Christopher Tienken and Donald Orlich, “The Sch...
Christopher Tienken and Donald Orlich are authors of the provocative new book, The School Reform Landscape: Fraud, Myth, and Lies (Rowman and Littlefield 2013). Dr. Tienken is an assistant professor in the College of Education and Human Services at Set...
22 min
1852
Steven Hill, “Europe’s Promise: Why the Europea...
What can the United States learn from Europe? One good answer, says Steven Hill, is social capitalism, a form of economic management that is responsive to markets and productive of broadly-shared prosperity.
49 min
1853
Kathleen J. Frydl, “The War on Drugs in America...
In 1971, President Richard Nixon declared a “War on Drugs.” We are still fighting that war today. According to many people, we’ve lost but don’t know it. Rates of drug use in the US remain, by historical standards,
2 min
1854
Thane Rosenbaum, “Payback: The Case for Revenge...
All humans have an emotionally-driven sense of fairness. We get treated unfairly and we get mad. It’s no wonder, then, that our laws–and those of almost everyone else–are intended to assure that people are treated fairly.
61 min
1855
Paul Barrett, “Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun...
History is in many respects the story of humanity’s quest for transcendence: to control life and death, time and space, loss and memory. When inventors or companies effectively tap into these needs products emerge that help define their times.
51 min
1856
Steven J. Harper, “The Lawyer Bubble: A Profess...
A friend of mine who had just graduated from law school said “Law school is great. The trouble is that when you are done you’re a lawyer.” Steven J. Harper would, after a fashion, agree (though he would probably add that law schools are not that great)...
63 min
1857
Jared Diamond, “The World Until Yesterday: What...
It’s pretty common–and has long been–for people to think that the “way it used to be” is better than the way it is. This tendency to idealize an (imagined) past is particularly strong today among critics of modern civilization.
22 min
1858
Andrew Koppelman, “The Tough Luck Constitution ...
Every hundred years or so, the Supreme Court decides a question with truly vast economic implications. In 2012 such a decision was handed down, in a case that had the potential to affect the economy in the near term more than any court case ever had.
56 min
1859
Stephen T. Asma, “Against Fairness” (University...
Modern liberalism is built on the principle of equality and its corollary, the principle of fairness (treating equals equally). But have we taken the one and the other too far? Are we deceiving ourselves about our ability to treat each others equally,
59 min
1860
Robert Skidelsky and Edward Skidelsky, “How Muc...
Why do we work so hard, and should we? These are the questions that Robert and Edward Skidelsky explore in their thought provoking book How Much is Enough?: Money and the Good Life (Other Press, 2012). Their answer to the first question is (to put it i...
58 min
1861
Matthew Wisnioski, “Engineers for Change: Compe...
In his compelling and fascinating account of how engineers navigated new landscapes of technology and its discontents in 1960s America, Matthew Wisnioski takes us into the personal and professional transformations of a group of thinkers and practitione...
67 min
1862
Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor, Jr., “Mismatc...
In their book Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It’s Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won’t Admit It (Basic Books, 2012), Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor, Jr. present the following big idea: race preferences in higher education har...
63 min
1863
John Wood, “Creating Room to Read” (Viking Pres...
In Creating Room to Read: A Story of Hope in the Battle for Global Literacy (Viking Press, 2013), John Wood presents this big idea: you can change the world if want to. The nice thing about John’s book is that he doesn’t tell you the “theory” of world-...
31 min
1864
Scott Melzer, “Gun Crusaders: The NRA’s Culture...
Scott Melzer is the author of Gun Crusaders: The NRA’s Culture War (New York University Press, 2012). Scott earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Riverside and now is an associate professor of Sociology at Albion College.
“Museums can be very painful sites for Native peoples,” writes Amy Lonetree, associate professor of history at UC-Santa Cruz and a citizen of the Ho Chunk Nation, “as they are intimately tied to the colonization process.
69 min
1866
John Lauritz Larson, “The Market Revolution: Li...
The mass industrial democracy that is the modern United States bears little resemblance to the simple agrarian republic that gave it birth. The market revolution is the reason for this dramatic and ironic metamorphosis.
32 min
1867
David Chura, “I Don’t Wish Nobody to Have a Lif...
It is easy to dismiss juveniles in prison as “bad seeds”, as people with which we have nothing in common, and of which we want only distance. David Chura, however, did not maintain his distance, and has been working with at-risk kids for other 40 years...
54 min
1868
Isaac Campos, “Home Grown: Marijuana and the Or...
Isaac Campos is the author of Home Grown: Marijuana and the Origins of Mexico’s War on Drugs (University of North Carolina Press, 2012). Campos is an assistant professor of history at the University of Cincinnati.
37 min
1869
Jesse Rhodes, “An Education in Politics: The Or...
Jesse Rhodes‘ book An Education in Politics: The Origin and Evolution of No Child Left Behind (Cornell University Press, 2012). The book synthesizes nearly forty years of US political history. It tells the story of the development and passage of the No...
31 min
1870
Barry Schwartz, “The Paradox of Choice: Why Mor...
Is there such a thing as too much choice? In The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less – How the Culture of Abundance Robs Us of Satisfaction (Harper Perennial, 2005), author Barry Schwartz answers with a resounding yes.
43 min
1871
David Linen, “The Compass of Pleasure: How Our ...
What happens in our brains when we do things that feel good, such as drinking a glass of wine, exercising, or gambling? How and why do we become addicted to certain foods, chemicals and behaviors? David Linden, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins,
35 min
1872
Elizabeth Brake, “Minimizing Marriage: Marriage...
From the time we are children, we are encouraged to see our lives as in large measure aimed at finding a spouse. In popular media, the unmarried adult is seen as suspicious, unhealthy, and pitiable. At the same time,
64 min
1873
Sally Pipes, “The Pipes Plan: The Top Ten Ways ...
In her new book, The Pipes Plan: The Top Ten Ways to Dismantle and Replace Obamacare (Regnery Publishing, 2012), Sally C. Pipes, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Pacific Research Institute, argues that the Obama health care law will make ou...
35 min
1874
Lynn Stout, “Cultivating Conscience: How Good L...
Lynn Stout‘s pathbreaking book Cultivating Conscience:How Good Laws Make Good People (Princeton University Press, 2010) represents a much-needed update to the discipline of law and economics. Using current social science and discarding threadbare premi...
57 min
1875
Naomi Schaefer Riley, “The Faculty Lounges: And...
In her new book The Faculty Lounges: And Other Reasons Why You Won’t Get The College Education You Pay For (Ivan R. Dee, 2011), Naomi Schaefer Riley, former Wall Street Journal editor and affiliate scholar at the Institute for American Values,