From Daedalus, a special issue on the Humanities, including Patricia Meyer Spacks (Virginia): Revolution in the humanities; Steven Marcus (Columbia): Humanities from classics to cultural studies: notes toward the history of an idea; Andrew Delbanco (Columbia): American literature: a vanishing subject?; Pauline Yu (ACLS): Comparative literature in question; Anthony Grafton (Princeton): History's postmodern fates; Thomas Crow (USC): The practice of art history in America; Gerald Early (WUSL): The quest for a black humanism; Jack Balkin (Yale) and Sanford Levinson (UT-Austin): Law & the humanities: an uneasy relationship; Dagfinn Føllesdal and Michael Friedman (Stanford): American philosophy in the twentieth century.
From Cosmos, there's nothing quite like Einstein and his theories of relativity to bring out the doubters, the cranks and the outright crackpots. Do they have a point? Was Einstein a fake? Given what is happening in Babylon (Iraq) and biotechnology today, we may be witnessing the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. From Skeptic, who designed that? An article on Creationism v. Intelligent Design. A review of Darwin’s Gift: To Science and Religion by Francisco J. Ayala and The Creation-Evolution Debate by Edward J. Larson. Don't Know Much About Biology: Suppose we asked a group of Presidential candidates if they believed in the existence of atoms, and a third of them said "no"? Jerry Coyne wants to know. Tyrannosaurus sex: They dominated the Earth for 150 million years, but we know little about how they reproduced. Now, a band of brave scientists is trying to find out.
From Policy Review, Lawrence Chickering (Hoover) and P. Edward Haley (Claremont): Strong Society, Weak State; and Peter Berkowitz reviews Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew who Gave us Modernity by Rebecca Goldstein. Stanley Rosen remembers Leo Strauss in Chicago.
From the International Social Science Review, a review of Herbert A. Simon: The Bounds of Reason in Modern America by Hunter Crowther-Heyck; and a review of Knowing Capitalism by Nigel Thrift. Learning with The Price Is Right: Thirty-five years of lessons on economics and class from retiring host Bob Barker.
From Academe, what does "Academic Freedom" mean? Michael Bérubé wants to know; and a review of The Making of Princeton University: From Woodrow Wilson to the Present. A consumer’s guide to the college of your choice: Thousands of American students are heading off to college for the first time in a few weeks. Have they made the right decision?
