January 29, 2014

Happiness and Its Discontents, Part I

This week our featured book is The Call of Character: Living a Life Worth Living by Mari Ruti. Throughout the week, we will be featuring content about the book and its author on our blog as well as on our...

January 28, 2014

Read the first chapter of The Call of Character, by Mari Ruti!

Read the first chapter of The Call of Character!

January 28, 2014

New Book Tuesday: The U.S. in the Middle East, Head Cases, 60 Years at Columbia, and More New Titles!

Our weekly list of new titles: Shifting Sands: The United States in the Middle East Joel S. Migdal Head Cases: Julia Kristeva on Philosophy and Art in Depressed Times Elaine P. Miller An Improbable Life: My Sixty Years at Columbia...

January 27, 2014

Santiago Zabala on Communism's Present and Future

“After all, politics is not supposed to be simply at the service of everyday administrative life, but also to provide a reliable guide for everyone to fully exercise existence. But when these and other obligations are not met, philosophers tend...

January 24, 2014

Dean Starkman Debates Whether the Business Press Failed the Public Trust

Recently, Columbia Journalism Review and Public Business, organized a panel Has the Business Press Failed the Public Trust?. Among the panelists were Dean Starkman, author of The Watchdog That Didn’t Bark: The Financial Crisis and the Disappearance of Investigative Journalism...

January 23, 2014

Dean Starkman on How and Why the Business Press Failed

In The Watchdog That Didn’t Bark: The Financial Crisis and the Disappearance of Investigative Journalism, Dean Starkman argues that the business press missed the biggest story of the new century. More specifically,the mainstream business press failed to cover and convey...

January 22, 2014

Interview with Dean Starkman, author of "The Watchdog That Didn't Bark"

“Journalism can be the antidote to corruption…. It gives the public a fighting chance to understand complex problems when powerful institutions betray their trust and act against the public interest. It can be a clarifying force, without which democracy in...

January 22, 2014

Michael Mann on the Responsibility of Climate Scientists

In a recent New York Times op-ed, Michael Mann, author of The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines (now available in paperback), argues that scientists can no longer stay on the sidelines when it comes...

January 21, 2014

New Book Tuesday: Boundaries of Toleration, An Investing Pioneer, and the Global Origins of Modernity in China

Boundaries of Toleration Edited by Alfred Stepan and Charles Taylor Passion for Reality: The Extraordinary Life of the Investing Pioneer Paul Cabot Michael R. Yogg Breaking with the Past: The Maritime Customs Service and the Global Origins of Modernity in...

January 17, 2014

Rashid Khalidi on Ariel Sharon

Rashidi Khalidi, author of Under Siege: PLO Decisionmaking During the 1982 War (now available in a revised edition with a new introduction), has recently been interviewed and asked to comment on Ariel Sharon’s legacy and his impact on the Middle...

January 16, 2014

August Turak on the Myth of Personal Development

In a recent article for Forbes, August Turak, author of Business Secrets of the Trappist Monks: One CEO’s Quest for Meaning and Authenticity (Columbia Business School Publishing), takes a closer look at what is meant by “personal development” and how...

January 15, 2014

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, the Book

Part of the Cultographies series, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! by Dean J. Defino explores Russ Meyer’s iconic, cult classic. (See the film’s trailer below—how could we resist?). In the book, Defino begins by describing his admiration for the film as...