Here Comes the Sun King

The sun has been shining brightly on solar power, but can it last? California has seen a lot of booms and busts, and solar power has been among them. Solar power boomed in the late 1970s and busted in the decades that followed. Today, it’s looking bright again, and solar panels blanket the state. But how far can we take it, and how much can the sun really do for us? In advance of the Zócalo event “Is California’s Solar Gold Rush Destined to Fail?”, we asked several solar supporter... 

The Full Montgomery

Constantino Diaz-Duran is a fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University. He is chronicling his walk from New York to Los Angeles to celebrate his eligibility for American citizenship. Follow Constantino's progress. I took a short trip to Montgomery a couple of weeks ago. I wanted to see the city that was both the first capital of the Confederacy and arguably the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement. I wanted to pay homage to one of my heroes, Rosa Parks, and wa... 

Go Ahead: Love Television Today

How much should we love what’s on TV? A panel of critics, producers, and television writers agreed that a lot of shows today are excellent and that viewers have more choices than ever. But they didn’t reach consensus on much else. Instead, in front of a crowd at the Grand Avenue MOCA, at an event co-presented with Occidental College, they cheerfully locked horns. Moderator Kim Masters, host of KCRW’s The Business and editor-at-large at The Hollywood Reporter, opened the evening by a... 

Is This the Golden Age of Television?

We hate it and we love it. Television is worse than ever and better than ever. Most of us can reel off the names of ten shows that we consider brilliant. Many of us can do the same for ten shows that are abominable. So what’s really happening out there in our culture—are the forces of good TV triumphing, or are they losing to the forces of garbage? It’s not always easy to tell. In advance of "Is This the Golden Age of Television?", a Zócalo event, we asked several television mavens to... 

The New American City

In Squaring Off, Zócalo invites authors into the public square to answer five questions about the essence of their books. For this round, we pose questions to George Washington University urban historian Suleiman Osman, author of The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn: Gentrification and the Search for Authenticity in Postwar New York. Osman’s history of “Brownstone Brooklyn” chronicles the transformation of blighted industrial neighborhoods into middle-class bastions of a mid-20th-... 

Civil Rights Are Yesterday

by Richard Thompson Ford When I was a child growing up in the 1970s, I learned to revere Martin Luther King Jr. and the power of civil rights. Many of us felt that a society that respected the civil rights of all Americans would inevitably become more just and equal. Racial divisions, irrational prejudice, and social injustice would quickly yield to the blind justice of the law. It didn’t work out that way. Not only did civil rights laws prove unable to redress many racial inequaliti... 

Is Philanthropy Too Powerful?

Philanthropy has a good name, but it doesn’t always make friends. Every foundation has its own mission, and these missions can be in conflict with one another. They can also, in the opinions of critics, play too large a role in democracy, usurping the power of the state and the ordinary citizen. In advance of “Is Philanthropy Too Powerful?”, a Zócalo event, several close observers of philanthropy offer their views on the same question. Not necessarily—but foundations should scru... 

Everything in Moderation, Except Moderation

In Squaring Off, Zócalo invites authors into the public square to answer five questions about the essence of their books. For this round, we pose questions to Brooklyn College economist Robert Cherry, co-author of Moving Working Families Forward: Third Way Policies That Can Work. Cherry and co-author Robert Lerman argue that “the Third Way”—an intermediate position between Republicans and Democrats—holds the answer to a lot of America’s political dysfunction. Based on stud... 

Democratizing Discovery

In Squaring Off, Zócalo invites authors into the public square to answer five questions about the essence of their books. For this round, we pose questions to historian Michael Nielsen, author of Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science. Science has traditionally been a field of competition and secrecy, where research is guarded from rivals at all costs. But the Internet is revolutionizing the process by which discoveries are made. Nielsen explores this transformation and ... 

How the West Won

In Squaring Off, Zócalo invites authors into the public square to answer five questions about the essence of their books. For this round, we pose questions to historian Niall Ferguson, author of Civilization: The West and the Rest. Ferguson tackles the modest topic of “Civilization” over the past five centuries, positing that there were six “killer apps” that allowed “the West” to overtake “the Rest”—competition, science, property rights, medicine, consumerism, and... 

We’ve Got Some Insurance To Sell You

We hear so much about presidential candidates—and so little about life in the states that elect them. In "Beyond the Circus," writers take us off the trail and give us glimpses of politically important places. Today, Iowa. by Jennifer Wilson Hello. My name is Jennifer Wilson. If we were doing this in person, I’d give you a firm handshake and make eye contact. I was brought up in Colfax, Iowa, and my father taught me that this is the proper way to greet people. I have found that he ... 

Street Vendors to the Rescue

In Squaring Off, Zócalo invites authors into the public square to answer five questions about the essence of their books. For this round, we pose questions to journalist Robert Neuwirth, author of Stealth of Nations: The Global Rise of the Informal Economy. As headlines trumpet worldwide financial doom and gloom, Neuwirth brings hope from unlikely corners of Nigeria, Brazil, and China. He reveals how businesses we consider illegitimate—from street vendors to gypsy cab drivers—are pro... 

Toward a New Ethical Science

In Squaring Off, Zócalo invites authors into the public square to answer five questions about the essence of their books. For this round, we pose questions to University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Jonathan D. Moreno, author of The Body Politic: The Battle Over Science in America. Science and ethics have come into conflict for centuries; the tension has only increased with the technological leaps of the last few decades. Drawing on current controversies and history, Moreno suggests that ... 

What Movie Best Captures L.A.?

Hundreds, even thousands, of movies are set in Los Angeles. But do they get Los Angeles right? Most people who live here would say no.  In advance of a Zócalo/Getty Center event that is part of the Pacific Standard Time initiative on how L.A. invented the world, we're taking a moment to laud the exceptions. We asked several notable Angelenos to tell us what movie (other than Chinatown—yes, everyone already knows that one’s good) best captures the reality of Los Angeles. The Movie A... 

A Veteran’s Return

by Peter Smith I’ve been trying for years to write something about my mother’s bench in the waiting room at Union Station in Chicago. The bench where she sat and waited the day my father got home from World War II (his train was late). The bench she began to revisit when, 44 years and nine children later, he died. I’ve been trying to write about the two of them and that moment that day at that bench, but everything keeps sliding out of focus. Nothing holds still long enough for ... 

Where Failure is the New Normal

Steven Brill’s journey into the American public school system began at an epicenter of failure and dysfunction: New York City’s “rubber rooms,” the “temporary reassignment centers” where teachers sat in a sort of purgatory. Judged by the new school administration to be incompetent or abusive, and sometimes even charged with crimes, they couldn’t be in classrooms—but because of state tenure laws and their own contracts, they couldn’t be fired, either. For as long as three... 

Educators, Get Ready to Fight

Everyone knows that schools in the United States have been struggling for years. Expenditures rise, but test scores fall. There are many competing lines of thought about problems and remedies in contemporary education, but only some of these disputes lead to all-out policy battles. And some of these policy battles are more important than others. So, in advance of Steven Brill's visit to Zócalo to discuss the future of America's public schools, we asked education experts what policy battle m... 

Just Add Water, Oil, Food, and Maybe a Solar Panel

Phoenix has over a million inhabitants, and its metropolitan area has over four million inhabitants. That’s a lot of water, a lot of driving, and a lot of air conditioning. How long can a desert community of this sort, dependent on all sorts of imported resources, keep the party going? In advance of “Can Phoenix Become Remotely Green?”, a Zócalo event, several economists and environmentalists offer their thoughts on the potential greenness of Phoenix. Can Phoenix ever be made sustaina... 

New Economy, No Sacrifice

“In a hundred years’ time, if we poll a majority of professional economists, they’ll say, most of them, that Charles Darwin was the founder of our discipline—not Adam Smith.” So said Robert Frank, author of The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good, in an evening talk full of provocative statements that challenged the accuracy of conventional economic wisdom and contemporary political conversation. Among them: that the country can bring in revenues and revive... 

Eleven Nations, Most Under God

The Seal of the United States promises one nation formed from many—e pluribus unum. But journalist Colin Woodard says the reality is different: America is 11 distinct nations. “We never really were one nation,” Woodard, author of American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, told a full house Monday night at Arizona State University’s Washington Center in Washington, DC. Woodard—in a conversation sponsored by the Center for Social Cohes... 

Running for President of 11 Nations

by Colin Woodard Campaigning for president in a continent-spanning nation of more than 300 million people is a daunting task, but it’s made all the more difficult by the profound differences between our cultural regions. What sells to partisan voters in New Hampshire may scare off South Carolinians from the very same party. The political certainties of Mississippi or East Texas are the stuff of controversy in Maine or Western Oregon. Most swing states swing precisely because they are ri... 

Control Yourself, People

In Squaring Off, Zócalo invites authors into the public square to answer five probing questions about the essence of their books. For this round, we pose questions to Roy F. Baumeister, co-author of Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. In a world full of distraction and temptation, self-control can seem like a lost virtue. Baumeister and co-author John Tierney argue that we can take control of our schedules, money, weight, habits, and more by understanding how willpower ... 

Living In A Material World...

Constantino Diaz-Duran is a fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University. He is chronicling his walk from New York to Los Angeles to celebrate his eligibility for American citizenship. Follow Constantino's progress. ...and I am a material guy. I must be. Otherwise, how do you explain the attachment I’ve developed towards, well, stuff? Stuff like my backpack, my walking sticks, my pocket knife, even my notepad; these things have become so important that I feel a c... 

You Think You Hate Aspen?

In Squaring Off, Zócalo invites authors into the public square to answer five probing questions about the essence of their books. For this round, we pose questions to Lisa Sun-Hee Park and David Naguib Pellow, co-authors of The Slums of Aspen: Immigrants vs. the Environment in America's Eden. In 1999, the town of Aspen, Colorado, citing environmental concerns, passed resolutions limiting immigration. Park and Pellow argue that such a policy is characteristic of those who enjoy “environ... 

Whoa, We Have a Black President

Randall Kennedy, Harvard professor of law and author of The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency, had an assignment: to answer whether or not Obama has been erasing the color line. "By color line,” explained Kennedy, “I mean all of the sentiments, instincts, habits of mind, structures that wrongly stymie people because of race. Is Obama erasing that baleful aspect of political culture?" In a word, said Kennedy, yes. But there was a caveat: the “Oba... 

Are You Ready for Some Football?

by Mike Downey January 31, 2016: I can see it now. Super Bowl L. Yep, the big game is turning the big 5-oh. Farmers Field in the heart of Los Angeles is a madhouse. Brett Favre, who came out of retirement in 2012 and 2014, leads the Green Bay Packers out of the tunnel. Mayor Johnson is here, wearing his old Lakers jersey over his suit. Governor Shriver is here, without her ex-husband or any of his many kids. President is here sporting a cheesehead. Justin Timberlake, who turns 35 today,... 

Our Guns Aren’t Going Anywhere—and That’s Okay

In Squaring Off, Zócalo invites authors into the public square to answer five probing questions about the essence of their books. For this round, we pose questions to Adam Winkler, author of Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America. America has been involved in a complex political battle over gun control for decades. In 2008, the landmark case District of Columbia v. Heller invalidated a law banning handguns in the nation’s capitol. Adam Winkler uses that case to arg... 

A Sanctuary for Humans, Part Two

Constantino Diaz-Duran is a fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University. He is chronicling his walk from New York to Los Angeles to celebrate his eligibility for American citizenship. Follow Constantino's progress. This is part two of last week’s post. I should start by apologizing to my readers for the delay. I ran into some problems with my computer and was unable to write. I’m also beginning to realize that I need to rethink my pace in order to be better... 

Don’t Get Hysterical

In Squaring Off, Zócalo invites authors into the public square to answer five probing questions about the essence of their books. For this round, we pose questions to Jay Feldman, author of Manufacturing Hysteria: A History of Scapegoating, Surveillance, and Secrecy in Modern America. The American political system has always been resilient, even in the face of efforts to curb civil liberties. Feldman, author of several books and articles, makes the case for vigilance as a way to preserve... 

Commuting to Drug War’s Stalingrad

by Angela Kocherga Being a war correspondent has its downsides. I’ve seen a headless body left hanging from an overpass at dawn, and covered several mass murders. At a drug rehab center I stood outside the tiny building where 17 people had been massacred on a sidewalk that was drenched in blood. I’ve talked to too many grieving victims of senseless violence, including parents of slaughtered children, and children of slaughtered parents. It all remains horrifying, trust me. I realiz... 

Step Away From the Pump

In Squaring Off, Zócalo invites authors into the public square to answer five probing questions about the essence of their books. For this round, we pose questions to Martin Cheek, co-author of Clean Energy Nation: Freeing America from the Tyranny of Fossil Fuels. According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), around 84 percent of U.S. energy comes from fossil fuels. Yet that nonrenewable energy supply is rapidly depleting, and one day it could all run out. Add steadily ris... 

Maverick's Surf Point

by Mark Kreidler One of the most magical things about the Maverick’s surf point – or perhaps it’s simply the most intriguing – is that you can’t usually see it, not even if you know exactly what you are looking for, which most of us don’t. You stand on the bluff above the water just north of Half Moon Bay in Northern California, and you hunker down in the chilled winter breeze blowing in off the Pacific, and at some point you crane your neck and stare perhaps half a mile out t... 

Confronting Franticism

Constantino Diaz-Duran is a fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University. He is chronicling his walk from New York to Los Angeles to celebrate his eligibility for American citizenship. Follow Constantino's progress. I dumped half the contents of my backpack, and I’m speed-walking (well, you know...) my way to Washington, DC. I’ve fallen behind schedule, and I’m trying to make up time. “Walk” I say to myself. “Don’t take your phone out to take a pic... 

Leave Leave It to Beaver to Beaver

In Squaring Off, Zócalo invites authors into the public square to answer five probing questions about the essence of their books. For this round, we pose questions to Judith Stacey, author of Unhitched: Love, Marriage, and Family Values from West Hollywood to Western China. Last weekend, hundreds of gay and lesbian couples all over New York were finally able to say “I do,” but they were only one example of how understandings of marriage and family have changed. In Unhitched, Stacey p... 

Try On My Gaga Goggles

In Squaring Off, Zócalo invites authors into the public square to answer five probing questions about the essence of their books. For this round, we pose questions to Jonnie Hughes, author of On the Origin of Tepees: How Human Culture Evolves. While the rules of natural selection apply to the behaviors of all living things, scientists have long debated how natural selection has influenced the evolution of human culture. Award-winning writer and documentary filmmaker Jonnie Hughes venture... 

Level Playing Field?

by Susan Ware Boston has a reputation – well-deserved – as a sports town whose residents are notorious for organizing their lives around the schedules of the Red Sox, the Celtics, the Patriots, and the Bruins, especially during post-season play. But it was definitely a first for me last week when I heard an older gentleman say to the owner of a local specialty shop that he needed to rush home to watch the women's soccer match. At first this seemingly casual remark didn't sink in, b... 

The Citizenship Question

Constantino Diaz-Duran is a fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University. He is chronicling his walk from New York to Los Angeles to celebrate his eligibility for American citizenship. Follow Constantino's progress. One question people keep asking me is how exactly the citizenship process works in the United States.  Most people know about the green card, for instance, but not really what it means, or how it’s different from citizenship. I came to the U.S.... 

New Jersey Views

Constantino Diaz-Duran is a fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University. He is chronicling his walk from New York to Los Angeles to celebrate his eligibility for American citizenship. Follow Constantino's progress. A United Methodist Church in the town of Clinton. Old Saint Mary Cemetery, Clinton, N.J. Old Saint Mary Cemetery, Clinton, N.J. The South Branch of the Raritan River, which flows through the town of Clinton. Main Street, Clinto... 

Don't Be Silly

In Squaring Off, Zócalo invites authors into the public square to answer five probing questions about the essence of their books. For this round, we pose questions to Lee Siegel, author of Are You Serious?: How to Be True and Get Real in the Age of Silly. Today, with the same reality shows recycling through networks, unlikely political candidates running for office and outrageous headlines such as “Kim Kardashian’s Butt: Is It Real?” (Yes, that is an actual headline), it’s hard t... 

Tortillas and Tough Tasks

Constantino Diaz-Duran is a fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University. He is chronicling his walk from New York to Los Angeles to celebrate his eligibility for American citizenship. Follow Constantino's progress. I can’t remember the last time I got nostalgic about Guatemala. But a home-cooked meal is always welcome, no matter where the recipe’s origin. And there is one thing about Guatemalan food I love: tortillas. Guatemalan tortillas are different from ... 

Life in the 'Burbs

Constantino Diaz-Duran is a fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University. He is chronicling his walk from New York to Los Angeles to celebrate his eligibility for American citizenship. Follow Constantino's progress. Ever heard of your hip flexors? Well, I heard from them during my first two days of walking, and they were mad. When you carry a heavy backpack for a long stretch of time, you’re supposed to rest it on your hip, rather than your shoulders. Your lowe... 

A Free Meal and a New Friend

Constantino Diaz-Duran is a fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University. He is chronicling his walk from New York to Los Angeles to celebrate his eligibility for American citizenship. Follow Constantino's progress. I’m sitting at Parisi Deli in Hackensack, N.J. on the second day of my journey. It’s been just a little over 24 hours since I hit the road, and I’ve already run into my first setback and met some kind and friendly strangers. I decided to save... 

A Rocky Start

Constantino Diaz-Duran is a fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University. He is chronicling his walk from New York to Los Angeles to celebrate his eligibility for American citizenship. Follow Constantino's progress. I made it to Hackensack, ready to fall into bed. When I got to the motel where I had a reservation, I found it closed. Due to -- get this -- an unsafe structure. A clerk came out to talk to me and said it closed four months ago because of a fire. They... 

The Journey Begins

Constantino Diaz-Duran is a fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University. He is chronicling his walk from New York to Los Angeles to celebrate his eligibility for American citizenship. Below he explains why. Follow Constantino's progress. I came to this country a decade ago from Guatemala, full of aspirations – none greater than being able to someday call myself an American. It has been a blessing to reside legally in this great country, but now I am eligible for... 

The Next Dodgers Owner

by Jordan Wallens Whitey Bulger has been dispatched back east, and the run of another Boston conman in Los Angeles – Dodgers owner Frank McCourt – appears to be nearing its own endgame. So what’s next in the Dodgers’ tedious ownership saga? The answer, my friend, is staring us in the mirror. That’s right, look in the mirror. You and I, Dodgers fans, should be the next team owners. Major League Baseball has strict rules against such public ownership, but that hasn’t s... 

Zócalo Public Square Poetry Prize

The Zócalo Public Square Poetry Prize is awarded annually to the U.S. poet whose poem best evokes a connection to place. “Place” may be interpreted by the poet as a place of historical, cultural, political or personal importance; it may be a literal, imaginary or metaphorical landscape. We are looking for one poem that offers our readers a fresh, original and meaningful take on the topic. Like everything else we feature, we will most be on the lookout for that rare combination of bri... 

Keeping the United States United

  Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor opened a conference on social cohesion in the United States by offering up the method of bringing people together she used as majority leader of the Arizona State Senate in the 1970s. After work, she said, "I’d get everybody together and cook Mexican food, and we’d sit around outside and eat Mexican food and drink beer and make friends with each other. That worked." So, the question, she continued, is “how can we as a na... 

Christina Sánchez

by Andrés Martinez What is it about the moment you arrive at your first college dorm room and meet your roommates while unpacking your stuff? That’s a scene seared in most people’s memory, the fodder of countless movies and novels to shorthand life’s most exciting, but often wrenching, transitions. For Christina Sánchez, South L.A. native and graduate of venerable Immaculate Heart High in Los Feliz, that moment, her landing at Yale, was a revelation. Sánchez vividly recalls... 

Braving the Silence

by Meghan O'Rourke --Reviewed by Marc Jaffee A memoir does not instruct. It searches. In 2008, Meghan O'Rourke's mother died of cancer, at the age of fifty-five. In The Long Goodbye, a remarkable, probing chronicle of grief, O'Rourke not only articulates the experience of her mother's illness and death but speaks of the impossibility of addressing something so difficult, sad, and strange. "If the conditions of grief are nearly universal, its transactions are exquisitely personal,"... 

Who is Mexico?

As Mexico struggles with a drug trafficking epidemic, high poverty rates and other quality of life issues, former foreign minister Jorge Castañeda sees a “disconnect between Mexico’s national character and its current reality.” In his new book, Mañana Forever, Castañeda describes the contradictions inherent in modern-day Mexico and explores potential future outcomes. Castañeda visits Zócalo on June 3 to discuss the Mexico paradox and where the country is headed. Few c... 

Your Results May Vary

In Squaring Off, Zócalo invites authors into the public square to answer five probing questions about the essence of their books. For this round, we pose questions to Eli Pariser, author of The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding From You. Surfing the Internet has become a highly personalized experience, with sites like Facebook and Google tailoring what you see based on troves of data they’ve collected about you. Pariser, the former CEO of MoveOn.org, argues that personalizatio... 

Peace, Security and Freedom

A joint project of the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations and Zócalo Public Square Rules of the Game: Detention, Deportation, and Disappearance by Asim Quereshi As leading advocates of human rights, the United States and Britain have found themselves in an uncomfortable spotlight thanks to numerous violations of human rights and legal standards perpetrated during the war on terror. Asim Quereshi’s book uses the voices of victims of torture and unlawful detention t... 

Large Families

by Dorothy Barresi Late August, no breeze rifling its feathers, and still the robin turned and truned in sunlight. By the time we found it, head lolled, hung from a low branch, its eyes were fastened shut with lice. The red bandanna of a throat was empty. I was eleven then but knew freak accidents when I saw them. Higher in the black walnut tree was a nest half built, stitched with kite tails and abandoned string,                  ... 

We're All Birthers Now

by Joe Mathews President Obama’s release of his birth certificate, to answer unfounded suspicions about his place of birth, was widely described as an extraordinary act. It wasn’t. Unreasonable demands for birth records are becoming a routine feature of American life. We like to think that, as Americans, the circumstances of our birth don’t matter. But increasingly we’re acting as if the circumstances of our neighbor’s birth sure do matter – we’ve become obsessed ... 

34

by Jane Miller The place may be clean and tidy and have for furniture only a mat if there are windows if they are large so much the better if there's a flower or a picture that's special if there is a teacher there may be respite from sorrow if there is rain remember the occasion of the double rainbow if there is a marriage there may be need of a goat about beauty the old ones could not have forseen if there is love think on these things honey nuts and ... 

No News is Good News

Economist Charles Kenny began his lecture at the Goethe-Institut by explaining the major problem with his own new book. "It's about exciting stuff that doesn't happen. The book is about how much more frequently around the world nothing much is going on. Nobody starves, nobody gets sick, nobody gets shot, and nobody dies.” But that’s exactly the point, said Kenny, a senior economist at the World Bank and senior fellow at the Center for Global Development whose book is called Getting... 

Birthmark

by Lynne Thompson No matter where I’m living, I will always be three-fifths Mississippi where memory's just one long train whistle. Whether I bask in moon-glow or cringe in a hornet's nest, I’m fastened to the backs of blacks living in hard, hard houses, up from tobacco fields. In America's windows, a cross is the favored device though from my perilous perch I cherish old photographs of bloodlines and salt wounds that won’t fade. I place my calluses on the cold pa... 

Gang of 36

Bringing Up Oscar: The Story of the Men and Women Who Founded the Academy by Debra Ann Pawlak --Reviewed by Ellen O'Connell In January 1927, Louis B. Mayer, head of MGM Studios, invited 35 other film industry giants to Los Angeles’ Ambassador Hotel to discuss an idea. Mayer’s plan to create a unified body for the film business to “resolve disputes, discuss industry-wide challenges and promote the film community’s positive side” was favorably received. As a result, the 34... 

Joseph Nye

Joseph Nye is a political scientist at Harvard who is considered one of the most influential scholars on American foreign policy. He created the neoliberalism school of international relations, pioneered the concept of "soft power" and served in the Carter and Clinton administrations. Before visiting Zócalo to discuss how global power structures have changed, he answered a few questions in the Green Room. Q. What was the last great book you read? A. There have been lots of books t... 

Friend v. Friend

Friend v. Friend: The Transformation of Friendship – And What the Law Has to Do With It by Ethan K. Leib Reviewed by Joe Mathews Ethan J. Leib’s brilliant new book, Friend v. Friend, is a small volume (fewer than 200 pages) that poses a big unexplored question: what is the best way for the law and public policy to treat friendship? The issue couldn’t be more relevant today. In the era of Facebook, friendship has become like water in Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner... 

My Gay Starbucks

by Larry Buhl Every city has a gay epicenter: Market and 18th in San Francisco, Halsted and Roscoe in Chicago. In Akron, Ohio, where I grew up, it was probably near the rack of parachute pants in the Chess King store at Belden Village Mall. In Los Angeles, at least at 9 o'clock on weekend mornings, it’s the Starbucks at Santa Monica and Westmount Drive. I’ve been going here at least two days a week since around 1998. The baristas know me by my order. “Short drip?” they chirp be... 

Mariposa de la Muerte

by Louise Mathias Pupae were placed in the mouths of the victims. With my back against the wall I can see this for what it is— the pursuit of velvet. Louise Mathias is the author of Lark Apprentice, which won the New Issues Poetry Prize, and The Traps, forthcoming from Four Way Books. She splits her time between the wilds of Joshua Tree, California, and the wilds of Northern Indiana. *Photo courtesy of lostinfog. 

Why Does Gandhi Still Matter?

The meaning of Gandhi has been hotly debated ever since his death, but one thing is certain: his pioneering concept of satyagraha, or nonviolence, continues to inspire activists and protesters today. Joseph Lelyveld’s new biography, Great Soul, has ignited controversy over Gandhi’s human side, so in advance of Lelyveld’s appearance at Zócalo on April 12, we asked two experts to evaluate his life and legacy. Let’s Evaluate Him on His Ideas, Not His Sex Life I read Lelyveld's ... 

An Unwelcome Visitor

People err in thinking of Gandhi exclusively in the context of the Indian independence movement, Joseph Lelyveld argues. In fact, it was in South Africa that he "formed the persona he would inhabit in India in the final thirty-three years of his life," Lelyveld writes in his new book, Great Soul: Mahatma Ghandi and His Struggle With India. Lelyveld visits Zócalo on April 12 to discuss Ghandi's complicated relationship with both nations, as well as almost everyone in his life. It was ... 

Hiking Skyward

by Colette Labouff Atkinson It started with heartache. I made the climb with one good friend who knew me to be sad. It was July; Cleveland Sage had flowered. We walked up and up because we thought that we could make it. We were slow: me, my friend, and my tired dog. We did this often, on weekends and after work. We walked through the dirt and past-prime blossoms, the brown of what to say. It didn't seem anything was ahead. Months passed and grew green. We'd meet off Laguna Canyon Road -- ... 

The Brunch

by Brian Brodeur It is much the way you said it would be, the world without you. After the decision not to make a fuss, after the mass and limo ride home for a change of clothes, we walk through the pristine doors of the new Ramada Inn: pitchers of ice water and OJ swaddled in cloth napkins, rhubarb salad bleeding on a silver tray. You’d wanted to know—as we all want to know—the details that survive you: whether or not your ex-wife would show, which maverick relative... 

From Charlie Chan to The Joy Luck Club

Amy Tan’s seminal 1989 novel The Joy Luck Club was the first glimpse many Americans had into the Chinese American experience, but history professor Mae Ngai says the challenge of translating that experience goes far beyond the book. Scholars must “think about how Chinese Americans have been represented in American literary and popular culture over the years and think about what that has meant and how it is changing,” Ngai said in her opening remarks during a panel about the creation... 

The Place Where Everything Changes

Humans have become a "wholly urban species," journalist Doug Saunders writes in his new book, Arrival City: The Final Migration and Our Next World. As a result of this massive population shift, cities are beginning to change dramatically, yet policymakers aren't paying attention. Saunders visits Zócalo on April 7 to discuss "the neighborhoods where the transition from poverty occurs, where the next middle class is forged, where the next generation’s dreams, movements, and governments are ... 

The Lovers

by Timothy Liu One is upstairs typing, the other downstairs reading, two lovers separated by a single floor. A simple sentence. The closest they will get is in that moment when one stops the way the other also stops, exchanging places with each other without ever getting up— Timothy Liu is the author of eight books of poems, most recently Polytheogamy and Bending the Mind Around the Dream's Blown Fuse. He lives in Manhattan. *Photo courtesy of ales... 

James Gleick

James Gleick’s first book, Chaos, a National Book Award finalist, has been translated into twenty-five languages. His best-selling biographies, Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman and Isaac Newton, were short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize. Before reading from his latest work, The Information, he joined us in the Green Room for a few questions. Q. What do you find beautiful? A. Chaos. Q. Describe yourself in 5 words or fewer. A. Person. Q. What’s your favorite techn... 

They Discovered the World (Or Not)

Irresistible North: From Venice to Greenland on the Trail of the Zen Brothers by Andrea di Robilant --Reviewed by Ellen O'Connell Andrea di Robilant’s new book Irresistible North opens with a bold claim: maybe, just maybe, two Venetian brothers named Nicoló and Antonio Zen traveled to parts of the new world in the 1380s, more than a century before Columbus. The tale of the Zens’ adventure was published by a descendant named Nicoló the younger in 1558 and served as th... 

Feed

by Lance Larsen Feed the road your best intentions, it demands not sandal or boot but blistered foot. Feed time a thank you, watch it dice your life into hours and hang them on a calendar. Feed awe to the sky, the only check it knows how to cash gleams cerulean blue. This craving never stops. The creek rolls stones, stones beg audience of the moon, moon blesses smoldering fire, fire wants nothing but to lick nearby grass, grass writes a contract, green on top, fine pri... 

Not Hard, Not Soft, But Just Right

Neither hard power nor soft power will be the key to winning the race for prosperity or global influence tomorrow. Rather, says, Joseph S. Nye Jr., author of The Future of Power, successful nations will deploy "smart power." Nye visits Zócalo to discuss his new book on March 29. In his inaugural address in 2009, President Barack Obama stated that "our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tem... 

Take Me Out to the Ballgame

by Joe Mathews Baseball, like America, is based on a lie: that the past doesn't hold us back; that the old ties and old bonds can be cast away; that each new season offers a fresh opportunity for all contestants to triumph. Baseball’s Opening Day might be the Christmas of this American myth of renewal. On most Opening Days, fans and announcers speak the shiny optimism that all things are possible, that the pitiful Pittsburgh Pirates and the rich and talented Boston Red Sox have the s... 

Gather Ye Chimps While Ye May

The Ragged Edge of the World: Encounters at the Frontier Where Modernity, Wildlands, and Indigenous People Meet by Eugene Linden --Reviewed by Catherine Bailey Not long after registering as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War, recent college graduate Eugene Linden convinced a local newspaper to send him on assignment to the front lines. Over a few harrowing weeks of interviews, braving open fire, fever, and gastrointestinal distress, Linden earned his stripes as a journalist... 

Heart and Home

by Sara Mengesha I was 9 years old when I discovered that Saudi Arabia, where I had lived since birth, wasn't a place where I'd be allowed to stay. My mother and father were born in Eritrea and Ethiopia, respectively, and they met in Sudan over thirty years ago. Later, they moved to Riyadh, where my siblings and I were born. My father worked as an engineer and an architect, my mother as a registered nurse. Saudi Arabia has strict naturalization laws. Foreign workers are granted iqamas... 

Not Evil. Yet.

The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry) By Siva Vaidhyanathan --Reviewed by Jake de Grazia Google has taken a colossal tangle of sometimes-useful information (the Internet) and organized it for us. We, accordingly, love Google. For the search tool that does that magical organizing. For Gmail and Google Maps. For Google Documents and Google Analytics. And for the dozens of other free services Google provides. In Siva Vaidhyanathan's words, "Google puts previ... 

What Adolf Learned from Josef

Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder --Reviewed by Adam Fleisher Bloodlands, indeed. Starting with Stalin’s reign of terror and famine in the Ukraine in 1932—which was followed by systematic killings of national minorities, prisoners of war, and Europe’s Jews—Germany and the Soviet Union murdered at least 14 million noncombatants as a matter of deliberate state policy in the regions east of the Molotov-Ribbentrop line, the area Timothy Snyder, a r... 

Those Kinky Victorians

Pleasure Bound: Victorian Sex Rebels and the New Eroticism By Deborah Lutz --Reviewed by Catherine E. Bailey Nineteenth century England was a hotbed of social change and intellectual discourse. Charles Darwin presented his Origin of Species, Charles Lyell demonstrated the deep antiquity of the planet and mechanized factories transformed the workforce, polluted the Thames, and spewed out dark clouds that hung low over the city of London. Swimming in this sea of uncertainty, many mi... 

Books in Brief

A joint project of the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations and Zócalo Public Square Borderlines and Borderlands: Political Oddities at the Edge of the Nation-State by Alexander C. Diener and Joshua Hagen When the only thing demarcating the end of one tract of land and the start of another is a highway sign, it is easy to regard such a “border” as arbitrary. Diener and Hagen argue that even the most iconic international borders – from the Strait of Gibraltar to the �... 

Stop Complaining, There Was Always TMI

The word “bit” was used as a term of measuring information in 1948, coined by 32-year-old mathematician and engineer Claude Shannon in The Bell System Technical Journal. "The bit now joined the inch, the pound, the quart and the minute as a determinate quantity…as though there were such a thing, measurable and quantifiable as information," James Gleick read from the prologue of his book The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood. Facing a crowd at the Petersen Automotive Museum i... 

Can There Really Be TMI?

Information rules all of our lives. In fact, DNA, the building block of our bodies, is "the quintessential information molecule," writes journalist James Gleick in his new book, The Information: A Theory, a History, a Flood. Yet all this information can be overwhelming and difficult to use effectively. In advance of Gleick’s appearance at Zócalo on March 15, we asked experts whether more information is always a good thing. More is More: You Can’t Have TMI Everything we know and ... 

My Classmate Saif Qaddafi

by Doug Flahaut Classes with Saif "Hi. My name is Saif. I'm from Libya." That's how he introduced himself to his fellow graduate students during our first seminar at the London School of Economics and Political Science. We were all enrolled in the political philosophy program. Saif was better dressed and a little older-looking than most of us, but he didn't otherwise stand out. LSE is a cosmopolitan school that attracts all sorts of students--even the sons of erratic North African st... 

Brooklyn's Nanny Diaries

Raising Brooklyn: Nannies, Childcare, and Caribbeans Creating Community by Tamara Mose Brown --Reviewed by Catherine Bailey For many work-at-home parents in the gentrified neighborhoods of Brooklyn, the workday begins when the nanny comes to collect the children, bundling them off to the park and out from underfoot. The nanny's workday typically begins much earlier. She may rise before sunup to prepare food for her own children and arrange their transportation to school or daycare b... 

See, Writing Is Rewarding

The Zócalo Public Square High School Essay Contest was made possible by the generous support of Southern California Gas Company. When Zócalo Public Square invited Los Angeles-area high school seniors to submit essays on the most powerful way to make their communities stronger, we received entries from dozens of schools across the region. Rodney Savannah's winning essay, about the challenges he's faced growing up with a single mother in a crime-ridden area of south Los Angeles, stood out... 

The Proud Inventor of Judicial Activism

Justice Brennan: Liberal Champion by Seth Stern and Stephen Wermiel --Reviewed by Adam Fleisher William Brennan was a relatively obscure judge on New Jersey's highest court when President Eisenhower nominated the Democrat to the Supreme Court. The nomination was generally well received on both sides of the aisle. But Brennan had written some opinions that 'might have given a conservative Republican pause," in the foreboding words of Seth Stern and Stephen Wermeil. And indeed, from... 

An Extended Stay With the Taliban

A Rope and a Prayer: A Kidnapping from Two Sides by David Rhode and Kristen Mulvihill --Reviewed by Ellen O'Connell In late 2008, New York Times reporter David Rohde went to meet with a Taliban commander. Rohde was writing a book about the faltering effort by the United States to bring stability to Afghanistan. When the reporter arrived at the purported interview site, however, he was kidnapped. For the next seven months, Rohde lived in captivity, getting moved from one safe house... 

Bringing Up Baby

Good Stuff: A Reminiscence of My Father Cary Grant by Jennifer Grant --Reviewed by Catherine Bailey Cary Grant retired from the silver screen at the age of 62, the year his daughter, Jennifer, was born. Given the generation gap that separated father from daughter, some degree of culture clash was inevitable (Cary could not abide Jennifer's 70s pop polluting the airwaves inside his Cadillac, for instance), but the two possessed kindred spirits, and their respective zeitgeists stirr... 

You May Have Already Won $5000

The First Annual Zócalo Public Square Book Prize was made possible by the generous support of Southern California Gas Company. Last April, Zócalo Public Square announced the launch of an annual book prize, to be awarded to the book that most effectively—and most creatively, strikingly, or enjoyably—enhances our understanding of community. The only firm rules about the sort of entries that could be submitted were these: the book had to be non-fiction, U.S.-based, and publ... 

Discord in Dakota

The Lakotas and the Black Hills: The Struggle For Sacred Ground by Jeffrey Ostler --Reviewed by Catherine Bailey After years of negotiating broken treaties with shiny-pated bureaucrats from Washington, the nineteenth century Lakota eventually came to equate bald-headedness with mendacity. In The Lakotas and the Black Hills, Jeffrey Ostler illuminates the cultural misunderstandings and outright chicanery that pushed the Lakotas out of their ancestral Black Hills in South Dakota. Hi... 

Boobs

by Sunday Avery I really can’t help thinking about boobs, They’re so close to my desk, where I write, sitting there, trying to be ignored, so I won’t embarrass myself and devote a poem to them. And why should we pretend? Lots of things look like boobs a little bit. Like two Cheerios. Or the Deathstar. My mom got a boob-job once, and it was pretty spectacular. Anyways, if you are wondering about mine (and I wouldn’t blame you) They’re pretty good, sort o... 

Qingyun Ma

Qingyun Ma founded the Shanghai architectural firm MADA s.p.a.m. (strategy, planning, architecture and media) in 1996, and is currently the Dean of the USC School of Architecture. Before joining a panel at the Getty to discuss “the New China” and influences of the Cultural Revolution, he answered a few questions in the Green Room. Q. What teacher or professor changed your life? A. My math teacher in high school. I don’t even remember his name. Q. What talent do you wish yo... 

ASTRO-GYMNASTICS

by Piet Hein Go on a starlit night, stand on your head, leave your feet dangling outwards into space, and let the starry firmament you tread be, for the moment, your elected base. Feel Earth's colossal weight of ice and granite, of molten magma, water, iron, and lead; and briefly hold this strangely solid planet balanced upon your strangely solid head. Buy the book here. *Photo courtesy of Anton Bielousov. 

Savage Season

Freedom Summer: The Savage Season That Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy by Bruce Watson --Reviewed by Ellen O'Connell By late May 1964, more than 700 students had gathered in Oxford, Ohio, to undergo training before descending on Mississippi for the summer. These students were part of a powerful political movement that was gaining momentum, and they wanted to be on the side of justice rather than the law. They were going to the south to fight against segregation,... 

Melissa Chiu

Melissa Chiu is the Museum Director and Curator for Contemporary Asian and Asian-American art at the Asia Society in New York. Before moderating a panel at the Getty to discuss "the New China" and influences of the Cultural Revolution, she answered a few questions in the Green Room. Q. If you could spend a night in any museum, which would it be? A. The Museum of Natural History in New York. Q. What teacher or professor changed your life? A. My high school history teacher. Q... 

I'd Like to Thank the Academy...

by Gautam Dutta Who should prevail in a popularity contest featuring several choices? Should one measure depth or breadth of support? Consider the classic “What movie should we see?” conundrum. Five guys want to go see a movie, two of them want to see Black Swan, but the other three say that’s the last movie they’d ever want to see. Trouble is, they’ve each offered up a different first choice (though they can all agree on an alternative). Do they go see Black... 

The Other Victims of 9/11

City of Dust by Anthony DePalma --Reviewed by Adam Fleisher When the twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed and disintegrated on September 11, 2001, a cloud of dust and ash billowed through the streets of lower Manhattan and into Brooklyn. Despite the fumes emanating from the site, authorities in New York and the federal government insisted there was no serious danger to the surrounding population, and they also downplayed--or at least voiced minimal concern about--the r... 

Questions Of Travel

by Elizabeth Bishop There are too many waterfalls here; the crowded streams hurry too rapidly down to the sea, and the pressure of so many clouds on the mountaintops makes them spill over the sides in soft slow-motion, turning to waterfalls under our very eyes. --For if those streaks, those mile-long, shiny, tearstains, aren't waterfalls yet, in a quick age or so, as ages go here, they probably will be. But if the streams and clouds keep travelling, travelling, the mountains l... 

On “Darb,” the Letter “A,” and, of Course, "Corn"

One Word: Contemporary Writers on the Words They Love or Loathe Edited by Molly McQuade --Reviewed by Ellen O'Connell A couple of years ago, sixty-six authors were asked to write a short meditation on what one word means the most to them, and why. The result, edited by Molly McQuade, is One Word, a collection of slang, poetry, rants, one-line zingers, etymological reflections, and grammar lessons. This is a quick read, something to pick up and read in short bursts rather than ... 

Separation

by W.S. Merwin Your absence has gone through me Like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color. From The Second Book of Four Poems. Buy the book: Skylight Books, Powell's, Amazon *Photo courtesy of Ben (Falcifer). 

Jane McGonigal

Jane McGonigal is a world-renowned game designer. Before joining Ze Frank to discuss her new book, Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, she joined us for our “In The Green Room” Q&A. Q. Did you get into trouble as a child? A. Rarely, yes. My biggest getting into trouble [moment] was throwing someone else’s sneakers out the bus window. Q. What literary character do you identify with? A. Sisyphus. Q. What was your favorite video game... 

Robert Kurzban

Robert Kurzban is a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Why Everyone (Else) is a Hypocrite. Before taking the stage to speak about humans and behavioral inconsistency, he sat down for our "In The Green Room" Q&A. Q. What was your first car? A. A Nissan Sentra. It was white, SE model, with a fancy spoiler on the back. Q. Who do you consider the biggest hypocrite, real or fictional? A. Spitzer, former Governor from New York. Q. What’s your favorite c... 

Ousting Mubarak, from Westwood

by Colin Kielty John Scott-Railton is a doctoral student at UCLA’s School of Public Affairs—where he spends virtually all of his spare time running a Twitter page dedicated to airing voices from the protests that broke out across Egypt on January 25th. Using a Blackberry and his laptop microphone, Railton has been relaying text, audio, and video messages from Egyptians on the ground to audiences both at home and abroad. Zócalo caught up with Railton between tweets to chat about the... 

Icy Avian Delight

Fraser's Penguins: A Journey to the Future in Antarctica by Fen Montaigne --Reviewed by Jake de Grazia As its title suggests, Fraser's Penguins is a book about penguins. It's also a book about krill, sea ice, climate change, and biologist Bill Fraser, who has been studying polar ecosystems for over 35 years. More than anything, though, Fraser's Penguins is a book about the chilling (and melting) beauty of Antarctica. Fraser's Penguins weaves history, ornithology, geography, m... 

How Will Video Games Change the Way We Work?

Today, games and reality are becoming ever more intertwined. Many game designers believe that some of the world's biggest problems might be solved by harnessing the gaming spirit within all of us. At the very least, games have the potential to change how we make a living. Zócalo asked five experts how games will affect affect the way we work in the years ahead. Games can be a huge help—but have huge limitations Reality is Broken makes a strong case for applying the lessons of v... 

You Are A Hypocrite

Here’s the exciting thing about brains: “The same idea in your head can be represented along with its contradiction.” At least that’s what fascinates Robert Kurzban, author of Why Everyone (Else) is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind. Kurzban, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, paced the stage and explained the scientific causes of hypocricy to a politically attuned crowd at the Actor’s Gang in Culver City. Built for Inconsistency Kurzban explain... 

Damascus, A Domino Too Far?

by Katherine Zoepf It’s so very tempting to embrace the idea that this could be the Middle East’s 1989 – and by that I mean the 1989 experienced in Eastern Europe, not Beijing. Tunisia begets Egypt; Egypt begets... Tempting, but not quite convincing. The Middle East dominoes are all so different, as if plucked from separate sets. Mubarak’s Egypt is a squishy sort of authoritarianism, an ethnically cohesive nation at peace with its neighbors and host to civil society... 

Resistance is Utile

A Privilege to Die: Inside Hezbollah's Legions and Their Endless War Against Israel by Thanassis Cambanis --Reviewed by Adam Fleisher It cannot be pleasant to have Hezbollah as your enemy. Led by the charismatic Hassan Nasrallah, who has cultivated something of a cult of personality, the organization has clear goals (the takeover of Lebanon and perpetual war with Israel) that enjoy broad support from the Shia of southern Lebanon and sympathetic neighboring regimes. Its legions a... 

Ozymandias

In honor of the marchers in Cairo and Alexandria. by Percy Bysshe Shelley I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things. The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these wo... 

Departmental

In memory of Milton Levine, inventor of the Ant Farm toy, who died on January 16th in Thousand Oaks at age 97. by Robert Frost An ant on the tablecloth Ran into a dormant moth Of many times his size. He showed not the least surprise. His business wasn't with such. He gave it scarcely a touch, And was off on his duty run. Yet if he encountered one Of the hive's enquiry squad Whose work is to find out God And the nature of time and space, He would put him onto the case. Ant... 

The Purpose of Science Fiction

by Robert J. Sawyer Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, is generally considered the first work of science fiction. It explores, in scientific terms, the notion of synthetic life: Dr. Victor Frankenstein studies the chemical breakdown that occurs after death so he can reverse it to animate nonliving matter. Like so many other works of science fiction that followed, Shelley's story is a cautionary tale: it raises profound questions about who should have the rig... 

The Invention of Chinese America

Columbia professor Mae Ngai is the author of several books. Her most recent work, The Lucky Ones: One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese America, explores the saga of the Tape family and three generations of Chinese American immigration brokers. “Everyone needed them, but nobody trusted them,” Ngai said of the family. She visited the Zócalo office to explain the emergence of the Chinese-American middle class in the 19th century and what it meant for future generations o... 

The Costs of Founding a Nation

The title posed by Charles Rappleye's lecture was "How Much Public Debt Can We Endure?" With President Obama's words about taxes and a spending freeze still echoing off the walls in an adjacent room (it was the night of the president's State of Union address), the question couldn’t be more relevant. In order to extract an answer, Rappleye delved deep into American history and into the life of a financier named Robert Morris. “What I can tell you is that debt and finance have b... 

Butchery by the Border

Amexica: War Along the Borderline by Ed Vulliamy —Reviewed by Ellen O'Connell In March of 2010, the Obama administration conceded that the insatiable appetite of Americans for illegal narcotics is at the root of the drug wars along the U.S.-Mexican border.  This was underscored by the US Drug Enforcement Administration’s staggering statistic that 90 percent of drugs entering the United States do so as part of the Mexican drug cartel business.  The trade has given rise to a ne... 

RETNA

RETNA is an artist who has participated in over 30 international exhibitions with works in the public realm since the mid-1990s. This year, he will be featured in the “Art in the Streets” exhibition at MOCA in Los Angeles. Before taking the stage to talk about the effect street art has on city life, he sat down for our "In The Green Room" Q&A. Q. What do you wake up to in the mornings? A. Work. Q. What surprises you the most about your life right now? A. I feel grateful ... 

Aaron Rose

Aaron Rose is an artist, writer, musician, film director and independent curator. He is co-curator of the forthcoming MOCA exhibition on street art and of the exhibition “Beautiful Losers: Contemporary Art & Street Culture.” Before taking the stage to talk about the changing perceptions of street art in mainstream society, he sat down for our "In The Green Room" Q&A. Q. What do you wake up to in the mornings? A. Red eyes. Q. What surprises you the most about your life r... 

Rust as Gold Dust

by Andrés Martinez In a tribute to the National Football League’s nostalgia-tinged, size-doesn’t-matter, redistributive genius, Super Bowl XLV will pit the nation’s 152nd largest metropolitan area against its 22nd largest. Green Bay defeated Chicago yesterday to clinch the National Football Conference; Pittsburgh prevailed against the New York Jets in the AFC Championship. Think about that. In what other contexts could Pittsburgh and New York – not to mention Green Bay and C... 

Guillermo del Toro

Guillermo del Toro is a Mexican-born filmmaker who directed Hellboy, and Cronos, and the Oscar-nominated Pan’s Labyrinth, among other movies. He is known for his love of insects, monsters, and dark places. Before speaking to a packed theater at the Arclight Hollywood, del Toro sat down for Zócalo’s “In The Green Room” Q&A. Q. What’s your favorite book? A. I would say it’s a toss-up between Bleak House by Charles Dickens and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Q. What mu... 

Rethinking Arizona

Arizonans: Only Connect! By Lattie Coor Despite what you might believe as a result of last year’s contentious immigration debate and this month’s horrifying shooting in Tucson, Arizona is not some rogue state populated entirely by crazies. Arizonans, in fact, mostly share the values and aspirations of people in the rest of the country, which is not surprising given that a high proportion of Arizonans have recently migrated from someplace else. That fact does make the state distinct... 

Intelligent Pig

by Christopher Schnieders Went to El Centro with the men in my family down by the Calexico border and the mountains of Mexicali. We woke before four AM, ate cereal, fruit, drank coffee and orange juice. Hunters on opening day. We found a pre-sunrise empty spot that was our choice territory and watched the light arrive. Been hunting all my life and never seen such a mass of birds covering the morning sky. It was beautiful, a hunter's dream and ain't that a bird's nig... 

Telling the Story of Cancer

Writing a biography of cancer -- particularly one that clocks in at 600 pages spanning 4,000 years -- was, as Siddhartha Mukherjee put it, "a little bit mad." But Mukherjee went for it, writing The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, honing in on the stories of patients — those who suffered primitive treatments, or survived thanks to radical advances. Today, he noted, cancer hits one in two American men and one in three American women. “These people are stitched into our h... 

Why Politics is Theater

Jeffrey Alexander, a sociology professor at Yale and co-director of its Center for Cultural Sociology, studies politics, but not with the usual metrics of polls, bills passed, and votes won. Instead, he focuses on "the cultural, the symbolic, the aesthetic, the rhetorical," he said. "When you do this kind of work, and you talk about emotions and images, people often say that you can't talk about the real hard stuff, like power." In The Performance of Politics: Obama's Victory and the Democra... 

Why Journalists Shouldn't Resist Public Funds

by Steve Coll Many journalists are predisposed to believe that government can be part of the solution to plenty of societal ills, but not the one threatening their livelihoods -- the contraction of quality news reporting across the country, and overseas, resulting from the implosion of previously viable business models for such endeavors. As a tribe, journalists abhor the idea that government should enact any new laws or reallocate any federal funding in response to these changes. The aver... 

Misunderstanding a Nationalist Cause

The Uyghurs: Strangers in Their Own Land by Gardner Bovingdon --Reviewed by Angilee Shah The plight of Uyghurs in China entered U.S. consciousness after 9/11. Since 2002, 22 migrant Uyghurs were detained at Guantánamo Bay after being turned over to the United States by bounty hunters in Pakistan. By 2008, the men were no longer considered enemy combatants. Seventeen of them have been released to Switzerland, Palau, Bermuda and Albania. The United States so far has not accepted any of... 

Tracking Shot

by Marc McKee Whose anti-aircraft battle station this is I think I know, the deliquescing snow falling like the tears of a floating motorcade.  Night builds its walls:  outside its badminton nets, inside its jury boxes full of foxglove and ash.  It is all right, says the sunlight stapled to the floor but was I not just in an anti-aircraft battle station and then suddenly in an empty courtroom with lickably-named flowers sitting at night in the place where citizens once f... 

A History of Home

At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson —Reviewed by Christine C. Chen One could judge Bill Bryson’s latest tome by the author photo. At Home: A Short History of Private Life is as amiable and comfortably tweedy as the Bryson himself. Those familiar with his other works, such as A Short History of Nearly Everything and Made in America, will not be disappointed by the rambling, often surprising, and unpretentious display of erudition that is Bryson's calling card. ... 

How Did Abu Dhabi Get So Rich?

Jo Tatchell grew up in Abu Dhabi in the 1970s and watched as "it went from being a tiny backwater to being the richest city in the world." But the city is now a misunderstood place, she said, thanks to media coverage that focuses on the political, the military, and the financial and thinks of Abu Dhabi as a "bumper sticker kind of story — the Arab state, rich with oil, brash with wealth." Below, Tatchell, author of A Diamond in the Desert: Behind the Scenes in Abu Dhabi, the World's Riches... 

John Deasy

John E. Deasy serves as a deputy superintendent for the Los Angeles Unified School District. Prior to joining Los Angeles Unified, Deasy served as the Deputy Director of Education at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He has previously served as superintendent of the Prince George’s County, Maryland., Public Schools. Before taking the stage to talk about teacher rankings, he took our In The Green Room Q&A. Q. What’s the last habit you tried to kick? A. Eating excessive s... 

Karen Hunter Quartz

Karen Hunter Quartz is the Director of Research of Center X, the home of UCLA’s professional credentialing and advancement programs for teachers and educational leaders.  In addition, she is Director of Research for the UCLA Community School, a new K-12 small public school that opened last fall within the Los Angeles Unified School District. Before taking the stage to chat about teacher rankings, she sat down for our In The Green Room Q&A. Q. What surprises you the most about your... 

Can We Avoid an Economic Aftershock?

Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future by Robert Reich —Reviewed by Jake de Grazia Meet Margaret Jones, your new President. She’s putting a freeze on immigration. She’s increasing tariffs on all imports. She’s withdrawing from the United Nations, defaulting on our debt to China, and abolishing the Federal Reserve. She’s outlawing investment banking, taxing capital gains at a rate of 80 percent, and capping personal income at $500,000 per year. She’s the new popu... 

Connie Kruzan

Connie Kruzan has been affiliated with the Valley Community Clinic for over eighteen years.  She developed and implemented a state funded teen pregnancy prevention demonstration project, Valley Teen Clinic, a reproductive healthcare clinic run by and for teens.  Before joining a panel asking what California is doing right about teen pregnancy, Kruzan sat down for our In The Green Room Q&A. Q. What music have you listened to today? A. Ozomatli. Q. Who was your childhood hero? A... 

Francisca Angulo-Olaiz

Francisca Angulo-Olaiz is a research scientist at the Public Health Institute, a non-profit health research organization based in Oakland. She is currently working to develop a sexuality curriculum for high school students. Before joining our panel on teen pregnancy, she sat down for our In The Green Room Q&A. Q. What is the last habit you tried to kick? A. Eating fast food. Q. What music have you listened to today? A. Salsa and reggaeton. Q. Where would we find you at 10 a.m... 

Why is Teen Pregnancy Declining?

In the past two decades, teenage birth rates in California have dropped by half — to a record low of 35.2 births per 1,000 teens, aged 15 to 19, said Emily Bazar, a senior writer for The California HealthCare Foundation’s Center for Health Reporting at USC. Without the decline, she said to the full house at downtown L.A.'s Artshare, “There would have been an additional 52,685 babies born in 2009 in California.” National rates are declining as well, but more slowly, Bazar noted.... 

Sara S. Hodson

Sara S. “Sue” Hodson is the curator of literary manuscripts for The Huntington Library, overseeing all British and American literary manuscripts, from the Renaissance to the present.  These collections include Christopher Isherwood’s papers. Before taking the stage to talk about Isherwood’s life and work in Los Angeles, Hodson took our In The Green Room Q&A. Q. What surprises you most about your life right now? A. The wonderful collections I’m working with at the Huntingto... 

After Ninetta col Cestina

by Matthew Frank painting by Gino Parin Open your life, piggishly, my love, for the lid has been burped.  You take the spatula from me, say, the Eastern Phoebe is a dark, medium-sized flycatcher, its buff bars prominent, but far from Paradise.  When you flip the eggs, all we can talk about are underparts, our grandmothers who never knew the stiffness of the swing-set, or its gravitational flush.  This apartment, after all, has fluorescent lights over the stove— ... 

Antonio Damasio

Antonio Damasio is David Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Neurology, and director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California. He is author several books including Descartes’ Error and, most recently, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain. Below, he takes our In The Green Room Q&A. Q. What surprises you the most about your life right now? A. Can I answer with a joke? I have this laryngitis and I’m still speaking... 

Zócalo's Top Books of 2010

After another year of featuring the smartest non-fiction books, we've chosen our top 10 titles of the year. The books below, presented in alphabetical order by author, span the globe in their reach. They took us to China and Africa, Eastern Europe last century and the American political trenches in the last few years. Check them out, read our reviews, and pick up a copy for the holidays. Said Amir Arjomand's After Khomeini: Iran Under His Successors. Arjomand creates a portrait of post-re... 

Greg Moon

Greg Moon is Director of Clinical Affairs at Proteus Biomedical in Redwood City, California. He has overseen the clinical development of the company’s Intelligent Pharmaceutical system, which networks proven medicines with mobile phones to help people meet their health-related goals.  Before taking the stage to talk about medical technology, he took our In The Green Room Q&A. Q. What’s the last habit you tried to kick? A. It’s kind of an anti-habit — not stepping on the sc... 

Sarah Varney

Sarah Varney covers health for KQED’s statewide news programs The California Report and Health Dialogues. Before moderating Zócalo’s panel on the medical future, she sat down for our In The Green Room Q&A. Q. What’s the last habit you tried to kick? A. It’s more the habit I’ve tried to make, which is to exercise more. Q. Who was your childhood hero? A. Eleanor Roosevelt. Q. What do you consider to be the greatest simple pleasure? A. Snuggling with my son. ... 

Where Consciousness Comes From

For Antonio Damasio, author of Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain, the human mind is certainly an astounding thing, but it's not as unique as many of us may think. "One of the main points about this book is to dispel the myth that we are alone in the specialness of mind and consciousness,” Damasio said to the full house at the RAND Corporation. “I believe what we call mind and conscious mind are the current end product of a long period of evolution." Damasio went ... 

What Technology Will Revolutionize Medicine?

As the stuff of science fiction starts to seem possible in the world of healthcare -- from reversing aging to microscopic body monitors -- Zócalo asked five doctors, humanists, and medical experts what single technology will most revolutionize the practice of medicine. Their answers include what we already have -- apps and electronic records -- to the ultimate shift, defeating death. How the iPhone has doctors beat Certainly technological interventions have transformed medicine: the s... 

Antonio Damasio on Waking Up

After 30 years studying the way the brain works, Antonio Damasio, in Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain, presents a new theory of consciousness: that it began with as a biological process, created by a living organism and going back all the way back to single-cell organisms. In the excerpt below, Damasio, who visits Zócalo on December 7, introduces and dissects the notion of consciousness. When I woke up, we were descending. I had been asleep long enough to miss the ann... 

From “Please Bury Me in This”

by Allison Benis White The sound of wind through a fence, or long hair being brushed. As a child my father told me everyone in his family was killed in Belzec except his uncle. Years later, I sat on a bed in a replica of Anne Frank’s room at a museum, stunned. The way we try to feel close, to animate emptiness. I looked up and saw nothing hanging from the ceiling, like a chandelier. *Photo courtesy Giorgio Raffaelli. 

Christopher Isherwood Goes to the Circus, and Clifton's

For decades writer Christopher Isherwood made Los Angeles his home. From his sunlit spot in the Santa Monica Canyon, Isherwood observed and recorded the 1960s in hundreds of typed pages. His The Sixties: Diaries 1960-1969 captures everything from the political tumult of the time to its spiritual questing to Isherwood's rich social circle of fellow artists, all up for discussion in Zócalo's forthcoming panel, Christopher Isherwood's Los Angeles. In the two diary entries excerpted below, the ... 

Creating Dangerously

Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work by Edwidge Danticat —Reviewed by Deanna Neil A cultural critic and memoirist, Edwidge Danticat’s elegiac essays reveal the tumultuous history Haiti, and the urgency of immigrant art. Her collection of stories hinge on the themes of artistry, death, memory, and what it means to have a soul divided between two countries: America and Haiti. Create Dangerously opens with a lurid description of Marcel Numa and Louis Drouin’s brutal 1964... 

Searching for Silence in the Midwest

by Lee Linderman The southern Minnesota farmhouse, my childhood home, hides inelegantly behind a spotty row of evergreens. The trees stand bravely in the wind, the house’s only defense from winter’s bitter gusts. Outside the house’s curtilage lies a frozen expanse that, in warmer months, reveals fertile soil, a place where soybeans and corn flourish. But in November, at Thanksgiving, a bitter frost suffocates the earth. It was in the farmhouse that I sat at midnight, alone, at th... 

War Isn't Over When It's Over

War is Not Over When it’s Over: Women Speak Out From the Ruins of War by Ann Jones —Reviewed by Angilee Shah You don’t need to go much further than the table of contents to know that Ann Jones’ War is Not Over When It’s Over is not an easy read. Among the chapter titles: “The Democratic Republic of Congo: Rape” and “Iraqi Refugees in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon: Blown Apart.” What happens in conflict is so terrible, so unspeakable, that Jones’ challenge is to convince comfor... 

What Does Technology Want?

Kevin Kelly, a former executive editor of Wired, has spent much of his career thinking and writing about technology. But he discovered he was quite happy without it as well. "I was spending a lot of time in the Third World and in remote places. I felt comfortable with people who were surviving on a minimum of technology," Kelly said. "I had a great admiration for that kind of simple lifestyle." Kelly began writing What Technology Wants in order to understand the role of technology in his own... 

Famously Beautiful City

by V. Penelope Pelizzon           For Nicole Cuddeback and Antonio Ambrosio Thank Christ for outskirts, where the river pulls you east or west beyond brilliance into the merely making do, scrappy verges where the water eddies and people unremarkably rake their gardens or tinker under cars. Please, please let’s ignore the genius of the past today. I need a walk with you along the margins where history’s only years among fri... 

Tim Wu

Tim Wu is an author, policy advocate, and a professor at Columbia Law School. He also serves as the chairman of the media reform organization Free Press. Wu is best known for developing the term “net neutrality” and the theory behind it. Before taking the stage to talk about his book, The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, Wu sat down for our In The Green Room Q&A. Q. Where would we find you at 10 a.m. on a typical Saturday? A. Asleep. Q. What music ha... 

The Fringes of Mainstream Faith

In Golden States of Grace: Prayers of the Disinherited, Rick Nahmias photographs the members of the fringes of mainstream faiths: a transgender gospel choir, imprisoned Zen Buddhists, Jewish addicts, Cambodian Muslims, and deaf Mormons. "The mainstream faiths were chosen specifically so the groups profiled were not easily dismissed. These are folks that are on the margins of society, but they're following for the most part mainstream traditions," Nahmias said. "I felt it would help build tha... 

Can We Defeat Aging With Medicine?

by Aubrey de Grey Aging is bad for you. Whether you call it a disease, not a disease, a set of disease precursors, or some other variation on the theme, it is a medical condition, and thus a legitimate target — in principle — for medical intervention. But is it a practical target? Medicine generally targets individual problems — a particular strain of virus, for example, or damage to a particular area of flesh. Aging seems like a huge number of progressive, chronic diseases all i... 

A Kinder, Gentler, More Conservative Way to Bank?

High Financier: The Life and Times of Siegmund Warburg by Niall Ferguson —Reviewed by Adam Fleisher Following in the footsteps of Ron Chernow’s massive study of the entire Warburg clan, and benefiting from newly available documents, Niall Ferguson tells the story of how Siegmund fled Nazi Germany and established himself — and the City of London — at the apex of post World War II high finance. If this biography has a theme, it is the foresight of its hero. Warburg, born and ... 

Who Invented the Telephone?

The lone inventor's a romantic figure, but does he actually exist? In the excerpt below from his The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, Tim Wu explains through the story of Alexander Graham Bell the real reason why inventors are so hyped. It's less about loneliness and more about circumstance, luck, disruption, and being at just the right distance from powerful people and powerful industries. There was, it is fair to say, no single inventor of the telephone. And this... 

How We Left California

by Andrea Perkins long finger of land disappearing into unfocused ocean we noticed ghostlings and told them to live they did but we already had an eye on the future, would soon make our crossing through nevada, past the graves of the unknown chinese beneath texaco’s iron flag outside the cafe where friendly waitresses gave out a glitzy, meager sugar i became a black baby you a stolen horse when we reached the new city we went underneath it and built a theme park... 

Dave deBronkart

Dave deBronkart, better known on the internet as "e-Patient Dave," is the leading spokesperson for the e-Patient movement and was elected founding co-chair of the new Society for Participatory Medicine. Mr. deBronkart was diagnosed in 2007 with Stage IV kidney cancer, with a median survival of just 24 weeks. He used the internet to partner with his care team and beat this unbeatable disease. Today he is well, and is the author of Laugh, Sing, and Eat Like a Pig: How an Empowered Patient Beat... 

Indu Subaiya

Dr. Indu Subaiya is co-founder of Health 2.0: User Generated Healthcare, a first-of-its-kind forum showcasing digital media, web and mobile technologies. She has been an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Physic Ventures, a consumer health and wellness investment fund, and president of the consulting firm Etude Scientific. Before moderating a panel on online healthcare at Zócalo, she took our In The Green Room Q&A. Q. Where would we find you at 10 a.m. on a typical Saturday? A. Sadly, ... 

How Labor Lost and Could Regain its Power

Unions in America aren't what they used to be. As membership fell dramatically over the last 60 years, labor leaders went from household names to obscure and often negatively stereotyped small players in the national story. But as Philip Dray reveals in There is Power in a Union: The Epic Story of Labor in America, labor has been an integral part of American history. "It's an incredible campaign that went on for decades, that involved our grandparents and great-grandparents and achieved so m... 

Can We Trust Online Healthcare?

Before Dave deBronkart was known by his online moniker e-patient Dave, he was a typical offline patient with a troubling diagnosis: Stage IV kidney cancer with a very low survival rate. But when deBronkart's doctor referred him to an online community for kidney cancer patients, deBronkart found information so up-to-date that it beat medical journals, pointing him toward a rarely used treatment that restored his health. “I’m a classic example of somebody who didn’t much care anyth... 

What's the Future of Web-Based Healthcare?

Many of us already go online to seek healthcare, and not just to Google symptoms. Online support groups, healthcare systems that allow for online communication between patients and doctors, and other innovations are making the web a crucial part of car. Ahead of our panel asking doctors and bloggers to discuss the dangers and opportunities of online care, we asked UCLA's Molly Coye, Kaiser's Kate Christensen, and UC Davis' Peter Yellowlees to tell us what online healthcare will look like in ... 

Why Your Vote Doesn't Count

by Joe Mathews On Election Day, I intend to stand reluctantly with the majority of my fellow Californians — on the sidelines and as far as from the voting booth as possible. All the news about the election obscures the big story in California politics: most people here have concluded that voting in state elections isn’t worth their time. Of the 38 million residents in California, 23.5 million are adults, citizens and non-felons, and thus eligible to vote. In this year’s June stat... 

Robert Kaplan

Robert D. Kaplan is a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington and a national correspondent for The Atlantic. He is the best-selling author of 12 books, and his most recent is Monsoon: The Indian Ocean Region and the Future of American Power. Before talking at Zócalo about whether the U.S. is ready for the rise of Asia, Kaplan told us more about himself. Q. Where would we find you at 10 a.m. on a typical Saturday? A. Reading. On the weekend I relax by rea... 

The Return of the Indian Ocean Region

The Asian century has begun, but not in the way we think, according to Robert Kaplan. "I don't mean it in only economic terms, which is something we all know about. The Pacific Rim tigers have been the stuff of magazine cover stories since the early 1980s," said Kaplan, an Atlantic national correspondent and author of Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power. "I mean it in military terms as well." The U.S. he continued, has been bogged down in the Iraq and Afghanistan... 

Matthew Kahn

Matthew Kahn, a UCLA Luskin Scholar and author of Climatopolis: How Our Cities Will Thrive in the Hotter Future, has lived in three major American cities: Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. But, he said, he grew up a suburban kid. “I was getting beat up in the public schools of New York City, so we moved to Westchester.”  Below, Kahn reveals more about himself. Q. Where would we find you at 10 a.m. on a typical Saturday? A. Walking to Westwood village to find bread and do our ch... 

Gideon Rose

Gideon Rose, the editor of Foreign Affairs, was born and raised in New York City. Today, he says, “I am living the standard, New York, upper bourgeois life in a Brooklyn brownstone with my wife and kids. Everything is basically copacetic.” Below, Rose tells us more about himself. Q. Where would we find you at 10 a.m. on a typical Saturday? A. Watching my kids play soccer. We are a soccer family now. My son recently betrayed the Yankees and his perennial Halloween favorite Alex Rod... 

What We Don't Know about Sex in the Middle East

After ten years writing and traveling through the Middle East, John R. Bradley decided to tackle the subject that everyone talks about without saying much: sex. In Behind the Veil of Vice: The Business and Culture of Sex in the Middle East, Bradley reveals the many different ways countries across the region talk about and regulate sex. Below, he chats with Zócalo about legal prostitution in Tunisia, hour-long marriages in Saudi Arabia, and what West and East have in common when it comes to ... 

Debt

by J.D. Smith To say the wolf is at the door is to admit knowing little of wolves, who employ teeth and claws for survival, who fail in most of their hunts. Their ribs emerge in lean times. Mostly they sleep, or play, shy of humans. The exceptions are soon driven off. *Photo courtesy Doug Brown. 

Bill Parent

Bill Parent is currently the director of the Center for Civil Society in the UCLA School of Public Affairs. Prior to coming to UCLA 10 years ago, he was at Harvard University's Kennedy School where he ran the Innovations in American Government program. Twenty years ago, he was executive assistant to then Dean Robert D. Putnam. Before he interviewed Putnam for Zócalo, he sat down for our In The Green Room Q&A. Q. What do you consider to be the greatest simple pleasure? A. Reading.... 

Where We Go Wrong in War

Only 12 years passed between the U.S.'s first war with Iraq and its second, but both were plagued by the same problem: postwar turmoil. As Gideon Rose explores in How Wars End: Why We Always Fight the Last Battle, understanding the relationship between the war and the aftermath has been a challenge for American policymakers as far back as World War I. Below, Rose explains just how badly we handled planning for peace in Iraq — particularly since military strategists knew the challenges that... 

How Religion Has Changed Since 'The Ten Commandments'

In American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, political scientist Robert Putnam drew from the two broadest surveys on religion in the U.S. to explore how the landscape of faith has transformed over the last 50 years. In the excerpt below, Putnam outlines how drastically our relationship to religion has changed since the days of "The Ten Commandments" and the John Kennedy candidacy. In the 1950s, the Fraternal Order of Eagles teamed up with movie director Cecil B. DeMille for a u... 

How Religion Strengthens Community

As much as religious conflict dominates our public conversations, religion has long been a force for unity. As political scientist Robert Putnam explains in his American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, religious Americans are less tolerant of dissent, but religious communities were crucial to the movements for women's and civil rights. We asked five students of religion how faith builds stronger communities. A shared sacred power Etymologically, “religio” means that whic... 

Zebra

by Ron Carlson You are on my mind the way a person clings to a broken table after a ship sinks in the open sea; and the way a girl in a swimming pool clutches a volleyball in her legs, bobbing for balance, splashing, her smile so smart; and, I guess, the way a leopard holds to the neck of a zebra, the two animals perfect, the spots and the stripes. *Photo courtesy Luca Moglia Photography.  

Where Ideas Come From

Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steven Johnson —Reviewed by Deanna Neil Part curious student, part erudite historian, and part tech-nerd, Steven Johnson does exactly what he claims brilliant people should do. In Where Good Ideas Come From, he works in organized chaos, taking an interdisciplinary look at his subject and searching for patterns. Genius, he says, is about making connections, and his book pulls it off. Johnson argues that innovation b... 

Myth-busting CSI: The reality of the forensic lab isn't so glamorous, or effective. Charter school: What it's like to wait for Superman. Women: Discrimination isn't the only reason they're paid less. Tracy Corrigan says itmight be partially their fault. Facebook: The stars of The Social Network aren't on it. Music industry: The news isn't so bad as it seems. Europe: Forget the American dream. For the Chinese, it's about retiring in the Old World. *Photo courtesy Edward Kustoff. 

Why Systems Need Failure

When an aggressive online commentator kept asking Megan McArdle why she was interested in writing about failure, she knew the answer immediately. “Write what you know,” she joked with the audience at the Hammer Museum. McArdle, business and economics editor of The Atlantic, argued that “the hidden strength of American society is how good we are at failure.” B-school to blogging McArdle's got a chance to know failure personally when, after getting her MBA at the University... 

Why Did Obama Lose his Base?

The massive grassroots support Barack Obama won in his campaign was the big story of 2008. But the years since have told a different story. “After the campaign was over, all the books were either about Obama or his inner circle,” said journalist Ari Berman, who covered the campaign for The Nation. “We missed the stories of these organizers and activists.” Below, Berman, author of Herding Donkeys: The Fight to Rebuild the Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics, chats about how... 

The Next Morning

by Dawn Corrigan Drink some beer, clear your head, go out and look around, don't ask yourself why the cock has scarlet feathers, why the ram paws the ground when rain thunders. Clothe yourself in glittering colors. The butterflies inside are only trying to join up with the butterflies outside where the mosquito lives in the forest, where frogs swell up and croak. Don't worry how the spider became bald, how the elephant's bottom grew so small. You have nothing to do be... 

When Left to My Own Devices

by Connie Voisine My self tries to become, the way the cat by the stove becomes after the cat has died. My self gets out sometimes, walks by the river where, during droughts, boys on dirtbikes tear up the riverbed. Burning fuel smells like boys now to my self who once firmly believed in free will, but now knows different. I encourage my self to see more people and so it sits on the neighbor’s patio drinking a beverage, laughing because the host said something... 

Resources Gold: The prices are up now, but they may not stay that way. Textiles: The industry in Pakistan collapses in the wake of flood, and Europe and the U.S. have their own industries to worry about. Money: Zadie Smith on the problem with lending to friends. Facebook Nerds: Does the head of Facebook have no social skills? Evil: Lawrence Lessig on the real message of "The Social Network." Women: Are they just accessories for the new nerd-ocracy? *Photo courtesy Hector La... 

Why the Phone Book is Worth a Read

Reading books that nobody reads has become something of a specialty for Ammon Shea. "I've been fascinated with reference materials, and why we don't treat them as interesting books," said Shea, author of Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages. He left aside catalogues, atlases, and encyclopedias in favor of the phone book. "It's the most curiously unexamined book, especially considering that it's the most frequently published book in the history of publishing." And other than being a... 

Why Techno-Utopians Should Beware

by Evgeny Morozov Whether it manifests itself in idolizing the crowds of Iranian twitterati who marched in the streets of Tehran armed with nothing but their cell phones, or in discussing the plight of brave Chinese dissidents who increasingly find themselves targets of sophisticated cyber-attacks, there is growing enthusiasm about the power of the Internet to democratize the world. Such unchecked enthusiasm -- which I dub The Net Delusion -- rests on two major fallacies. The first one... 

Sebastian Mallaby

Sebastian Mallaby is director of the Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies and a Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Mallaby joined CFR from The Washington Post, where he served as a columnist and editorial board member. He is author of the bestselling The World’s Banker and most recently of More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite. Below, he tells us more about himself. Q. Where would we fi... 

Why Hedge Funds Help Markets

Though the title of his history of hedge funds — More Money Than God — might sound a bit extreme, Sebastian Mallaby had his reasons. "J.P. Morgan was known as Jupiter because of his godlike power over Wall Street," Mallaby explained to the crowd at MOCA Grand Avenue. The titan had at his death in 1913 $1.4 billion in today's dollars. "A lot of characters around hedge funds make $1.4 billion in a single year." In an event presented with the UCLA Burkle Center for Internation... 

The Problem with Humanitarian Aid

The Crisis Caravan: What’s Wrong with Humanitarian Aid? by Linda Polman —Reviewed by Erica E. Phillips The Red Cross set the standard for humanitarian aid one and a half centuries ago: that it is to be “impartial, neutral, and independent…irrespective of the people involved and the situation on the ground.” But in 1995 at Goma, a camp for Rwandan refugees, the Red Cross and more than 300 other aid organizations — including big names like UNICEF, Oxfam, and the World He... 

Will Los Angeles Go the Way of Paris?

by Greg Critser Not long ago, I came across a book about the trials and tribulations of a giant city. This city was reeling from a seemingly endless migration of rural peoples from its south. Its traditional family structure was strained — papa and mama both had to work. Most of them had to live in housing close to sources of polluted air. Infectious disease was rampant but largely untreated. Most had known hunger in their lifetimes. Their mothers likely experienced some kind of trauma... 

Where Did Hedge Funds Come From?

Hedge funds didn't exactly get off easy in the financial crisis — some imploded, some fell under scrutiny — but it could have been a lot worse. As Sebastian Mallaby explores in More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite, the hedge fund is singularly resilient, not only surviving but raking in returns in the midst of collapse. Below, Mallaby, who will visit Zócalo on September 29, explains how hedge funds got their start thanks to a would-be Leninist, how much money t... 

Women Bloggers: Why are there fewer female science writers than male? O'Donnell: Is she the new Sarah Palin? Sao: The bewitching power of one Portuguese women. Crime Concerts: Why video phones are a worse offense than lighters. Organized: Understanding Saul Alinsky. New York: Why the prison population is going down. *Photo courtesy Kate Patten.