Moses and the Tablets of the Law, Claude Vignon by Walter Kendall III Legality, by Scott Shapiro, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 472 pp Scott Shapiro’s new book Legality has re-ignited many of the jurisprudential debates initially kindled by H. L. A. Hart’s The Concept of Law in 1961. For instance, Brian Tamanaha has described it as…
Read More“Poison/Palate”, Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas, Rebecca Solnit, 2010. Toxic mines and factories in the Bay Area plotted alongside farmers markets, farms and food producers. by Don Mitchell Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas, by Rebecca Solnit, Berkeley: University of California Press, 144 pp. At the bottom of the cover of Infinite City: A San…
Read More#occupyucdavis, photograph by California Aggie by Deborah Blum One hundred years ago, an American pharmacist named Wilbur Scoville developed a scale to measure the intensity of a pepper’s burn. The scale – as you can see on the widely used chart below – puts sweet bell peppers at the zero mark and the blistering habenero at…
Read Moreby Philip Hans Franses and Heleen Mees Are the Chinese prone to money illusion? This column uses a unique Chinese dataset and finds that, unlike their American counterparts, Chinese people are more likely to base decisions on the real value and not be fooled by inflation. China’s monetary policy and its inflation have got people…
Read More“The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad”, from Arabian Nights, Illustrated by Duilio Cambellotti, 1912-1913 by Karla Mallette The Islamic Context of The Thousand and One Nights, by Muhsin Jāsim Mūsawī New York: Columbia University Press, 344 pp. Readers have long celebrated the Thousand and One Nights as a work that transcends cultural divides: during the last…
Read Moreby Tamar Rothenberg American Iconographic: National Geographic, Global Culture, and the Visual Imagination, by Stephanie L. Hawkins, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 264 pp. What is iconic about National Geographic? From the ethnographic “types” displayed as such in the first half of the twentieth century, to the bare-breasted women “in their native dress,” to the…
Read MoreFemale factory workers in Shenzhen, China, Douglas Johnson From Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews: In 1923, the British House of Commons had what was termed “a great debate”: “Socialism or Capitalism: Which?” Not so long ago, books were regularly published on this thorny topic; but now, even on the left, enthusiasm for raising the issue has…
Read MoreKristina Söderbaum as Äls in The Great Sacrifice, Veit Harlan, 1944 by Christelle Le Faucheur Nazi Cinema’s New Women, by Jana Francesca Bruns, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 271 pp. Bruns’s book represents an attempt to answer some of the major questions concerning the Third Reich’s functioning and longevity. Following other scholars, the author focuses on the regime’s use…
Read MoreBird’s eye view of Central Park, New York, John Bachman, 1859 by Katy Layton-Jones Melodramatic Landscapes: Urban Parks in the Nineteenth Century, by Heath Massey Schenker, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 232 pp. At the end of a decade during which urban green space ascended the hierarchy of public and political priorities, it is worth noting…
Read Moreby Deborah Blum The only way to start this story is by opening a door – the door leading into the Loony Gas building. The workers at the Standard Oil Refinery in New Jersey, gave the building that name, waving goodbye to their colleagues when they entered the shadowed opening, promising to have undertakers waiting…
Read MoreThe single most important variable for the feasibility of repatriation in a post conflict situation is the role ethnic and national identity play in the conflict…
Read Moreby Tim Besley and Maitreesh Ghatak As we approach three years since the fall of Lehman Brothers, the incentives that led the financial sector to take on too much risk still exist. This column argues that they will remain so long as governments continue to provide an implicit guarantee that banks will be bailed out. To…
Read MoreThe Revolt, Luigi Russolo, 1911 by Kevin Kelly In this 1964 clip from the BBC Horizon show, Arthur C. Clarke makes a fairly precise prediction, but one that is only half right. “We’ll no longer commute in cities,” he says, “we’ll communicate instead.” He also says, “I am perfectly serious when I suggest that you’ll…
Read MoreFishing boat salvage year overflowing after collapse of salmon stock. Noyo, Fort Bragg, 2007 by Linda Ivey The Left Coast: California on the Edge, by Philip L. Fradkin, Berkeley: University of California Press, 115 pp. Of the many images of California that have captured the national imagination, few are as culturally pervasive as that of…
Read Moreby Maggie Koerth-Baker It’s August of 2011, do you know when your Apocalypse is? There are 1000s of people who think that something important—if not the end or the world, then something—will happen on December 21, 2012. These speculations spring from a well-seasoned cultural melting pot, but a key ingredient is the writings and…
Read Moreby Deniz Igan and Prachi Mishra Did anti-regulation lobbying fuel the subprime crisis? This column shows that there is a strong relationship between financial industry lobbying and favourable financial regulation legislation. It argues that the financial industry fought, and defeated, measures that might have curbed some of the reckless lending practices that many think played…
Read Moreby Julia James When Stanford visiting scholar Li Cong thinks back to her recent stint surveying villagers in the Anhui province of China, one interviewee in particular springs to mind. He was a middle-aged man, not too rich, who was so desperate to finally wed that he’d spent years pouring everything he had into building…
Read MoreFrom The Simpsons, Fox Broadcasting Company by Amy E. Wendling The Reification of Desire: Toward a Queer Marxism, by Kevin Floyd, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 270 pp. Of the many striking features of Kevin Floyd’s excellent study, The Reification of Desire: Toward a Queer Marxism, certainly the most striking is its second chapter. In…
Read MorePollo Rico Restaurant, Queens, New York by Anne Elizabeth Moore In recent years, much of our economy – and now, almost the entirety of our global media – has come to rest on a public display of authenticity: ads that bemoan the notion of the sales pitch, heartfelt apologies by perpetrators of large-scale bank frauds or…
Read MoreKnowing animals more fully will prompt us to treat them better…
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