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Academic Insights for the Thinking World
Norman Ornstein dropped in on The Colbert Report last night for a dose of Steven Colbert’s unorthodox interviewing style. Ornstein, who is a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and author of the forthcoming book on Congress, The Broken Branch, withstood Colbert’s grilling rather well, barely flinching when Colbert determined that Ornstein is actually "a […]
by Anatoly Liberman The entries in the great Oxford English Dictionary (OED) reveal, although, naturally, in broad outline, the documented history of thousands of words. Some of them surfaced in texts more than a millennium ago, others emerged in Chaucer’s works and later, and still others were added to the vocabulary of English within the […]
by Richard Striner How will historians eventually rate our incumbent president as a wartime commander? A comparison of George W. Bush and the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, is instructive. Putting aside the issue of civil liberties in wartime —— an issue that people of good will could debate almost endlessly —— Lincoln was a […]
Poet’s Work Grandfather advised me: Learn a trade I learned to sit at desk and condense No layoff from this condensery –Lorine Niedecker, 1964 From the forthcoming Oxford Book of American Poetry.
On Tuesday on his blog Whatever, John Scalzi announced the arrival of the NOAD and The American Writer’s Thesaurus in his mailbox. In addition to giving the customary compliments to Erin McKean, Editor of Oxford’s US Dictionary program, Scalzi was surprised to find both books “delightful” and “fun to read.” He then turns to the […]
There was a time when historical linguistics was one of the most prestigious disciplines in the humanities. At school, Latin and Classical Greek were shoved down young boys’ unwilling throats, and it seemed natural to look at languages with the eyes of a historian. Early in the 19th century, regular sound correspondences between languages were […]
Presidents are the curse of American history. Or to be more precise, our interpretation of American history is bedeviled by the excessive focus on the role of the president, his character and personality. Not long ago, PBS’s “American Experience” repeated its major series on Ronald Reagan, which used a biography of Reagan as a means […]
Butler, Octavia (b. 22 June 1947 – d. 24 February 2006), science-fiction author. Butler was one of the most thoughtful and imaginative authors of her time. One of the few black writers in the science-fiction field, she took full advantage of the speculative freedom that the genre allows writers to explore her interest in sociology, […]
Goldberg, Whoopi (13 Nov. 1955 –), actress and comedian, was born Caryn Elaine Johnson in New York City, the second of two children of Emma Harris, a sometime teacher and nurse, and Robert Johnson, who left the family when Caryn was a toddler. Caryn attended St. Columbia School, a parochial school located several blocks from […]
After our brief Q&A session with Lizzie Collingham last week, I wanted to provide another taste of the delicious and fascinating recipes woven into her new book, Curry. Having already given out Collingham’s favorite recipe from the book, green coriander chutney, I’m strangely delighted to post the much more esoteric dish that she mentioned last […]
by Jill Quadagno Last year 46 million Americans were uninsured and health care costs continued their inexorable upward climb. These two problems, rising costs and increasing numbers of uninsured people, have bedeviled every president since Nixon, each of whom has sought solutions by regulating health care providers and insurance companies. In his State of the […]
“WASHINGTON’S CROSSING!” the stranger said with a bright smile of recognition. Then a dark frown passed across his face. “Was it like the painting?” he said. “Did it really happen that way?” The image that he had in mind is one of the folk-memories that most Americans share. It represents an event that happened on […]
Carson, Ben (18 Sept. 1951 –), pediatric neurosurgeon, was born Benjamin Solomon Carson in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Robert Carson, a minister of a small Seventh-Day Adventist church, and Sonya Carson. His mother had attended school only up to the third grade and married at the age of thirteen; she was fifteen years younger […]
This week, Tim Harford turned his eye towards various forms of love – and arrives, or nearly so, at some highly unconventional conclusions. Namely, getting married may or may not make you a happier person, but if you do decide to take the plunge, you could help make the rest of us happier by taking […]
Slaves retained their humanity thanks to the support of families and religion, which helped them resist oppression. Nonetheless, slavery was a dehumanizing institution. Assaults on the bodies and minds of the enslaved exposed them to trauma that was both physical and psychological.
What advice would you give to all of those ‘foodies’ out there searching for an authentic Indian meal? Don’t worry about the authenticity of the food. There is no such thing as an authentic Indian dish. The stories behind Indian dishes are far more fascinating and almost always reveal that the dish is an amalgamation […]