Ben, Author at Common Reader

The Soul Story

Musolino delivers a compelling narrative, inherently polemical, based on historical facts, experimental data, theories in sociology and political science, findings in experimental psychology and neuroscience, philosophical principles, and theological beliefs. While this conglomerate is conveyed admirably in layman’s terms, avoiding disciplinary jargon for the most part, it sometimes feels dizzyingly kaleidoscopic with little attempt at layering or prioritizing the relative status of component parts.

Reviews

The Spirit Level

By Daniel Appleyard

Over the millennia, holy writings and wisdom become a guide to many of us as we search for the meaning that will shape us as individuals and as communities. There is no certainty here, and doubt and questions and reconsiderations will always accompany us, as it does many who practice science. There is no simple reading of Scripture here, either.

Reviews

The Requirements of Southern Journalism

By Ida B. Wells

”If it could be established, a fearlessly edited press is one of the crying necessities of the hour. Such a journal, edited in the midst of such conditions as exist in the South, can better give the facts, than out of it, or than the press dispatches will do. True, such a one might have to be on the hop, skip and jump but the seed planted even though the sower might not tarry to watch its growth, can never die. At present only one side of the atrocities against a defenceless people is given, and with all the smoothing over is a bad enough showing.”

Essays

The Hyper-Vigilante

By Nicholas Henke

Well intentioned as they may be, trigger warnings nevertheless confuse victim with expert, and expert with advocate.

Uncategorized | Dispatches

Animal, Vegetable, Intelligence

By Eleanor Sarasohn

The humble cockatoo. Smarter than you think. (CC: David Cook Wildlife Photography) Plant neurobiologists argue the ways in which plants demonstrate behaviors that look very much like intelligence, memory, learning, and decision-making. Rather than relying on a brain and neurons, plants use a decentralized network, but both plants and…

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

Trans Fats’ Last Stand

By Susan Gelman

Trans fats have met their final fate in an FDA ban. About time.

Science & Nature | Dispatches

Hearn’s “Memphis To New Orleans”

By Gerald Early

The Common Reader’s inaugural essay by Lafcadio Hearn, one of the most acclaimed journalists of the 19th century. Born 1850 in Lefkada, Greece, Hearn became most famous for his writings about Japan. Before that, however, he was a well-known New Orleans journalist.

Essays

The Atomic Frenchman

By Nicholas Henke

The surprising positivist connection between Serge Gainsbourg and the Manhattan Project.

Uncategorized | Dispatches

Mary Tyler Mores

By Rosalind Early

Sex and The City would add more sex, shoes, and cocktails; 30 Rock upped the neurosis and goofball antics; while Parks and Recreation added small-town government parody. But it all started with Mary.

Reviews

How Orson Welles Pioneered the Horror of “Fake News”

By Richard Chapman

The hysteria generated by War of the Worlds provides today’s Internet users with a cautionary tale when posting on social media networks: Be careful what you put out there—somebody might just believe you.

Reviews