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Mixed At Most
I hoped for more from The Mixed Marriage Project: A Memoir of Love, Race, and Family, which is the most recent book from Dorothy Roberts. In it, Roberts, who is the George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, offers an account of the summer she spent in a…
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The Rest of Us
I wonder what Stacy Davis Gates thinks of us. Gates, who is president of both the Chicago Teachers Union and the Illinois Federation of Teachers, recently argued that CPS is transforming into a “sustainable community school district” of community “anchors” as a result of the recent Chicago Board of Education approved five-year equity plan and…
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The Dope on Kids and Their Parents Today
Michaeleen Doucleff’s (2026) new book Dopamine Kids offers an alternative account of challenges confronting kids and their parents today. Doucleff, who has a physical chemistry PhD, was surprised to learn that dopamine isn’t a pleasure hormone as it is commonly regarded but a wanting hormone, or one that initiates cravings or urges. For her, this…
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Reality For Few
Fantasy Life, which is a new movie written and directed by Matthew Shear, is a more substantial story than some critics seem to think. Sam (Shear), a law-school dropout, agrees to babysit his psychiatrist’s (Judd Hirch) granddaughters and soon thereafter finds ways to spend their mother Dianne (Amanda Peet), an unemployed actor. Dianne, who does…
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An Internet For All
Tim Berners-Lee’s (2025) recent memoir, which he co-wrote with Stephen Witt, is an invaluable account of the invention of the internet and useful counterbalance to mainstream accounts of it. Berners-Lee recounts his experiences from imagining a world-wide web, convincing CERN administrators in 1989 to support his proposal, and its stunning evolution since then into the…
“There is always something to do. There are hungry people to feed, naked people to clothe, sick people to comfort and make well. And while I don’t expect you to save the world I do think it’s not asking too much for you to love those with whom you sleep, share the happiness of those whom you call friend, engage those among you who are visionary and remove from your life those who offer you depression, despair and disrespect.”
–Nikki Giovanni