Turn Your Brain Back On
It's back to school week, and Public Seminar is right there with you. Don't forget your lunch box--and your nasal swabs!
This is our first issue back from summer hiatus. In the coming weeks, we will be making announcements, greeting new colleagues, and giving you terrific articles that make you think.
But we also hope that you came back from the summer wanting to write for us. Do you have a book you have written or one you want to review? Some research that you would like to share with a general audience? An opinion piece—or a rediscovered classic text that you want to explore? If so:
Illustration from Edwin D. Babbitt's The Principles of Light and Color (1878). Courtesy of Public Domain Review
August 25, 2021
Featured Essay
Ruth Padel, “A Patch of Moonlight: Darwin’s warning.” (August 25, 2021)
History
Marcus Rediker, “Serendipity in the Archives: Or, a lost freedom story I found while looking for something else.” (August 25, 2021)
The World
Joanne Meyerowitz, “How the War on Global Poverty Failed: As economic programs and policies shifted from the nation to the individual, United States development experts made political allies at home but failed the world.” (August 25, 2021)
Michael Bustamante, “Remembering—and Forgetting—the Cuban Revolution: The history of Cubans’ mobilizations of, reckonings with, and debates over their past has not yet been fully told.” (August 24, 2021)
In Memoriam
Jeff Goldfarb, “Remembering Michael E. Gellert: Not just a benefactor but a friend, this émigré from Central European knew that the act of listening was the future of democracy.” (August 23, 2021)
Our columnists:
Pat Garofolo, “Cuomo and the Buffalo Bills’ Billion: When a political scandal and a stadium subsidy collide.” (August 23, 2021)
Claire Potter, “The Un-Canceling of Biographer Blake Bailey: W.W. Norton took a financial bath on Philip Roth: A Biography, and Skyhorse Press will make all the profits. Is this the end of cancel culture?” (August 25, 2021)
John Stoehr, “Is Bad Faith Sabotaging the Fight Against Covid? To our country’s elites, it makes perfect sense that if the CDC wants the public’s trust, it has to do better.” (August 25, 2021)
Did we do a good job this week? Let us know by: