Follow @yaleSCIbooks Merriam Webster defines “natural” as “growing without human care; not cultivated,” but one organization that does not define how the word natural can be used is the Food and Drug Administration. This absence of a definition in the food industry is at the heart of Alissa Hamilton’s Squeezed:
American politics is, by definition, divisive, but in the 2012 election perhaps no single word demonstrates this better than Obamacare. In Remedy and Reaction: The Peculiar American Struggle Over Health Care Reform, Paul Starr, a former senior advisor on health policy for the Clinton administration, examines the political and economic
Follow @yaleSCIbooks When Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence he would never have imagined a country where agriculture was not always a respected activity in society. In American Georgics: Writing on Farming, Culture and the Land, editors Edwin C. Hagenstein, Sara M. Gregg, and Brian Donahue explore the history
Where do we draw the line between our own personal history – history with a small “h” – and the History we consider public knowledge – history with a big “H”? This is an important question for historical researchers of any caliber. It shapes the way we value (and the
In honor of National Dairy Month in June, we thought you might like a taste of Deborah Valenze’s Milk: A Local and Global History, covering the illuminating cultural history of milk, from ancient myth to modern grocery store, now available in paperback from Yale University Press. Deborah Valenze— Cows that
Follow @yaleSCIbooks How do we know how many eggs are in a dozen? How do we tell red from blue? How can we imagine tomorrow when the sun has not even begun to set on today? These are just a few of the mysteries associated with the human brain, the
Sarah Underwood— Reading poetry normally does not make me hungry, but after “Lake of Little Birds,” poet Katherine Larson had me ready for “[s]wordish/ drizzled with virgin oil, rubbed with/ mint and saffron”…and several other dishes. The 2010 winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize uses her experience
The United States Supreme Court is, in the words of today’s New York Times headline, up against a “momentous test.” As most Americans are aware, the justices are hearing arguments about the constitutionality of requiring citizens to obtain health care: the “mandate” that is one of the central components of
Ivan Lett— I’m no political junkie, just a book publishing historian who comes away from the glory of Britannia every so now and then to find the ever-changing world around me to be…well, ever-changing. When news of the revolution in Egypt broke last winter, I was still in a holiday
They say the pen is mightier than the sword—but what about the cellphone? In Kenya, at least, this may be the case, for in one community Chief Francis Kariuki’s tweets are bringing hope to a country whose history has been marked by violent conflicts. Although most Kenyans do not have