Tag: Book

  • Nation & World

    Looking at ‘spoiled’ Americans through an energy lens

    In 1968, the United States was exporting oil. A decade later, given massive increases in domestic demand, it was importing half of this coveted fuel.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Japanese government honors Professor Edwin A. Cranston

    The government of Japan announced its decision to award Edwin A. Cranston, professor of Japanese literature, the decoration of the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon, on April 29.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Raising happy — and moral — children

    A teenager tells her parents she is considering quitting her soccer team. Worried that her daughter is unhappy, her mother wants to let her skip practice. Her father argues that soccer is important on her college résumé. While both parents are concerned about their child, they neglect another question entirely: How would her leaving affect…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Brown honored by Organization of American Historians

    For his book “The Reaper’s Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery” (Harvard University Press, 2008), Vincent Brown, the Dunwalke Associate Professor of American History, has been selected by the Organization of American Historians (OAH) as the 2009 recipient of the Melre Curti Award. The honor, presented annually, is awarded for the…

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Scholar enjoys wrestling ‘the Great Bear’

    Some scholars are hard-pressed to identify what exactly drew them to their field. Others can point to a specific “aha!” moment when they found their academic calling. In Justin Weir’s case, it all began with a bit of bureaucracy.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    History of a ‘scribal machine’

    Starting in the 1920s, Chinese writer Lin Yutang earned a reputation as an urbane essayist and translator who moved easily between the literary cultures of the East and West.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    An attempt to define ‘academic excellence’

    Michèle Lamont, Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies and professor of sociology and of African and African American studies, analyzes the system of peer review in her new book “How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment.”

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    The third chapter can be the best in the book

    There may be something to the adage about growing older and wiser. A lot, in fact, according to the new book by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, “The Third Chapter: Passion, Risk, and Adventure in the 25 Years After 50,” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009). The work explores the trend of learning and development for adults who are…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    President Faust named American Historian Laureate

    Louise Mirrer, president and CEO of the New-York Historical Society, has announced that Drew Faust, Harvard’s president and Lincoln Professor of History, will receive the society’s fourth annual American History Book Prize for “This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War.”

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    When gentrification occurs in City of the Seven Hills

    History and modernity collide in Monti, a neighborhood in Rome, and the local way of life is falling victim to the impact. Michael Herzfeld, professor of anthropology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, explores the changing landscape of this ancient neighborhood in a new ethnography about this district within Italy’s capital city.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Mothers in fiction, mothers in fact

    In 1930, the French author Colette published the novel “Sido” and bound the first copy with swatches of blue fabric cut from her late mother’s favorite dress.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Assessing the assessments

    Educational testing is a fundamental part of the educational system in the United States, but many argue that far too much emphasis is placed on it. One influential voice in the lively, often contentious, testing debate belongs to Daniel Koretz, professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), whose research focuses on…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Reminiscences of Maxim Gorky

    In 1895, Russian journalist Alexei Maximovich Peshkov, a onetime shoemaker’s apprentice who had quit school at 10, adopted a new name: Maxim Gorky. After that, literary fame came fast and furious for this self-taught, fresh-voiced grandson of a Volga boatman. Gorky — the name means “bitter” — could tell a story, remember everything he read…

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Author tells of life-changing experience

    Kennedy School graduate Steve Reifenberg M.P.P. ’88 reflected recently on becoming — at the age of 23 — a father figure to 12 young children.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    ‘Father of Aerobics,’ HSPH alumnus, receives Healthy Cup Award

    The Nutrition Round Table of the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) honored Kenneth Cooper, groundbreaking author of the best-selling book “Aerobics,” with its Healthy Cup Award this past Tuesday (April 22).

    2 minutes