On Poverty in America
America’s social welfare programs are geared to providing a safety net for those who fall on hard times. What if we directed our efforts to prevent falling into the net in the first place? I think of this now...
A Science Lesson
In Nature’s Mutiny: How the Little Ice Age of the Long Seventeenth Century Transformed the West and Shaped the Present (2017), best-selling historian Philipp Blom documents the effects of climate change on the development of Western civilization. As recently...
Half of Us
The story of America’s founding has been informed largely by the record of the white men of means at its center. During the past half-century or so, however, a concerted effort has been made to account for the experiences...
It Is to Me
“I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think vainly, flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be...
Model Minority?
The Chinese in America by Iris Chang is a sweeping narrative history exploring the wholly unique circumstances of Chinese migration to the United States. Most notably, two general waves of Chinese migration were separated by an 80 year period...
Citizen Korematsu
Following the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, more than 120,000 Japanese Americans were gathered from their homes along the Pacific coast and relocated to camps within the interior of the country. The large majority of these...
Life is Good
In Enlightenment Now: The Case For Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker defies the persistent drumbeat of negativity that floods our avenues of information. Through six dozen graphs that break down the vitality of the human...
Uncle Joe
Dear Uncle Joe, Given the general attitude towards government in the twenty-first century, it occurs to me that the expectations surrounding your recent promotion are rather low. With that said, you have been pursuing this job for quite some...
Black and White Spaces
Racial segregation in America has often been viewed through two lenses. In the South, Jim Crow laws separated the races in schools and other public spaces. This is de jure (by law) segregation. Outside the South, de facto (in...
The Gift of History
The history of the United States* has been a shared experience. Whether your family recently stole its way across the Southern border or has been here long before Columbus; whether your roots in this country were planted at Ellis...
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