Monthly Archive: February, 2008

February 29, 2008

Humanity’s Growing Pains: A Post by Walter Dodds

Walter Dodds is a professor of biology at Kansas State and the author of Humanity’s Footprint: Momentum, Impact, and Our Global Environment. Humanity is entering adolescence. For most of our history, the world has had unlimited capacity to take care...

February 28, 2008

Letter from Jim Jordan about Gutenberg-e

The recent Chronicle of Higher Education article about Gutenberg-e got a number of facts wrong, which is not surprising given the fact that Columbia University Press was not contacted before the article was published. First, it is wrong in fact...

February 27, 2008

I Love Dollars: Finalist for the Kiriyama Prize

I Love Dollars: And Other Stories of China by Zhu Wen and translated by Julia Lovell was selected as a finalist for The Kiriyama Prize in the fiction category. The other finalists are Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones (The Dial...

February 26, 2008

Black History Month: The Education of Booker T. Washington

Continuing our series of postings on Black History Month, we turn to Michael West’s The Education of Booker T. Washington: American Democracy and the Idea of Race Relations. In the book, West explores the power and influence of Washington’s ideas...

February 25, 2008

Evolution and the Blogosphere

Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters by Donald Prothero continues to receive enthusiastic reviews from a variety of excellent science-related blogs. Most recently, the blog Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted) wrote of the book, “Beautifully written...

February 22, 2008

Oscar Reading to Win That Pool

Whether you are watching the Academy Award nominated movies for fun, for money, or for professional reasons, it’s always good to do a little research on the categories that films are nominated in. To that end, we present our highly...

February 21, 2008

Interview with Marda Dunsky, author of Pens and Swords

In this interview with the Press, Marda Dunsky talks about her new book Pens and Swords: How the American Mainstream Media Report the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and discusses some of the failures by the media and what can be done to...

February 20, 2008

Herve This Helps Clean Your Silverware

Courtesy of the Web site Delicious Days, Hervé This’s scientific knowledge is put into use to help you around the kitchen. Drawing on a chapter from Kitchen Mysteries: Revealing the Science of Cooking, “Delicious Days” shows how in just four...

February 19, 2008

Books for the Candidates: Terrorism

This continues our series of blog postings on essential reading for the presidential candidates. Two weeks ago we advised our candidates to read The Economists’ Voice, edited by Joseph Stiglitz, Aaron Edlin, and J. Bradford Delong to prepare for tackling...

February 15, 2008

Our February Presidents: A Post from Thomas W. Evans

Thomas W. Evans is the author of The Education of Ronald Reagan: The General Electric Years and the Untold Story of His Conversion to Conservatism. Four presidents were born in February: Washington and Lincoln, William Henry Harrison, and Ronald Reagan....

February 14, 2008

Valentine’s Day Reading

Happy Valentine’s Day. There are lots of modern self-help books out there to analyze your relationships and make you a better person, but we prefer to look backwards in time to the tried and true masters that stand the test...

February 13, 2008

Bookslut Reviews "Inventing English" by Seth Lerer

Both print and online venues continue to talk about and review Seth Lerer’s Inventing English: A Portable History of the Language. Last week wordsmith.org held an online chat with Seth Lerer and earlier this week, the very popular Bookslut reviewed...