Follow @yaleSCIbooks Sharon McGrayne’s The Theory That Would Not Die is the story about a statistical method of analysis that almost wasn’t. Created by the Reverend Thomas Bayes and further molded by scientist Pierre-Simon Laplace, Bayes’ theorem is a statistical analysis method for probability that takes an initial guess or
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
Today, The Metropolitan Museum of Art reopens a suite of fifteen galleries devoted to Islamic Art, after an eight year renovation project. The new space will display 1,200 works of art from Arab lands, Turkey, Iran, Central, and South Asia, among them the celebrated Emperor’s Carpet, and the Damascus Room,
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
For our latest “Eminent Biography” installment, Joshua Rubenstein reflects on his writing of the tumultuous political career of Leon Trotsky: A Revolutionary’s Life, the latest in Yale University Press’s Jewish Lives series. Often remembered as persecutor turned persecuted, Leon Trotsky was a central figure in the global political drama between
For last month’s contest inspired by the new illustrated edition of E.H. Gombrich’s A Little History of the World, we asked you to answer five questions, the last one of which read, “Who found enlightenment under a fig tree?” As many of you were able to tell us, the answer
Michelle Stein— I am familiar with the conflicting images and identities of shifting or presumably unchanging institutions. New York City may have been immortalized in the arts, and its landmarks might be recognized the world over, but underneath there is constant change. Whether the shuttering of one shop and