Good advice from Sieff writing for The Washington Times. He has more to say including:

Mr. Bok’s rich, challenging, remarkable new book is remarkably solid. For it is based not on the empty aphorisms so beloved by lazy and second-rate pseudo-philosophers. There is a surprisingly massive quantity of serious statistical and sociological research that has been done on the subject of happiness in both prosperous and developing societies, and Mr. Bok draws liberally and impressively upon it. His conclusions are remarkable and well worth heeding.

Read the complete review here and then heed Sieff’s advice to “snap it up at once” here.

I just ran across this audio recording of Ian Buruma discussing Taming the Gods at the PEN World Voices Festival earlier this month (via Talk to Me at WNYC).

To read an excerpt or view an interview with Ben visit the The Great Brain Race page here.

Join EPI’s latest webinar to speak with author Ben Wildavsky on his latest book “The Great Brain Race”!

Author Ben Wildavsky, a senior fellow in research and policy at the Kauffman Foundation and guest scholar at the Brookings Institution, will participate in The Educational Policy Institute’s upcoming Book Club webinar. In The Great Brain Race, Wildavsky presents the first popular account of how international competition for the brightest minds is transforming the world of higher education–and why this revolution should be welcomed, not feared. The webinar is open to the public.

Educational Policy Institute

801 N. Quincy St. Suite 700, Arlington, VA 22203 – www.educationalpolicy.org – 703.875.0701

Ghostbusters!

(Duh.)

Well, close enough.  Improv Everywhere, the guerrilla performance group whose tagline is “We Cause Scenes” did just that at the New York Public Library today.

In a send-up of the 1984 beloved cult classic, “Ghostbusters,” troupe members infiltrated the main reading room off Central Park West and hilarity ensued.

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Get a load of the reaction shots from library patrons.  A nice mix of gawking tourists, students and some textbook New York bemused blasee!  Give it up for these jokesters and unplug the i-pods, kids!  It’s for a good cause.  The white sheet shenanigans and proton packs were dreamed up to promote the Don’t Close the Book campaign to keep public libraries haunted by, well, the public.

Special thanks to the NYT ArtsBeat blog for the heads up!  Here’s hoping it cracks the viral top ten by week’s end.

That is Miller’s description of Ben not mine. Head over to the National Review Online to listen to the latest installment of Between the Covers with John J. Miller in which Ben describes the titular “great brain race” of his book and and addresses concerns about “the emergence of a global market in higher education…being another example of foreign competition threatening the United States.”

Apparently a debate is raging between Leonhardt, Floyd Norris, Daniel Indiviglio, and Jacques Steinberg about whether too many people are going to college and the real value of a college degree.

Yesterday on Economix Leonhardt wrote,

The debate, I think, is really about the 40 percent or so of students in the middle of the spectrum: those who attend college but do not graduate. The economists and higher-education experts who say that college isn’t such a good deal — and, as Jacques Steinberg notes, they are very much in the minority — are really focusing on this 40 percent. Many of them should never enroll in college, the skeptics say, because they don’t have what it takes to finish.

And no doubt some of them do not have what it takes to finish college. But there is abundant evidence that many of them could indeed graduate — if colleges did a better job than they are doing today.

He then uses information from our recent book Crossing the Finish Line that shows that students who do not aim high enough (ie they undermatch when choosing what school to attend) graduate at a lower rate than students who attend the best possible school they can get into. He also notes that Crossing the Finish Line‘s findings indicate that graduation rates can be negatively affected by price sensitivity, so students who attend more expensive universities are less likely to graduate than similarly qualified students who attend a less expensive university.

These findings lead Leonhardt to the following conclusion:

This country does still lead the world in the share of the population that enrolls in college. Combine this fact with the research from “Crossing the Finish Line,” and it’s hard not to conclude that many students with the ability to graduate from college are not doing so today.

What do you think? Should education policy and administrators at universities shoulder some of the responsibility in this debate? Are the 40% a lost cause or should we re-energize efforts to graduate more students in this middle group? Post your comments below.

Tattered Cover’s Cathy Langer featured on NPR

She may not be a household name but she’s a respected VIP here at PUP.  Cathy Langer is the buyer for the Tattered Cover bookstore in Denver, CO; one of the remaining blessed bastions, the independent bookstore, instrumental in the promotion and placement of a book in the public conscience.

She recently spoke to Bob Edwards about the fate of the independent stores and put it in perspective for this publicity gal.  The relationship between bookseller and publisher is the definition of symbiotic.  We need them.  They need us.  We provide filters and feedback for each other that just doesn’t exist at the corporate level.  If they go under, what happens to us?  A scary thought indeed…

To listen to the podcast, click here and from all of us at PUP, thanks, Cathy, for keeping up your end of the equation!

Check out the Tattered Cover website and share the indy love!

The Financial Times interviews Carmen M. Reinhart, co-author of This Time is Different about the financial crises.

Carmen Reinhart talks about:

The history of financial crises and their patterns:
http://bit.ly/cbduas

The aftermath of financial crises:
http://bit.ly/dCMVme

The role of debt and monetary policy:
http://bit.ly/aqtQEF

The Greek crisis and the possibility for contagion and restructuring:
http://bit.ly/bDuhdl

This Time Is Different:
Eight Centuries of Financial Folly
Carmen M. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff
Read the Preface and Chapter 1 here: http://bit.ly/blJclU

A new blog… about US! Well, not us as in Princeton University Press, but us as in the community of university presses and academic publishers. PageView, a new blog from the Chronicle of Education is a blog devoted to covering everything from e-books, transitions of journals, high profile books, and other important news.

The Crossley ID Guide is now available for pre-orders on Barnes and Noble.com where you can also view this terrific video from Richard Crossley detailing his philosophy of bird-watching and why he wrote this guide.