Julian Baggini— The quality of debate in the public square has reached a nadir. To be sure, there are plenty of corners of thoughtful, intelligent analysis and conversation. But when we look at society’s broadest discussions, be they presidential debates or referendum campaigns, reason is in short supply. In its
Steven B. Smith— No period of modern history has come under more intense scrutiny than has the Enlightenment. What is—or was—the Enlightenment? We have not ceased asking this question and the answer or answers are far from settled. The question was most famously stated by Immanuel Kant at the start
Robert Miner— Beyond his status as a musical innovator—guitarist extraordinaire, master architect of King Crimson, collaborator with David Bowie and Brian Eno—Robert Fripp is a serious man. He dresses impeccably; he reads old books in his study. One perceptive reader of his online journal, noticing his apparent fondness for Anglican
John Makeham— Forty years ago, intellectual historian Joseph Levenson famously commented: “What the West has probably done to China is to change the latter’s language—what China has done to the West is to enlarge the latter’s vocabulary.” Levenson was referring to a process that began in the decades immediately before
Welcome to the first installment of Books et Veritas, the column written by Yale University Press’s student interns! In each installment, an intern will write about life and reading at Yale and Yale University Press. In this first post, Alex Blum gives a roundabout answer to the question: what Yale University
The critics have weighed in: at the Boston Globe, at the Chronicle Review, even with a slideshow on Slate.com, and the consensus is that Peter Toohey’s Boredom: A Lively History is anything but boring! (You can imagine how it came to have such a subtitle from the “Book Bench” interview
In the wake of a heated commentary by Carlin Romano in The Chronicle Review, the academy has revived a familiar and unsettling debate over the merits of philosopher Martin Heidegger's work in light of the thinker's well-known connections to Nazism. The publication of Emmanuel Faye's book, Heidegger: The Introduction of
Thoreau: Fully Annotated
In a month, it will have been ten years since Jeffrey S. Cramer published Walden: A Fully Annotated Edition. Cramer has had a prolific and successful decade, editing numerous volumes on Henry David Thoreau and racking up awards and praise. In 2012, radio host Jim Fleming said that Cramer “may know
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