May 24, 2019

Dr. Karen Kinsell: Making Health Care Happen in the Deep South

Photo credit: Peter Wortsman The only MD in the entire county, tending to the health needs of some 3,600 people. Her patient pool includes many destitute individuals, some of whom cross state lines from nearby Alabama to seek care. Dr. Karen Kinsell ’93...

May 23, 2019

Translating the Untranslatable

Our second #TranslationThursday post brings you an excerpt from Between Dog and Wolf, a novel by Sahsa Sokolov. In honor of of Russian Literature Week, we have shared an excerpts from titles published in our Russian Library series. Russian Literature...

May 23, 2019

Iliazd’s Lost Modernist Masterpiece

All week we have been sharing excerpts from our Russian Library series in honor of Russian Literature Week. Today, for #TranslationThursday, we’re sharing two excerpts for your reading enjoyment. First up, we have an excerpt from Iliazd’s novel Rapture. If...

May 23, 2019

Dr. Davida Coady: Protecting Imperiled Populations

Photo credit: Peter Wortsman Following a long career devoted to the care of the world’s most vulnerable,including refugees, the homeless, and the incarcerated, Dr. Coady succumbed toovarian cancer in 2018. Davida Coady ’65 A Doctor Devoted to the Care of...

May 22, 2019

Linor Goralik Conjures the Everyday Absurd

It’s Russian Literature Week! All this week we are sharing excerpts from our Russian Library series. Today we are sharing an excerpt from Linor Goralik’s collection Found Life: Poems, Stories, Comics, a Play, and an Interview, edited by Ainsley Morse, Maria...

May 22, 2019

Dr. Story Musgrave: A Surgeon in Space

Photo: Courtesy of NASA At last count, Dr. Musgrave, age eighty-four, earned seven graduate degrees, flew on six NASA space missions, was awarded twenty honorary doctorates, operates a palm farm and a production company, serves as a landscape architect and concept artist with...

May 21, 2019

Platonov’s Response to Stalin’s Assault on the Soviet Peasantry

To continue our Russian Literature Week celebration, today we are sharing an excerpt from Fourteen Little Red Huts and Other Play by Andrei Platonov. If you are in Washington, DC, don’t miss The Man Who Couldn’t Die author Olga Slavnikova...

May 21, 2019

New Book Tuesday! The Story of the Dinosaurs in 25 Discoveries, How Much Inequality is Fair?, Playing Dystopia, and More!

Our weekly list of new releases is now available! The Story of the Dinosaurs in 25 Discoveries Amazing Fossils and the People Who Found Them Donald R. Prothero How to Read a Japanese Poem Steven D. Carter New in Paper!...

May 21, 2019

Dr. Robert Coles: An American Odyssey

Photo credit: Peter Wortsman Recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, a so-called “genius” MacArthur Foundation award, and a Medal of Freedom, the child psychiatrist, author, and defender of tender lives, has been called “a national treasure.” Robert Coles ’54 Child Psychiatrist Pulitzer Prize–Winning...

May 20, 2019

Russian Literature Week 2019

It’s Russian Literature Week! All week (May 20-24) there will be events with acclaimed Russian authors, famed translators, and leading scholars and critics celebrating Russian literature. We’re bringing the #RussianLiteratureWeek celebration online by sharing excerpts throughout the week from our...

May 20, 2019

Taking Doctors’ Histories

“In these profiles of some of America’s most notable, influential, and fascinating MDs, Peter Wortsman merges social history, theory of the professions, and an intimate local cultural anthropology of Columbia University’s medical center.” ~ Rita Charon, MD, PhD, Professor and...

May 16, 2019

Book Excerpt! Political Categories: Thinking Beyond Concepts

“Political Categories proposes nothing less than a new way of thinking about politics and such political ideas and institutions as the state, sovereignty, power, and revolution. The question is how to define what is proper or singular to politics without isolating...