When people think of slave revolts in United States history, the Nat Turner rebellion is usually what comes to mind. On August 21, 1831, Turner led a group of slaves in a rebellion that resulted in the deaths of almost 60 white men, women, and children. While I don’t remember ever going into much depth Read More
I just finished listening to The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks on audiobook (though I really wish I’d read it) and I can’t overstate how fabulous it was. Ta-Nehisi Coates has already noted that the author, Rebecca Skloot,* seemed to equivocate on the question of race, but her reporting doesn’t. In 1951, Lacks’s cervical cancer Read More
I came home from a day of motherhood prep to find that one of my literary foremothers has passed away. Frequent visitors to this blog may know how connected I feel to Lucille Clifton. I loved her. And it feels like one of my own relatives has left this realm. I hope her spirit is Read More
Nicholas Carr from the Britannica Blog on Why How We Read Matters: “A change in form is always, as well, a change in content. That is unavoidable, as history tells us over and over again. One reads an electronic book differently than one reads a printed book – just as one reads a printed book Read More
“Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.” -John Maynard Keynes In The Myth of the Rational Market, Justin Fox, the “Curious Capitalist” columnist for Time, traces the lineage of the efficient market hypothesis, a school of thought backed by the economic powerhouse Read More
This month’s pick, All You Can Eat: How Hungry Is America is a recommendation from shani-o who writes: “In the book, Berg touches on the role racism has played in starvation of both whites and blacks in the 60s, notes the varying policies presidential administrations have enacted to fight hunger, and gives an excellent primer on Read More
blackink: If you get a moment, or something closer to 30 minutes, please make sure to check out Zadie Smith’s penetrating essay about multiple voices and the appeal of Barack Obama. The narrative hones in on the many voices of our president, all of them authentic in their own way, culled from a life spent Read More
