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August 31, 2015

Interview with Robert Boyers, author of "The Fate of Ideas"

In The Fate of Ideas: Seductions, Betrayals, Appraisals, Robert Boyers strikes an unusual balance between cultural criticism and the personal or memoiristic essay. Examining a wide range of ideas—from pleasure and fidelity to “the other” and authority—he argues that people...

August 28, 2015

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds — Donald Prothero on the Oldest Human Skeleton

Donald Prothero on Lucy’s legacy and the search for human fossils.

August 27, 2015

WITMonth 2015: Author/Translator/Author

In honor of August as Women in Translation Month (#WITMonth), we are featuring two very different posts by translators Howard Goldblatt and Esther Allen on women in translation. Goldblatt’s piece explains the meticulous translation and writing process he undertook to complete Chinese novelist Xiao Hong’s novel Ma Bo-le.

August 27, 2015

Mega-Jaws — Donald Prothero on the Rise and Fall of the Giant Shark

Donald R. Prothero looks back to the fossil record to explain what happened to Carcharocles mealodon, a giant shark that used to rule the seas.

August 26, 2015

WITMonth 2015: Lost In Translation

In honor of August as Women in Translation Month (#WITMonth), we are featuring two very different posts by translators Howard Goldblatt and Esther Allen on women in translation. In Allen’s post, she profiles Eleanor Marx, daughter of Karl Marx and first translator of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary into English.

August 26, 2015

Is "Brontosaurus" Back? Not So Fast! — Donald Prothero

Donald Prothero, author of THE STORY OF LIFE IN 25 FOSSILS, takes a closer look at the recent findings regarding the brontosaurus.

August 25, 2015

Interview with Donald R. Prothero, Author of The Story of Life in 25 Fossils

The following interview is with Donald R. Prothero, author of The Story of Life in 25 Fossils: Tales of Intrepid Fossil Hunters and the Wonders of Evolution: Question: How do you summarize the history of life in just 25 fossils?...

August 25, 2015

New Book Tuesday: Pope Francis, Eqbal Ahmad, and More New Books

Our weekly listing of new books now available.

August 24, 2015

The Economic Risks of Climate Change

In the following segment from The Leonard Lopate Show, Michael Oppenheimer and Geoffrey Heal, two contributors to Economic Risks of Climate Change: An American Prospectus, discuss their econometric research on human responses to climate, and explain private sector risk-assessment tools:

August 21, 2015

Reactions to Laudato Si': The Great Gift of "Laudato Si'"

Read an article on Pope Francis’s recent Encyclical on climate change by economist Jeffrey D. Sachs, author of THE AGE OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT, that recently appeared in America Magazine.

August 20, 2015

Reactions to Laudato Si': Is Pope Francis Right on the Science?

Read an essay by scientist James Lawrence Powell, author of THE INQUISITION OF CLIMATE SCIENCE and FOUR REVOLUTIONS IN THE EARTH SCIENCES, on Pope Francis’s recent Encyclical on climate change.