A Good War is Hard to Find

Over the weekend I finished David Griffith’s A Good War is Hard to Find , a non-fiction book - an extended essay, really - on the peculiarly paradoxical moral sensibilities we Americans have come to cultivate toward violence. The point of departure for the book, its key moral dilemma, is framed by the photos that [...]

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The Head Trip

There’s an old joke about Wagner that runs something like this:
I went to see an opera by Wagner last night. It started at 6:00. Five hours later, I looked at my watch. It said 6:20.
The joke gets at something I’m sure many of us have experienced - being startled, for instance, by the occasional rifts [...]

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The World without Us

I’ve just finished reading Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us, and found it to be a wonderfully written book - an immensely enjoyable read, a true page turner (the companion web site to the book is here). As the title of the book suggests, the narrative revolves around a seemingly simple hypothetical question: what would [...]

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Reading Recommendation: Abbott’s Methods of Discovery

Well, on the road to my specialization exams, which will be held in a couple of weeks, I continue to take reading detours that I can’t help.
The latest trip: I just finished reading Andrew Abbott’s Methods of Discovery: Heuristics for the Social Sciences and was blown away. Although Abbott writes that the book is [...]

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