Closing the Achievement Gap, Taking Down Gangs, and Ending World War II

Multiplication Is For White People: Raising Expectations for Other People’s Children
by Lisa Delpit

The nutshell: After spending decades interviewing and observing African-American students and their teachers, Southern University education scholar Delpit believes that the single best way to close the achievement gap in education is to raise our expectations for black students.

Literary lovechild of: Jonathan Kozol’s The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America and Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the …

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Short Memories, Long Runs, and Endless Wars

New Books on the Cold War, Long-Distance Running, and Immigration

UC Irvine historian Wiener traveled to Cold War monuments and exhibits around the country—from a “hippie contest” at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library to a museum exhibit on North Dakota’s …

Real Startups, Fake Stuff, and Pirated Property

New Books on Silicon Valley, Synthetic Biology, and Digital Copyright Law

New York Times columnist Stross spent a year observing the summer camp/graduate school/boot camp/incubator that is Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley program that brings together founders of promising startups for …

Savages, Soldiers, and Sinology

Three New Histories That Cover A Lot of Ground

University of Arizona legal scholar Williams presents a history of the western world’s obsession with the savage that begins with Homer’s description of the savage centaurs and ends with James …

Misguidance, Mismanagement, and Misdeeds

New Books on the Future of America, the Current State of Evidence, and the Past of Sin

Environmentalist leader and Vermont Law School legal scholar Speth sounds a clarion for not just a new economy but a new America. Speth argues that we must combat poverty and …

Bad Morals, Better Algorithms, and The Best Hackers

New Books on Ethics, Equations, and Espionage

Human societies have grown larger, more diverse, and more technologically complex, and as a result, our moral compasses are no longer up to the task of guiding us, argue Oxford …