In the past half-century public higher education, like so much of America, has changed dramatically. It’s a vastly different landscape, with millions more attending college as the economy – the world – demands new skills, new knowledge, and new ways of doing business. The City University of New York, one of the largest systems in…
Author: David Potash
Strong Towns For All
Charles Marohn’s Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity is a most provocative book. Since reading it I haven’t been able to look at the built environment around me in quite the same manner. The outgrowth of popular blog, Strong Towns describes a movement in urban planning and the journey to its creation.…
Armed American Public Health
What are the reasons, consequences and outcomes for a more heavily armed America? It is a question increasingly looked at by politicians, policy makers, businesses, and more than a few scholars. One of the country’s foremost experts is Jonathan M. Metzl, a professor at Vanderbilt University. He directs the university’s Department of Medicine, Health and…
Reasons Has Its Reason
How does one plump a 37-year-old philosophy book? How can one best recommend a scholarly study that demands close reading and is challenging for those without a solid understanding and appreciation of continental philosophy? It is no easy task, even though in so many ways, Frederick C. Beiser’s The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from…
Public Health Reconsidered From A Different Perspective
Jonathan Metzl is a doctor, psychiatrist, professor and author of several well-received books. Right before the pandemic he wrote Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland. The work garnered a great deal of attention and significant praise. It is a powerful study, drawing from several disciplines, and made all…
Aging And Options
Elizabeth White has a stellar resume, tremendous writing skills, and an important story to tell. A well-traveled army child attuned to the importance of education, White attended Oberlin as an undergraduate, majoring in political science. She went on to earn an MBA from Harvard and a Masters in International Studies from Johns Hopkins University. Early…
Future Latino Urbanism – 25 Years Ago
Twenty-five years ago, an activist and scholar named Mike Davis wrote Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the US City. It is a short book, packed with numbers, statistics and trends. Davis, who would pen many books and articles from a working class perspective throughout a lengthy career, makes a compelling case that American cities were and…