Category: Author-Editor Post/Op-Ed

December 13, 2019

Why Chimpanzees Can’t Learn Language: My Rollercoaster Experience Trying to Teach a Chimp Sign Language

“Language seems to be a miracle; even our closest relatives, the great apes, lack any capacity for the grammatical structures that make human language unique. Herbert Terrace goes further and shows that chimpanzees can’t even learn words. With characteristic clarity,...

December 11, 2019

How to Catch a War Criminal

“Extraordinary Justice is hands down the final verdict on the UN’s controversial ‘mixed tribunal.’ . . . Simply put, nobody knows more about the Khmer Rouge war crimes trials than Etcheson. This is a remarkable, three-dimensional study of the legally simple...

December 4, 2019

Can We Still Rely on Counterspeech to Correct Disinformation in Political Advertising?

“Napoli takes up the daunting challenge of lassoing and taming the wild social media beasts that have wreaked so much havoc in democracies around the world. This book is bold, clear, and necessary. Readers of this book will gain a...

November 6, 2019

Enacting Environmental Stewardship by Acting Locally

“Talking the environmental talk is one thing, but if you want to walk the walk, too, Karl Coplan’s book will tell you how to do it and how to do it happily.” ~Colin Beavan, author of How To Be Alive...

November 6, 2019

Why Waterboarding Won’t Die

“In a gripping story about fear and loathing in Amboina, Adam Clulow probes a pivotal event in world history to offer fresh insights about the entanglements of European empires in Asia. Meticulously researched and engagingly told, Amboina, 1623 is that...

October 11, 2019

Nim Chimpsky and Noam Chomsky: Why Language Began with Words

“Herbert S. Terrace, known for his breakthrough work on the ape, Nim Chimpsky, now shines light on language acquisition in human children. In this masterful work, Terrace provides extraordinarily novel ideas about the evolution and development of the human mind...

September 4, 2019

Time to Move Empathy from the Personal to the Political

“Using social empathy to frame community decision making such as social policies helps us understand our citizenship responsibilities. Especially in times of extreme political divisiveness, we need to be reminded of the consequences of a lack of social empathy—in our...

August 14, 2019

The Marvels of the Sarashina Diary

“As the author herself says of Mount Fuji, this unique work ‘looks like nothing else in the world.’” ~David Damrosch, Harvard University   This week, we’ve been featuring works from Heian-era Japan, a period that produced an enormous amount of...

August 14, 2019

Understanding the El Paso Massacre

“The study of lone wolf terrorism takes a significant leap forward in this important book. Hamm and Spaaij provide a thoughtful analysis and critical insights about the nature of lone wolf terrorism and terrorists. The book is a must-read for...

July 20, 2019

Marooned and Miraculous

“Oliver connects Heidegger’s pivotal distinction between Earth and World to deliberations on cosmopolitanism from Kant to Arendt and Derrida and to thinking earth as the sustaining ground of not-just-human life. Drawing effortlessly on film and popular culture, this is a...

June 19, 2019

Immigration, Racism, and the Growth of Economic Inequality in New York City

“Updated throughout and extended to the present through the latest scholarship, this enduring classic demonstrates once again how central the growth of immigrant-origin communities has been to the neighborhoods, collective life, politics, and economy of New York City. All the NationsUnder...

May 29, 2019

Thomas Berry and Columbia University: Reflections from Mary Evelyn Tucker, Columbia PhD 1985

“A tour de force biography: Thomas Berry was one of the most important thinkers on humanity and our trajectory on this wondrous living planet—and indeed in the journey of the universe. This is a book written with love and clarity...