Ellen Ruppel Shell, Boston University journalism professor and author, is a smart and informed writer. In her latest book, Cheap: the high cost of discount culture, Shell looks at the rise of discount culture – discount shops, outlet malls, and the proliferation of the cheap. Cheap, she takes pains to point out, is not the…
Category: Reviews
Reviews of books, articles, and the like
Necessary Lies
A well-crafted history arranges space and time into a set, frames a proscenium for our viewing, and knows when to raise the curtain and when to let it fall. It crafts order out of chaos; it conjures up beginnings, middles and ends where none exist, boxing up time, processing it and rendering it digestible. History…
Lost in Transition and Translation
Capturing attention and fears with the ominous subtitle “The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood,” Christian Smith’s Lost in Transition is a sociological study of 18-23 year old Americans. These are the early “emerging adults” discussed by many social scientists. Emerging adults have some of the traits of the adults of earlier generations, but are marked by delayed settling down,…
Tony Judt – difficult to forget
The 26 April 2012 issue of the London Review of Books contains a fascinating one-page piece on Tony Judt by Eric Hobsbawm. Amid the many remembrances, criticisms, and encomiums, Hobsbawm finds something different to say about Judt. Likening Judt to a crusading attorney or a bruising intellectual barrister, Hobsbawm’s characterization situates Judt’s intellectual journey. It…
New Normals and Higher Education
What is normal in higher education today? When we think of a college we often picture young people, popular football games, lectures halls and the academic quad. However, traditional students, the 18-21 year-olds who live in dormitories, make up less than 20% of all who study in higher ed. One of the great strengths and…
On Leadership and the Utility of Precepts
For several weeks have toted Michael Fullan’s Change Leader: Learning To Do What Matters Most, wondering what to make of it and what to do with it. It neither inspired nor engaged me. It is well-meaning and well-organized, written, one must surmise, from the best of intentions by an informed and intelligent man. It shares…
Practical Reasoning From an Impractical Perch
It takes a certain degree of hubris to assign oneself the responsibility of investigating and learning about something popular and effective – and then making recommendations about how it should be rethought. Higher education, however, has no shortage of experts eager and willing to tell others what to do and how to do it. Knowledge,…