For decades, the news from cities was all bad. But today, cities are on the rebound. They are seen as idea labs, exciting places to live, and a shopping alternative to suburban malls, with challenges that linger but do not overwhelm the future.
Can the Internet really promote democracy?
THE SOURCE: “Imperial by Design” by John J. Mearsheimer, in The National Interest, Jan.–Feb. 2011.
THE SOURCE: “Becoming the Enemy” by Stanley A. McChrystal, in Foreign Policy, March–April 2011.
THE SOURCE: “Coping with a Conflicted China” by David Shambaugh, in The Washington Quarterly, Winter 2011.
THE SOURCE: "The Inequality that Matters” by Tyler Cowen, in The American Interest, Jan.–Feb. 2011.
THE SOURCE: “Creating Shared Value” by Michael E. Porter and Mark R. Kramer, in Harvard Business Review, Jan.–Feb. 2011.
THE SOURCE: “The Euro’s Never-Ending Crisis” by Barry Eichengreen, in Current History, March 2011.
THE SOURCE: “Was There Really a Hawthorne Effect at the Hawthorne Plant? An Analysis of the Original Illumination Experiments” by Steven D. Levitt and John A. List, in American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, Jan. 2011.
THE SOURCE: "After the Wave” by Henry Olsen, in National Affairs, Winter 2011.
THE SOURCE: “In Front of the Burgundy Curtain: The Top Ten Lessons I’ve Learned About Advocacy Before the Nation’s Highest Court” by Lisa S. Blatt, in Green Bag, Autumn 2010.
THE SOURCE: “Gendered Perceptions and Political Candidacies: A Central Barrier to Women’s Equality in Electoral Politics” by Richard L. Fox and Jennifer L. Lawless, in American Journal of Political Science, Jan. 2011.
THE SOURCE: "Affirmative Inaction” by William M. Chace, in The American Scholar, Winter 2011.
THE SOURCE: “Strange Bedfellows: War and Minority Rights” by Robert P. Saldin, in World Affairs, March–April 2011.
THE SOURCE: “The Drinking Game” by Marshall Poe, in Policy Review, Oct.–Nov. 2010.
THE SOURCE: “How Good Is It?” by Diarmaid MacCulloch, in London Review of Books, Feb. 3, 2011.
THE SOURCE: “Religion, Social Networks, and Life Satisfaction” by Chaeyoon Lim and Robert D. Putnam, in American Sociological Review, Dec. 2010.
THE SOURCE: “MFA vs. NYC” in n+1, Fall 2010.
THE SOURCE: “Caravaggiomania” by Richard E. Spear, in Art in America,Dec. 2010.
THE SOURCES: “The Afterlife of David Foster Wallace” by Jennifer Howard, in The Chronicle Review, Jan. 6, 2011, and “Our Psychic Living Room” by Rebekah Frumkin, in The Common Review, Fall–Winter 2010–2011.
THE SOURCE: “Age and Great Invention” by Benjamin F. Jones, in The Review of Economics and Statistics, Feb. 2010.
THE SOURCE: “On Early Warning Signs” by George Sugihara, in Seed Magazine, Dec. 20, 2010.
THE SOURCE: “Refuting a Myth About Human Origins” by John J. Shea, in American Scientist, March–April 2011.
THE SOURCE: “The Officer Crisis in the Indian Military” by Dinesh Kumar, in South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Dec. 2010.
THE SOURCE: “Lesson From Canada’s Universal Care: Socially Disadvantaged Patients Use More Health Services, Still Have Poorer Health” by David A. Alter, Therese Stukel, Alice Chong, and David Henry, in Health Affairs, Feb. 2011.
THE SOURCE: “Religious Resurgence in Contemporary Asia: Southeast Asian Perspectives on Capitalism, the State, and the New Piety” by Robert W. Hefner, in The Journal of Asian Studies, Nov. 2010.
THE SOURCE: “When Democratization Radicalizes: The Kurdish Nationalist Movement in Turkey” by Günes Murat Tezcür, in Journal of Peace Research, Nov. 2010.
ODESSA:
Genius and Death in a City of Dreams.
By Charles King.
W. W. Norton. 336 pp. $27.95
MALCOLM X:
A Life of Reinvention.
By Manning Marable.
Viking. 594 pp. $30
TORIES:
Fighting for the King in America’s First Civil War.
By Thomas B. Allen.
Harper. 468 pp. $26.99
LIBERTY’S EXILES:
American Loyalists in the Revolutionary War.
By Maya Jasanoff.
Knopf. 460 pp. $30
THE RIGHTS OF THE PEOPLE:
How Our Search for Safety Invades Our Liberties.
By David K. Shipler.
Knopf. 363 pp. $27.95
ACADEMICALLY ADRIFT:
Limited Learning on College Campuses.
By Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa.
Univ. of Chicago Press. 259 pp. $25
THE SOUTH AND AMERICA SINCE WORLD WAR II.
By James C. Cobb.
Oxford Univ. Press. 374 pp. $24.95
BOURGEOIS DIGNITY:
Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World.
By Deirdre McCloskey.
Univ. of Chicago Press. 571 pp. $35
QUIRK:
Brain Science Makes Sense of Your Peculiar Personality.
By Hannah Holmes.
Random House. 262 pp. $26
THE SOCIAL ANIMAL:
The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement.
By David Brooks.
Random House. 424 pp. $27
THE USE AND ABUSE OF LITERATURE.
By Marjorie Garber.
Pantheon. 320 pp. $28.95
MUSIC FOR SILENCED VOICES:
Shostakovich and His Fifteen Quartets.
By Wendy Lesser.
Yale Univ. Press. 350 pp. $28
HELVETICA AND THE NEW YORK SUBWAY SYSTEM:
The True (Maybe) Story.
By Paul Shaw.
MIT Press. 131 pp. $39.95
THE HEMLOCK CUP:
Socrates, Athens, and the Search for the Good Life.
By Bettany Hughes.
Knopf. 484 pp. $35
THE IMMORTALIZATION COMMISSION:
Science and the Strange Quest to Cheat Death.
By John Gray.
Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 273 pp. $24
Sixty-five years ago, the federal school lunch program was created to make American schoolchildren healthier. Today, it’s helping to make them fatter. Will a new law change the diets of millions of kids raised on French fries and chicken nuggets?
Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez has set alarms ringing with his efforts to create a global anti-American coalition.
The study of ancient Greek and Latin long ago vanished from most American classrooms, and with it has gone a special understanding of the values and virtues prized by Western civilization.
New York City’s garment district illustrates that manufacturing can still be vital to the innovation that cities foster.
Americans like their cities spacious. Will concerns
about costs and the environment push them to rein
in sprawl?
How can you be called an urban pioneer when you move to an inner-city neighborhood where families have lived for generations?
Many cities launched revival efforts with downtown festival marketplaces such as Boston’s Faneuil Hall. Can retailers work the same magic in less affluent neighborhoods?
