A conversation with Kimberly Kay Hoang, author of the 2023 PROSE Awards R.R. Hawkins Award Winner Spiderweb Capitalism: How Global Elites Exploit Frontier Markets October 20, 2023 Kimberly Kay Hoang is an award-winning scholar, author, teacher, current Professor of Sociology and the College and the Director of Global Studies at the University of Chicago, and the author of two books: Spiderweb Capitalism and Dealing in Desire. Read More
Beyond the ivory tower: Real world guidance on education, skills, and careers October 20, 2023 The story of how a particular set of ideas eventually turns into a book can sometimes be a tale all its own. The creation of my new book has been a matter of poking and prodding a set of assumptions about education and careers over time. Read More
Listen in: Economics in America October 17, 2023 Blending rare personal insights with illuminating perspectives on the social challenges that confront us today, Angus Deaton offers a disarmingly frank critique of his own profession while shining a light on his adopted country’s policy accomplishments and failures. Read More
Smart books for humans on artificial intelligence October 16, 2023 AI’s involvement in everyday life is ever-evolving, with significant implications for how we work, live, and traverse fields from education to healthcare. As this powerful technology is incorporated into more services and products that we rely upon, here are some books that can help us to embrace human agency and navigate this new digital age. Read More
What makes it so difficult for colleges to control costs? October 14, 2023 The fate of cumulative increases in college costs is playing out as predicted. Everyone agrees that it can’t continue to go on like this—and not just students and families. Read More
Simon West on Prickly Moses October 13, 2023 An uncanny blend of the external and the intimate has been a hallmark of Simon West’s poetry for nearly twenty years. In this new collection, the Australian poet and Italianist delights in the transforming and endlessly varied powers of naming and speaking. Read More
The cascading consequences of a Child Protective Services call October 13, 2023 CPS intervention has ballooned in recent decades, such that state and county CPS agencies now investigate the families of more than three million U.S. children each year. These investigations carry profound costs for the families subject to them, even in cases when the agency promptly closes out after investigating, as is typical. Read More
Bidenomics and the Hillbilly Highway October 12, 2023 No region in the country has witnessed a greater decline in its manufacturing employment rate during the twenty-first century than the southeast. Regional deindustrialization, as much if not more so than the politics of racial resentment, explains the current era of one-party Republican rule in the South. Read More
Aristotle and ecology October 12, 2023 Aristotle urges us to study animals closely for what they reveal about the larger world around us, including ourselves. Read More
PUP Speaks: Ben Wildavsky on the art of career preparation October 11, 2023 PUP Speaks author Ben Wildavsky reveals why college education and job preparation are not either-or propositions and identifies the blend of education and networking needed to support real-world career aspirations. Read More
Free Agents October 11, 2023 Scientists are learning more and more about how brain activity controls behavior and how neural circuits weigh alternatives and initiate actions. As we probe ever deeper into the mechanics of decision making, many conclude that agency—or free will—is an illusion. Read More
To Build a Black Future October 10, 2023 When #BlackLivesMatter emerged in 2013, it animated the most consequential Black-led mobilization since the civil rights and Black power era. Today, the hashtag turned rallying cry is but one expression of a radical reorientation toward Black politics, protest, and political thought. Read More
Dog diplomacy October 03, 2023 The habit of judging a political figure by their dog may seem to be a distinctively medieval preoccupation. Yet it is by no means alien to modern political discourse. Read More
Angus Deaton on Economics in America October 03, 2023 Deaton tells the story of the last 40 years of economics in America, not by writing about economics directly, but by telling stories about the adventures of economists—including himself —in research and in policy. Read More
Fool: In Search of Henry VIII’s Closest Man September 28, 2023 In some portraits of Henry VIII there appears another, striking figure—a gaunt and morose-looking man with a shaved head and, in one case, a monkey on his shoulder. Read More