In Why Trilling Matters, from Yale University Press’s Why X Matters Series, Adam Kirsch makes a compelling argument for why mid-century American literary critic Lionel Trilling might matter thirty-six years after his death. Yet the importance of a literary critic rests on the more fundamental question of the importance of
Speaking of all the revolutionary action going around—Trotsky, anarchy, Wall Street—Emma Goldman seems to have a found a perfect moment to surface as she does in Vivian Gornick’s new Jewish Lives biography, Emma Goldman: Revolution as a Way of Life. A book-based essay that Gornick has written for The Jewish
Reinhold Niebuhr’s best known contribution to contemporary culture is rarely associated with his name. “God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, Courage to change the things which should be changed, and the Wisdom to distinguish the one from the other,” Niebuhr wrote in
For a month that annually celebrates the Thanksgiving holiday, the heritage of Native Americans, election season, and towards the end, a shopping frenzy that fuels the cycles of capitalism and consumerism, November brings with it many opportunities to reflect on the current state of American culture and the history that
Today, we officially publish David Margolick’s new biography, Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock, looking at one of the most unforgettable photographs of the civil rights era and recounting the impact on the lives of Elizabeth Eckford and Hazel Bryan Massery. We’ve shown you the book trailer, and
Follow @yaleSCIbooks Michelle Stein— Notes from the Ground: Science, Soil & Society in the American Countryside, by Benjamin R. Cohen is primarily the story of the merger of agriculture and science in early America, and all the attendant debates and developments in agricultural life. But in the spirit of
As we look back on this month’s Education theme, and reflect on the challenges and joys that face us every day in our learning, we should remember that American education was quite different not so very long ago.The desegregation of schools that began with the landmark US Supreme Court Case,
You’ve read her column in The Nation, seen her guest hosting the Rachel Maddow Show, even found her at our office; now, the week before the publication of Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America, we sit down with Melissa Harris-Perry to ask a few key questions about
In our newest 3@2 Interview, we asked Peggy and Murray Schwartz, professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and professor at Emerson College respectively, about their intimate knowledge of legendary dancer, Pearl Primus (1919-1994). A noted anthropologist in her tireless studies of Afro-Caribbean cultures and folklores and her pioneering