THE SOURCE: “Social and News Media Enable Estimation of Epidemiological Patterns Early in the 2010 Haitian Cholera Outbreak” by Rumi Chunara, Jason R. Andrews, and John S. Brownstein, in The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, Jan. 2012.
BABEL NO MORE:
The Search for the World’s Most Extraordinary Language Learners.
By Michael Erard.
Free Press. 306 pp. $25.99
Past articles are full of predictions—were they right?
In the 1990s, scientists declared that schizophrenia and other psychiatric illnesses were pure brain disorders that would eventually yield to drugs. Now they are recognizing that social factors are among the causes, and must be part of the cure.
Though Americans see upward mobility as their birthright, that assumption faces growing challenges, with consequences not just for the size of our wallets but for the tenor of our politics.
Take some favorable demographics, add a generous shot of American ingenuity, and stir in a very large quantity of natural gas, and you have the beginning of a bright new American future.
A new and better approach to shaping the places in which we live has emerged just as Americans responding to the rising cost of energy begin to crowd into older suburbs and cities.
For 36 years, it has been The Wilson Quarterly’s central preoccupation: What’s on the horizon for the great American experiment?
The great 19th-century observer of America’s democratic revolution has much to teach the tumultuous new century.
They’re long, exhausting, and sometimes appalling, but America’s raucous presidential campaigns are also testimony to the success of its continually evolving democracy.
