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“Listening will be the hardest part”
… Let me introduce you to a couple of my ghosts. As I stand here, I think of my two grandfathers—Lawrence Crowder and Robert Styles. Lawrence was … which pervades this place, and which can make us each rise to the call of our ghosts. See also: Full text For me, …
Issue: July-August 2007
The Science of History
… In his 1998 book Consilience, Pellegrino University Professor emeritus Edward O. Wilson dreamed of a time when the boundaries between sciences and humanities would fade …
Issue: March-April 2016
The Entrepreneurs of Ideas
… During the final week of October, three academic units unveiled … to gun violence and suicide); poverty and humanitarian crises (preventable deaths and injuries across the globe); …
Issue: January-February 2014
The Art of Juxtapositions
… 1980 as her own rebellious creation, Mlle Bourgeoise Noire. Thewhip-wieldingbeauty queen, gowned in white dinner gloves, … artist and writer is still mining the timely themes of racial identity, cultural legacies, and what it means to … November 17 at the Harvard Art Museums.) The Carpenter show offers selections from five bodies of work (dating from 1980 …
Issue: November-December 2015
Controlling the Global Thermostat
… Climate change may be the most inexorable catastrophe the human species has ever … be made, and feasibly paid for? How high will sea level rise by 2050? By 2100? Given rich nations and poor ones, and … we could become carbon-neutral tomorrow,” says the director of the Harvard University Center for the Environment, “the …
Issue: November-December 2020
Games of Old
… How best to spend leisure time during the winter months? The cold, dark days of yesteryear called for story-telling, reading aloud, and … pencils to death masks. An 1814 board game, The Study of the Heavens at midnight during the winter solstice, …
Issue: January-February 2018
Historic Threads
… By the time the talented and shrewd Samuel Slater arrived in … Rhode Island, in 1790, the race to mechanize was on. Groups of carpenters and mechanics, funded by businessmen, were … that also led to the influx of immigrant workers, the rise of labor unions, widescale railroad infrastructure, and …
Issue: May-June 2020
Against “Indifference”
… Lawrence S. Bacow spoke upon occasion about his mother, Ruth Wertheim—the only Jewish resident transported from her hometown of Londorf, Germany, to Auschwitz who survived the Nazi … why he had never been able to bring himself to visit one of the camps—until this past January, after the University …
Issue: May-June 2025
Off the Shelf
… The Rise and Fall of American Growth, by Robert J. Gordon ’62 (Princeton, $39.95). In a huge study of the U.S. standard of living since the Civil War, the …
Issue: January-February 2016
The Talking Cure
… and risk-management departments have told doctors that if they make a mistake, the last thing they should do is admit … talk openly to patients even when harm occurs in the course of medical care. In 2001, the national accrediting body for … that the total spent on compensating patients would rise by about a quarter, from $5.6 billion to $7 billion a …
Issue: March-April 2008
Nobelists of Note
… Five alumni—two of them former faculty members—and the recipient of an honorary doctorate were among those to whom Nobel …
A New Face of American Evangelicalism
… Here's how Walter Kim, Ph.D. ’07, tells the short version of his parents’ migration. After the … of the NAE, led the church from 1939 to 1969, aiding the rise of global evangelical leader Billy Graham, who in many …
Issue: July-August 2023
Glimpses of Senior Life
… Roger Fu In the fall of his sophomore year, Roger Fu mistakenly walked … where, Fu says, the Radcliffe Quad experiment was reprised on a much larger scale with the earth's own seismic …
Christian Flow , Krysten A. Keches , Brittney Moraski
Issue: May-June 2009
The Senior Housing Shortfall
… As the ranks of American seniors swell with aging baby boomers, … (JCHS) predict. They note that there is an acute lack of safe, affordable, and accessible housing options to … involved in maintaining a home, and we’ve seen a dramatic rise in the number of older adults paying mortgages into …
Issue: March-April 2023
Off the Shelf
… Yeltsin: A Life, by Timothy J. Colton, Feldberg professor of government and Russian studies ( Basic Books, $35 ). A monumental biography of the flawed, but democratic, Russian president. Mean and … Music Shed, and the precursor to the Internet. The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State, by Noah Feldman, professor of law …
Issue: May-June 2008