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January 15, 2009

The China Beat's 10 Best Books About Chinese Women in 2008

The China Beat has a very interesting list of the best books from 2008 on Chinese women, including two titles from Columbia University Press: The Song of Everlasting Sorrow by Wang Anyi; translated by Michael Berry and Susan Chan Egan...

January 14, 2009

Wired on The Scientific Way of Warfare

On Danger Room, a national security blog on Wired, Michael A. Innes, director of The Complex Terrain Laboratory, reviews and praises Antoine Bousquet’s The Scientific Way of Warfare: Order and Chaos on the Battlefields of Modernity. Innes argues that Bousquet’s...

January 13, 2009

Paul Offit Confronts the Antivaccine Crusade

Today’s New York Times had an article about Dr. Paul Offit’s new book Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure, and the frequently heated debate about the possible link between autism and vaccines. Dr....

January 12, 2009

More Interviews with Siddharth Kara

Interest in Siddharth Kara’s Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery continues as he travels the country discussing his book, his first-hand experience talking to victims, and how an economic perspective can help us better understand the sex trafficking...

January 12, 2009

Post-Convention Wrap-Ups — Philosophy

There seems to have been less coverage of the American Philosophical Association‘s meeting than some of the other academic conventions but below are a few dispatches from the meeting. Like the other conventions concerns about a shrinking job market were...

January 9, 2009

Is “Thirdhand Tobacco Smoke” a Valid Scientific Concept or a Public Relations Gimmick? — A Post from Geoffrey Kabat

Geoffrey Kabat is the author of Hyping Health Risks: Environmental Hazards in Daily Life and the Science of Epidemiology. “There are enough scientifically documented harmful effects of exposure to cigarette smoke without concocting catchy but uninformative concepts that, while likely...

January 8, 2009

Baseball in the Depression — Breaking the Slump

Yesterday’s New York Times quoted Charles Alexander, author of Breaking the Slump: Baseball in the Depression Era, in their article on how baseball was affected by the Great Depression. Needless to say, attendance was down, players’ salaries were cut, and...

January 8, 2009

Post-Convention Wrap-Ups — AHA

We continue our recap (or really recap of recaps) of recent conventions with the American Historical Association’s meeting which was recently held in New York City. Given historians penchant for documenting, it is not surprising that there are a lot...

January 7, 2009

Excommunicating Dead Terrorists, by Leor Halevi

In a past post, Columbia University Press authors Bruce Hoffman and Ami Pedazhur looked at the geopolitical and security issues raised by the Mumbai attacks. In his article Excommunicating Dead Terrorists, Leor Halevi, author of Muhammad’s Grave: Death Rites and...

January 7, 2009

Post-Convention Wrap-Ups — The MLA

The two weeks after Christmas are kind of the equivalent of “March Madness” for academia and scholarly publishing with conferences for a variety of fields. Not surprisingly, these events are now blogged about and twittered. Over the next few days,...

January 6, 2009

Interviews with Siddharth Kara

Siddharth Kara’s Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery investigates the mechanics of the global sex trafficking business across four continents and takes stock of its devastating human toll. Recently, Kara was interviewed on Marketplace. In the interview Kara...