Reading Mathew A. Foust’s Loyalty to Loyalty was a special treat for me. Foust was the graduate teaching fellow who led my discussion section for Mark Johnson’s Philosophy 101 lecture course during my first term at the University of Oregon. It is no understatement to say that Foust changed my life; after just a few weeks, he encouraged […]
I am getting married in two weeks, and my officiant––who is also a dear friend and fellow book-lover––recommended Milton Mayeroff’s On Caring as an aid for writing my wedding vows. I can’t imagine a better text for helping someone approach the joyful yet intimidating project of marriage. This isn’t just one of the best books […]
It’s been nearly a decade since my favorite undergraduate philosophy professor introduced me to Owen Flanagan. Flanagan is part of a vibrant but relatively new philosophical niche: naturalized ethics. The field plumbs the depths of philosophical history, plucks out tidbits that harmonize with modern findings about the capabilities and constraints of the embodied mind and […]
In the last decade, the twin topics of technological unemployment and the automation revolution have found their way out of esoteric discussions between specialists and into the public consciousness. Plenty of good books are coming out every year to help us analyze these issues and gauge the degree of impact and pace at which they […]
From the works of John Steinbeck to David Simon and George Packer, narrative nonfiction has played a significant role in shaping my ideas about America. Now I can add Dave Eggers to that list. I’d never heard of Zeitoun until a friend recommended it, but her description of a man undertaking a quixotic canoe journey in […]
If humans want to survive and flourish in the Anthropocene, we will need to overcome the habits of thought that have wrought destruction on our collective psyche and the natural world. One of our most misguided and longstanding myths is the notion that humanity’s mental faculties should be considered qualitatively different from those of nonhuman […]
Geography is one of the glaring weak points in American education. I’m college-educated, but know relatively little about world geography, and even less about how it shapes national economies and political strategies. A portion of my ignorance can be attributed to personal preferences and limitations, but it’s a good bet that my geopolitical blind spots […]
With legalization gaining steam across the nation, it seems we are about to close the chapter on cannabis prohibition in the long, sordid history of America’s “War on Drugs.” The question is no longer “Will we have full legalization?” but “How soon?” There will no doubt continue to be heated debates about cannabis’s place in […]
There was a time when I thought Michael V. Hayden and his ilk were scum, but, as Hayden himself acknowledges: “You can only dehumanize an enemy from a distance” (238). Once I let Hayden into my head, he gave my liberal, civilian ass a serious reality check. Despite its nonlinear format and a bevy of […]
I’m not sure I’ve ever been so annoyed by a book that taught me so much. Frederic Laloux’s Reinventing Organizations is, in some ways, exactly what it claims to be––a guide for creating organizations with internal dynamics that radically diverge from prevailing models. But it’s also a highly repetitive text with a lot of fuzzy […]