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Academic Insights for the Thinking World

Cover of The Art of the Bee by Robert Page

Nature’s landscape artists

Claude Monet once said, “I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.” Perhaps he should have given bees equal credit for his occupation. Without them, the dialectical coevolutionary dance with flowers that has lasted 125 million years would not have produced the colorful landscapes he so cherished. For Darwin, it was an abominable mystery; for Monet, an endless inspiration.

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Cover image of "A Man on Fire: The Worlds of Thomas Wentworth Higginson" by Douglas R. Egerton featuring a close up painted portrait of Higginson

Thomas Wentworth Higginson and the freedom jubilee

“Colonel Higginson was a man on fire,” read one obituary. “He had convictions and lived up to them in the fullest degree.” The obituary added that he had “led the first negro regiment, contributed to the literature of America, and left an imprint upon history too deep to be obliterated.” Thomas Wentworth Higginson would have been pleased to have been referred to as “colonel.” He was proud of his military service and happily used the title for many decades after the end of the Civil War and up to his death in May 1911 at the age of eighty-seven.

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Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman

Dwarf and its past

First, my thanks to those who wrote kind words about my most recent essays. Especially welcome was the comment that sounded approximately so: “I understand almost nothing in his posts but always enjoy them.” It has always been my aim not only to provide my readers, listeners, and students with information but also to be a source of pure, unmitigated joy.

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Cover image of "Frances Oldham Kelsey, The FDA and the Battle Against Thalidomide" by Cheryl Krasnick Warsh

Frances Oldham Kelsey: fame, gender, and science

Frances Oldham Kelsey, pharmacologist, physician, and professor, found fame soon after she finally, well into her forties, landed a permanent position as medical reviewer for the Food and Drug Administration in 1961. One of the first files to cross her desk was for the sedative thalidomide (tradename Kevadon), which was very popular in Europe and other nations for treating morning sickness.

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Cover image of "A Concise Guide to Communication in Science and Engineering" by David H. Foster

Discussing your research findings

Most research articles in journals have a standard structure with sections entitled “Introduction,” “Methods,” “Results,” and “Discussion.” Each has a clear remit except for the Discussion, which, if you’re a less experienced writer, may seem a hopelessly vague description. The occasional alternative of “Conclusion” or “General Discussion” isn’t much better.

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Cover of "Return of the Gods: Mythology in Romantic Philosophy and Literature" by Owen Ware

We are mythmaking creatures

Many of us feel disconnected, from ourselves, from others, from nature. We feel fragmented. But where are we to find a cure to our fragmentation? And how can we satisfy our longing for wholeness? The German and British romantics had a surprising answer: through mythology.

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Cover of "Vengeance Is Mine: The Mountain Meadows Massacre and Its Aftermath" by Richard E. Turley and Barbara Jones Brown

Fact and fiction behind American Primeval

A popular new Netflix series, American Primeval, is stirring up national interest in a long-forgotten but explosive episode in America’s past. Though the series is highly fictionalized, it is loosely based on events covered in my recent, nonfiction publication, Vengeance Is Mine: The Mountain Meadows Massacre and Its Aftermath, co-written with Richard E. Turley Jr.

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Cover image of "Stomp Off, Let's Go" by Ricky Riccardi

The meteoric rise of Louis Armstrong [playlist]

In the five years between his first recording session as a sideman with King Oliver in April 1923 to his final date as a leader in Chicago in December 1928, Louis Armstrong changed the sound of American popular music, with both his trumpet and with his voice. He perfected the art of the improvised solo, expanded the range of the trumpet, popularized scat singing, rewrote the rules of pop singing, and perhaps most importantly, infused everything he did with the irresistible feeling of swing.

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Square image reads "emerging & global health policy" with the Health Affairs Scholar logo in the bottom left corner

The best of Health Affairs Scholar 2024

As we welcome 2025, we reflect on the milestones and achievements that shaped Health Affairs Scholar in 2024. Among the highlights, we introduced our first Calls for Papers, focusing on the critical topics of: Global Aging, Intersections of Social Policies, and Health and Policy Options for the 340B Discount Program.

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The unknown A Complete Unknown

Folk music is still and always with us. It is in the tap of the hammer to the music on the radio or, in older days, to the workers’ own singing. It is the rhythmic push of the cabinetmaker’s saw, the scan across the checkout station to the beat of songs inside the checker’s head.

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Cover image of "We Tried to Yell Y'all" by Meredith D. Clark

Voices of change for Black History Month [reading list]

In honor of Black History Month, we celebrate the powerful voices that have shaped history and continue to inspire change in America and around the world. This reading list features eight books that amplify the diverse experiences and contributions of Black individuals. Eight unique stories of resistance, perseverance, empowerment, and transformation that deserve their place in the American narrative.

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Librarian reflections: a retrospective on 2024

At OUP, we’re eager to foster discussion and reflection within the library community. So we took the opportunity to ask Eleanor Thomas, Acquisitions Coordinator for the University of Adelaide Library, to share her reflections on, and experiences, of the library sector over the past year, and her impressions of what the new year may bring.

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Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman

Slippery as an eel, merry as a grig

My post on Yule redux (January 22, 2025) engendered two responses. One, published as a comment, states that my essays give the correspondent a lot of joy, though he does not understand much of what I say. I never thought that my writings sound like some sort of glossolalia.

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Meditations in purple

Children may have less height, vocabulary, and power than adults do. But children’s books are not a lesser art form. Consider Crockett Johnson’s Harold and the Purple Crayon. At first glance, the book looks self-explanatory. What more can be said about a boy, a crayon, and the moon?

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Title cover of "Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels: Insulting the President from Washington to Trump" by Edwin L. Battistella, published by Oxford University Press

Some barely iconic, epic usages

As a linguist, I understand that language shifts and changes.  The voiced z sound of houses is being replaced by an unvoiced s sound.  The abbreviation A.I. has become a verb, as in “He A.I.ed it.” Neologisms abound, tracked by the American Dialect Society, and new words often make us think of things in new ways.

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