In Civil War Wives, Carol Berkin sketches the lives and times of Angela Grimke Weld, Varina Howell Davis and Julia Dent Grant. This is solid women’s history, close to the sources and closely attuned to opportunities and constraints these well-known women faced. Weld was married to abolitionist Theodore Weld. Davis was the spouse of the…
Category: Reviews
Reviews of books, articles, and the like
What Sort of Justice is Possible?
Few forms of injustice incite our sense of outrage more than the abuses of power. Power can often have a corrupting influence and unchecked power provides predators opportunities to hurt the weak. And when evil occurs under these conditions, right-thinking people call out for equity and demand justice. In early 2002 the Boston Globe published…
The Nabe Back In The Day
Many people live in cities, but what allows an urban citizen to claim that they live in an urban neighborhood? Knowing your neighbors? Giving a neighbor a key to your place while your away? Being recognized by the guy at the deli, the woman and the market, and the other local trades? Participating in local…
Measure What You Value and Value What You Measure
Few works on higher education have generated as much press and interest as Richard Arum and Josipa Roska’s Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (University of Chicago, 2011). Reviews, attacks, accolades and discussion have accompanied its publication and we are now seeing the ultimate measure of interest in higher education: the conference. Within months…
In Search of an Interesting College Student . . .
Exactly how ineffective is higher education? How much is wrong? Please, please, let me count the ways. A book a week, a screed a fortnight and an expose daily seem to be populating the media, each of which take a different tack highlighting the many woes of American higher education. In this melange of negativity…
Who Is The Party Pooper?
Craig Brandon’s The Five-Year Party makes me think of reheated coffee: sometimes necessary but always bitter, acidic, and thin. A former journalism professor at Keene State, New Hampshire, Brandon has assiduously collected bad new and bad results throughout higher education in order to populate this book. He weaves together the negativity into an extraordinarily bleak…
Poor Options, Smart Choices
If, sadly, a twenty-two year old is killed by a bus, the news media will quickly report the untimely demise of a man. Ask a group of middle-aged Americans about a twenty-two year old who lacks a full-time job and lives in his parent’s house, and they would be unwilling to call that person an…