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Why We Eat What We Do
In the spring of 1910, the freshmen of the Harvard Class of 1913 sat down at New American House in Boston, white tablecloths and all, for a typically extravagant meal. The first course: a Cotuit cocktail, made with local Cotuit oysters. The eighth: …
A Man and His Castle
Hammond Castle Museum is a romantic pastiche of medieval and Renaissance European architecture, a passionate testament to the past where John Hays Hammond Jr. foresaw the technological future. The prolific inventor built the massive dwelling, with its …
Issue: November-December 2020
Due Process
As recently as 10 years ago, Jeannie Suk Gersen was still telling people that the area of law she specialized in—sexual assault and domestic violence—didn’t hold much interest for the general public. A quiet corner of the profession, she thought. …
Issue: March-April 2021
Sculpture That Breathes
“In sculpture , you are always fighting the deadness of a thing,” says Murray Dewart ’70, paraphrasing Victorian critic Walter Pater. “The secret of sculpture is getting the feeling that the life force is pushing from the inside out. You get it in bread.” …
Issue: November-December 2013
The 2013 Centennial Medalists
The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Centennial Medal, first awarded in 1989 on the occasion of the school’s hundredth anniversary, honors alumni who have made contributions to society that emerged from their graduate study at Harvard. It is the …
In the Eye of the Storm
Regularly the dismal news streams in from Japan. The "lost decade"--dating from the early 1990s, when the country's seemingly invincible economy began to derail--shows no sign of ending. The high public-approval ratings for wavy-haired maverick prime …
Issue: November-December 2001
Commencement Confetti
Musical Notes Joshuah Brian Campbell ’16 did double duty— nailing his Senior English Address during the Morning Exercises but also, literally, singing for his dinner the night before. At the honorands’ banquet in Annenberg Hall, accompanied by guitarist …
Issue: July-August 2016
Alumnus Moungi Bawendi Shares Nobel Prize in Chemistry
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences today conferred the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Moungi G. Bawendi, Louis E. Brus, and Alexei I. Ekimov. The trio were honored for “for the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots,” crystals so small that they are …
An Earlier Bid for Mastery
New genetic knowledge may let us manipulate our nature: beef up our muscles, brush up our memory, make designer children. What’s wrong with that? Bass professor of government Michael J. Sandel proposes an answer in The Case against Perfection: Ethics in …
Issue: May-June 2007
“Design Is Not an Intellectual Exercise”
Standing before a graduating class of soon-to-be architects and designers and urban planners at the Graduate School of Design’s Class Day, Teju Cole—the Vidal professor of the practice of creative writing—wanted to talk about doors. Real doors, but also …
Off the Shelf
Health Care Reform, by Jonathan Gruber, Ph.D. ’92, with HP Newquist, illustrated by Nathan Schreiber (Hill and Wang, $30; $13.95 paper). Think “Healthcare reform: the comic book.” An illustrated guide to the new law by the MIT professor of economics who …
Issue: January-February 2012
The Poco of Pocos
The “Poco of Pocos” was Bernard Butekan, a secondhand-clothes dealer (“clo’man”), a Harvard celebrity, and the first in a series of rag dealers who played a surprisingly large role in the culture of students, faculty members, and the broader University …
Issue: September-October 2021
Football: Harvard 14, Dartmouth 13
At game’s end last Friday night at Harvard Stadium, a reporter from The Harvard Crimson turned to her colleagues in the press box and held up her hands. “How,” she asked, “did we win this game?” The young lady may be forgiven her partisanship, usually …
Controversial Reunioner
The urbane Ernst "Putzi" Hanfstaengl '09 was Hitler's crony and foreign press chief during the Führer's ascendancy, and played the piano for him soothingly. He later fell out of favor and fled to the United States, where he worked against the Nazis for …
Issue: September-October 2004
Agree to Disagree
Last year, in the midst of all of the turmoil on campus in the aftermath of October 7, I sat down to dinner with a Muslim friend. With so many of our peers facing threats of doxxing, she told me how stressful it was to even walk to class from her dorm …
Issue: July-August 2025