The acclaimed biographer Michael Scammell discusses the peculiar challenges and delights of his craft.
The college-educated share of America’s population has barely increased in years. The key to reviving mass higher education may be to rethink the divide between high school and college.
The national drive for education reform has touched off many power struggles, but one has emerged as fundamental.
Most of the problems with testing have one surprising source: cheating by school administrators and teachers.
THE ANOINTED:
Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age.
By Randall J. Stephens and Karl W. Giberson.
Belknap/Harvard. 356 pp. $29.95
LITERARY BROOKLYN:
The Writers of Brooklyn and the Story of American City Life.
By Evan Hughes.
Holt. 337 pp. $17
WHY TRILLING MATTERS.
By Adam Kirsch.
Yale Univ. Press. 185 pp. $24
BACK TO THE LAND:
The Enduring Dream of Self-Sufficiency in Modern America.
By Dona Brown.
Univ. of Wisconsin Press. 290 pp. $24.95
Today’s new austerity may have an upside if it prods schools to embrace new technologies that cut costs and improve learning.
THE SOURCE: “9/11 in Retrospect” by Melvyn P. Leffler, in Foreign Affairs,Sept.–Oct. 2011.