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 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
Sarah Underwood— When I interned at Yale University Press this summer, the other interns and I occasionally joked about how many more young women than men were participating in the program. We knew it was not from a lack of equal opportunity, and I guess we should not have been
Follow @yaleSCIbooks Christopher Lane, Professor of English at Northwestern University and author of The Age of Doubt: Tracing the Roots of Our Religious Uncertainty writes on the misperception that Christianity and Darwinism are and have always been incompatible. His new book traces the thought of the Victorian age through scientific,
Follow @yaleSCIbooks In our age of calculators, computers, and the fifteenth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, most questions are pretty easy to answer. Why is the sky blue? What is the cube root of 1331? Who was Fredrick the Great of Prussia? Still, in some areas, uncertainty lingers—even though we
“Shall I receive the gift?” “Shall I be reconciled with my son?” “Shall I be poisoned?” These questions were all found in an oracle book created in the late third century B.C., as part of an exhaustive numbered list of queries one might pose. Their answers could be found by
King Solomon is famous for using his wisdom to mediate weighty conflicts. Yet, in his new biography of the Biblical figure, Solomon: The Lure of Wisdom, Steven Weitzman makes it clear that Solomon’s knowledge extended to a wide variety of areas: some Jamaicans credit the king with the discovery of