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Academic Insights for the Thinking World
In the mid-1970s the cultural shockwave known as hip hop emerged from the economic paralysis of New York City, especially the neglected neighborhoods in the Bronx. However, while hip hop music was born in New York, it speaks to a long line of black American and African diasporic cultural traditions.
Washington Park Arboretum Designed by James Dawson (1874-1941) of the Olmsted Brothers firm, and was founded in the 1930s with funds and labour from the Works Progress Administration, which provided relief during the Depression. Covering 93 hectares/230 acres in the heart of the city, and encompassing collections of Rhododendron, Cornus, Malus, Ilex, Magnolia, Camellia, Sorbus, […]
By Brian Fagan When I sat down to compile my latest book From Stonehenge to Samarkand, I found my greatest inspiration in the writings of a virtually forgotten English writer, Rose Macaulay. Her classic book, Pleasure of Ruins, first appeared in the 1950s and was reprinted with evocative photographs by Reny Beloff a decade later. […]
By Charlayne Hunter-Gault I’m a journalist, not a poll-taker, however, over the past month, while touring the country to talk about my book New News Out of Africa, I’ve been conducting an informal, highly un-scientific survey about how much Americans know about Africa. I know that the majority of the people I talk to are […]
Lawrence E. Harrison directed the USAID missions in the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Haiti and Nicaragua between 1961 and 1985. He also co-edited, with Samuel Huntington, Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress. In this podcast, Harrison discusses his latest book The Central Liberal Truth. Click here to listen to the podcast (Lawrence_Harrison_podcast_MD1.mp3)
Mark Tushnet: In reading over your responses, Saul, I was struck by the proposition that the Second Amendment, properly interpreted, would encompass only long guns – the equivalent of muskets – but not handguns. I think this is a non-starter. I begin with the question, “Why long guns – a general category – rather than […]
Mark Tushnet: A couple of things occurred to me. The less important question is this: You say that the citizen-rights view you offer “would certainly mean much more rigorous gun regulation.” Do you think that, on the view you find in the founding era, such rigorous gun regulation was thought to be required, or simply […]
Mark Tushnet: Hi Saul – First, let me say that I look forward to debating the arguments in your new book on the Second Amendment, A Well-Regulated Militia. As I read it, you make two “large” arguments, backed up of course with a lot of detail and qualifications. I’m going to sketch those arguments here, […]
By Glenn LaFantasie Authors prepare themselves for negative reviews of their books, but when critics have bad things to say about one’s writing there is no girding of the loins that really seems to work. An unfavorable review hurts, no matter what authors say to the contrary. Some writers, though, dismiss critics and criticism more […]
By Charlayne Hunter-Gault The first time I went to Ethiopia was in 1990, and I was filled with a mixture of excitement and anxiety. My excitement was sparked by the prospect of visiting one of the oldest countries in the world, and as I entered the hotel where I was to stay, I was greeted […]
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We too often forget that the generation that fought the Civil War lived in a world very different from our own. In our attempt to personalize the past, which all too often leads us into a romanticization of that past, we see the elements of human experience that unite us with the Civil War generation—how they, as individuals, loved and lost, laughed and cried, lived and died—but we tend, in the process, to overlook how these same people spent their lifetimes in a world that, upon closer inspection, seems like an alien planet.
By Glenn W. LaFantasie Near the High Water Mark on Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg, a massive white building shaped like a drum sits flat on the eastern slope of the ridge, obscured partially by a grove of fruit trees. Almost exactly in the center of the lines that Major General George Gordon Meade’s Army of […]
By William N. Eskridge, Jr. and Darren R. Spedale Last week, the Senate debated the Marriage Protection Amendment (MPA), which failed to achieve the two-thirds vote needed to amend the U.S. Constitution. If ratified, the MPA would have added language to the Constitution defining marriage as “the union of a man and a woman” and […]
Continued from last week’s post: Boswell: Thursday, 2 September Johnson: Edinburgh We now returned to Edinburgh, where I passed some days with men of learning, whose names want no advancement from my commemoration, or with women of elegance, which perhaps disclaims a pedant’s praise. The conversation of the Scots grows every day less unpleasing to […]
Continued from last week’s post: Boswell: Wednesday, 1 September Boswell: Thursday, 2 September. I had slept ill. Mr Johnson’s anger had affected me much. I considered that, without any bad intention, I might suddenly forfeit his friendship. I was impatient to see him this morning. I told him how uneasy he had made me by […]