In There Is No Place For Us: Working and Homeless in America, Brian Goldstone follows the struggles of five Atlanta families who are trying to keep a roof over their heads. Their stories are gripping [...] Continue Reading
Author
Not a Movement, More Like a Coup
If you’re probing a controversial issue, it’s heartening to find someone with wide-ranging experience and expertise in the field. And, when it comes to school vouchers, Josh Cowen—author of The [...] Continue Reading
How Social Media Is Changing Our Lives
Several recent books and articles that probe the troubling aspects of social media have something in common: They focus on the dangers that social media platforms pose for the young. Less explored, [...] Continue Reading
“They’ll Miss Their State”
For several years, some historians have speculated that democracies as we know them might collapse—and that repressive autocracies might replace them. For at least two scholars, however, the [...] Continue Reading
“Yanking the Hook”: Modern-Day Gambling
It’s something “worth celebrating”—at least according to a December 2024 cover story in The Economist. The development that’s making the magazine so enthusiastic: a recent explosion of gambling [...] Continue Reading
“Punishing and Insulting the Poor”
It’s a problem that many employees face now and then: What should they do if they have a truly awful boss? Several workers in Adelle Waldman’s Help Wanted share this problem, and they came up with [...] Continue Reading
The Rule of the Worth
BY STEVEN ROESCH A series of German folktales involves the citizens of a make-believe town called Schilda. When problems arise, the people of Schilda are sure to find a dimwitted and ineffective [...] Continue Reading
Anne Applebaum’s Autocracy, Inc.
What in the world happened? In November 1989, the Berlin Wall was breached. Two years later, the Soviet Union collapsed. During those heady years, the air was alive with talk of the “end of [...] Continue Reading
The Enemy All Along
Six minutes. Several years ago, at a Fresno Unified School District school site, that’s how long students had to go from one period to the next. And, according to Annie Jacobsen’s meticulously [...] Continue Reading
As Relevant as Ever: The BS Factor
Some authors just have a knack for finding an eye-catching title. One such writer was Harry G. Frankfurt, a philosophy professor whose pint-sized book On Bullshit created something of a furor when [...] Continue Reading
Narratives That Harm: Stories as Weapons
Nowadays you don’t hear much about Sigmund Freud. Even a few decades ago, his thoughts about human behavior still commanded a lot of attention. In the 21st century, though, they’re rarely [...] Continue Reading
All But Invisible: Food Crisis
Food insecurity. The phrase is so compact that you might think it has to do with something relatively small. But the crisis it’s referring to is massive, something that really hit home when Kym [...] Continue Reading