Professor in the Department of History at George Washington University. He is the author of four books in Native American and colonial American history, with a particular focus on New England. His next book, a Wampanoag-centered history of Plymouth colony and the Thanksgiving holiday, will be published by Bloomsbury.
Ethan Zuckerman is director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT, and a principal research scientist at the MIT Media Lab. His research focuses on the distribution of attention in mainstream and new media, the use of technology for international development, and the use of new media technologies by activists. He is the author of Digital […]
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 […]
Richard Ogle is an entrepreneur, veteran consultant, and educator and senior associate specializing in innovation with the consulting company Enterprise Design. Previously, he was on the faculty of the School of Economics and Business Administration at St. Mary’s College, CA, where he taught in the Executive MBA Program. He also taught for nine years at […]
A manifesto that argues for the importance of consumption in driving the economy, forming identity, creating meaning—and saving the world. In the aftermath of the financial meltdown of 2009, readers will have heard very different explanations for why the housing bubble burst, how the recession came to pass, and how we might recover from the […]
What can the rocks in old stone walls tell us about how the earth’s crust was shaped, melted by volcanoes, carved by glaciers, and worn by weather? And what can they tell us about earlier people on the land and the first settlers? As Adam and his grandfather work together to repair the family farm’s […]
The terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” were both coined in the 20th century to describe the attempted extermination of a specific group of people by their own government. Genocide was first used in 1944 in regard to the Holocaust, and ethnic cleansing was first used in the early 1990s to describe the policies of Bosnian […]
Transcending the boundaries of class and race, the G.I. Bill enabled a sizable portion of the hallowed “greatest generation” to gain vocational training or to attend college or graduate school at government expense. Its beneficiaries had grown up during the Depression, living in tenements and cold-water flats, on farms and in small towns across the […]
James E. Block is assistant professor of political science at DePaul University. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, Committee on Social Thought, J.D. from New York University, and M.A., History of Ideas, from the University of Sussex. He also studied at Columbia University in a joint program with Wolfson College, Oxford. Professor […]
Joshua D. Rothman is Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History at the University of Alabama, where he has taught since receiving his Ph.D. at the University of Virginia in 2000 and where he served as Director of the Frances S. Summersell Center for the Study of the South from 2010-2016. A […]
Paul Attewell is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the Graduate Center, CUNY, where he works in two doctoral programs: sociology and urban education. His recent research has been in the sociology of education with a focus on the relationship between educational institutions and social inequality. He has studied middle and high schools and colleges. He […]
