Hunter And Hunted

There is little about big-game hunting that has changed since the era of Teddy Roosevelt.

The Ripley Effect

Like an amusement park, Believe It or Not was a cheap thrill but it also brought together a community of seekers who sought their faith through the excess of the unusual.

America’s Big Chill

Friedman’s skill in populating her chapters with not only intriguing protagonists but a full cast of supporting characters results in an engrossingly textured account of the early Cold War. Freeing the era from the straightjacket of conformity to which it has been confined by hindsight and historiography, Citizenship in Cold War America reveals a society more fractious than anxious.

Rough And Religious

Rough Country clearly shows the sociological function of religion in Texas and, as a consequence, its political leanings and influence on the rest of the United States.

Cries and Whispers

Lydia Denworth in her book I Can Hear You Whisper restores one’s awe at the amazing feat that is communication. As a scientific journalist, she dissects the process of language acquisition from auditory comprehension to speech production, but her quest for understanding is personal. Denworth’s third son, Alex, was born hearing-impaired.

Big Genomic Promise of Big Data

The combination of "big data" and genomics allow medical professionals to diagnose patients genetically at risk for disease, but there are some serious hurdles to surmount before we can sequence ourselves.

Bikel Remembered, And Linked

Theodore Meir Bikel remembered

Mosquitoes. What Are They Good For?

Mosquitoes are attracted to some people more than others. The implications for world health are enormous.

The Bite That Kills

Understanding mechanisms by which mosquitos sense their environment may prove pivotal to combatting diseases that kill millions.

Cool: How Air Conditioning Changed Everything

The Birth of The Coolth

Americans were more fully aware that modern life, urban life in the late nineteenth century, made heat more unbearable than ever. As Salvatore Basile writes in Cool: How Air Conditioning Changed Everything: “America was realizing that a heat wave was much more unpleasant in cities than in rural areas: the larger the city, the more brick and stone and human bodies, the more hellishly hot it felt." A man-made heat was being created that could only be controlled, ultimately, by man-made cooling. Slowly, inchoately, but tenaciously, the quest for coolth had begun.

Skip to content