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The Intoxication of Celebrity
… Nearly a quarter-century has passed since the death of Leonard Bernstein ’39, D.Mus. ’67 , yet his … continue to work their charms. Call it the afterlife of the media age. Bernstein’s epic performances of …
Issue: May-June 2014
The Financial Cost of Feeling
… In 1890, Harvard psychology professor William James sought to redefine the “self,” which, he wrote in The Principles of Psychology , includes not only our bodies and “psychic …
Issue: November-December 2008
The Long-term-care Puzzle
… thinking about it. But at some point, it touches nearly all of us. Demand for long-term care (LTC) — the medical and personal services people receive when … they're no longer able to care for themselves — is on the rise. Already, 60 to 70 percent of Americans who live to age …
Issue: July-August 2004
Harvard Reflects on the “Meanings of Mandela”
… Standing at the podium in Sanders Theatre yesterday, Nobel laureate and … Soyinka, Litt.D. ’93, recalled learning about the passing of former South African president and anti-apartheid hero … “When I was asked for my reaction, I said, ‘The soul of Africa has departed, and there is nothing miraculous left …
What the Meaning of the Word "Is" Is
… Man of letters (and movies, and newspapers, and television) … on Francis Avenue in Cambridge. Especially luminous members of the Harvard faculty have houses all around him. Kaplan …
Pillars of the Economy
… Boston-area research universities reported jointly on their collective size, stability, and importance to the metropolitan economy. At a Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce briefing on March 11, Harvard, Boston College, … use of academic discoveries and the birth of new enterprises. Engines of Economic Growth also examines the …
Issue: May-June 2003
The Phenomenon of Parenting
… Two new parenting memoirs, Bad Mother by Ayelet Waldman, J.D. ’91, and Home Game by Michael Lewis, have been getting lots of press. In the June 29 New Yorker , Jill Lepore offers a fresh take rooted in the American past . The …
The Price of Slavery
… Several high-profile lawsuits filed recently in this country are seeking redress for slavery and other racial wrongs, focusing national attention on the … were much less likely to support an apology. What most surprises Dawson is the hostility he and other academics …
Issue: May-June 2003
Mapping the Amazon
… width:407] Learn about the adventures of ethnobotanist Mark Plotkin ABE ’79 as he retraces the footsteps of explorer Alexander Hamilton Rice, founder of Harvard’s …
"The Doctor's Song"
… During the past several weeks, as the COVID-19 pandemic swept … Rafael Campo has been writing poems to help make sense of the crisis. Below is a draft of one still in process, but … agreed to share. THE DOCTOR’S SONG The ventilator’s rise and fall. The ambulance’s siren call. The yellow gown’s …
Emily Dickinson—Dashed
… P rofessional funny person Alexandra Petri ’10, who lightens up the pages of The Washington Post (and occasionally these … is just a standard thing we tell everyone to do with their machines and should not be a problem, Emily! Emily: I shall …
Issue: March-April 2023
“A More Perfect Heaven”
… By his thirties , Nicolaus Copernicus had developed a theory that would turn the universe inside out, but for … that placed the sun, rather than the earth, at the center of the solar system. To friends and colleagues, he promised … his revolutionary ideas, yet decades later, perhaps wary of how those ideas would be received, he had published only …
The Abode of the Message
… The Abode of the Message is a Sufi retreat center located just over the … South Family Shaker Village, The Abode is now a community of the Sufi Order International. Many original structures …
Issue: January-February 2012
Off the Shelf
… Reason and Politics: The Nature of Political Phenomena, by Mark Blitz ’66, Ph.D. … Flowers, also featured in the untold story of the Colossus machines, apparently the world’s first digital electronic …
Issue: September-October 2021
“You Can Correct the Mistakes of My Generation”
… Drawing on his own success in brokering a peace treaty with the guerilla army FARC, ending five decades of civil war, former president of Colombia and Nobel … anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela, saying “We must ‘rise above the parochial concepts of nation, race, and …