Adrianna J. Kezar, an associate professor at University of Maryland and an ERIC higher education editor, summarized a raft of recent scholarship on organizational change in Understanding and Facilitating Organizational Change in the 21st Century: Recent Research and Conceptualizations. The title is a mouthful, and while accurate, an even more precise description would emphasize that…
Category: Reviews
Reviews of books, articles, and the like
Academia’s Dilemma
Important and interesting questions are often difficult for higher education to digest. Michael Pollan raises just such a vital question in his book The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. The book has reached into America’s public intellectual consciousness in a thoughtful and profound way. It is related, perhaps, to a similarly provocative…
Career Advice Can Appear in the Strangest Forms
Career development centers are hot spots on college campuses. Prospective students and their parents inspect them, faculty seek their perspective on student success and failure in the world of work, employers liaise with them to find talent, and alumni offices partner with them to keep graduates engaged. In a world that demands outcomes, higher education…
Fictitious Lawyers
Joseph O’Neill is a very smart man and an extremely talented writer. In 2008 he garnered critical acclaim for Netherland, one of my favorite recent novels, a powerful book about loss and regaining life after the attacks on 9/11. It is a wonderful work of fiction and and a worthwhile read. I gained a deeper understanding…
The Educator’s Dilemma
Mark Kurlansky’s The Last Fish Tale: the fate of the Atlantic and survival in Gloucester, America’s oldest fishing port and most original town is not a particularly good book. Written without great care and poorly thought through, the book teases with the engaging anecdote and arresting observation, but disappoints when it comes to more substantive…
What We Are and What Our Children Eat
Food is no longer just food. It is a statement, a value, a marker and a signifier. Food has political value and it is freighted with meaning. What we eat, and what are children eat, is no simple matter. Stepping beyond the perspective of a father encouraging his children to consider a balanced plate, what…
Colossus – Building the Hoover Dam
Good popular history combines the rigor of academic historical scholarship with accessible, lively prose. Good popular history is about telling a story with heroes, villains, drama and resolution. Popular historians can situate their subjects within broader historical questions. Most importantly, good popular history takes a complicated story and renders it in human scale. Popular history…