The American history of printed primary sources has been rich and varied. Starting in the nineteenth century with the growing interest in preserving America’s memory of its Revolution and Constitution making, documentary editors in the early republic began what would become a notable part of American record-keeping as editors assembled lasting collections meant for the public. This practice during the twentieth century began to concentrate more and more on publishing primary sources for academic and scholarly uses rather than for a general audience. The advent of the Internet has altered the publication template yet again, now offering one-and-all access to both previously published letterpress editions of primary and secondary sources, as well as unpublished primary sources. One of the consequences of this, of course, has been the diminishment of letterpress publications of primary sources in American history that follow a chronological narrative or a specific historical subject. The intention of virtually all of these publications had been to help the reader to acquire a better “firsthand” understanding, one that as not colored by the intermediate voice of any historian’s narrative interpretation. In an age when we are awash in document, the services of skilled anthologists may be more important than ever. Read More...

In 2010, Deirdre McCloskey published Bourgeois Dignity, remarkable for her erudite repudiation of all previous theories about how we arrived at the modern commercial world. McCloskey developed the thesis that modernity rejected hierarchy, the assignment to some people of more dignity (and privilege) than others, and that this recognition of the dignity of the bourgeois (what I would call a culture of personal autonomy) has led not only to the spectacular economic prosperity we see around us but that it liberated people, and that liberation is reflected in an expanding conception of human dignity. It’s a great book. Read More...

Adam Smith is one of the most beloved, most hated, most cited, and least read figures in the pantheon of great Western thinkers. His ideas have helped transform political and economic policy throughout much of the world, and they are credited by many for the unprecedented growth in wealth and prosperity the West has seen in the over two centuries since his death. They are also blamed by many for inequalities in wealth that have arisen since Smith’s time. But consider that since 1800 the world’s population has increased six-fold, and yet, despite this enormous increase, real income per person has increased approximately sixteen-fold.1 That is a truly amazing achievement. Yet that increased prosperity would seem due principally to the complex of institutions we now call “capitalism.” For the only thing that changed between two hundred years ago and the previous hundred thousand years of human history was the introduction and embrace of “capitalist” institutions—political, economic, and cultural. And Adam Smith stands as one of the founders of these institutions. Read More...

How could a devoted teacher of the humanities like this reviewer not like a book that is a ringing defense of the humanities in a world of educational “accountability”? Read More...

I enjoyed and learned from Sandel’s book, which is a far different thing than agreeing with many of the conclusions that he reaches. I read this book because I anticipated he would consider aspects of morality and markets that I have been writing about and do so in a way that would challenge my conclusions. I was not disappointed in this expectation. His challenge was clear enough, serious enough, and unconvincing enough to add to my own reservoir of arguments, few of which I have the space to elaborate here. Read More...

To fully appreciate the significance of this valuable book by one of our leading practitioner/scholars, one needs to understand its cultural context within the profession. Bruce Sievers' has eminent credentials—trained in political science, former head of state Humanities Councils, then of the Walter and Elise Haas Fund of San Francisco (1983-2002), and currently at Stanford University's Center on Civil Society. This broad background positions him well to bridge philanthropy's two cultures—social-scientific and humanistic—in the current rapidly transforming period of paradigm-shift. Read More...

This is both a biography in the usual sense of the term and an intellectual biography. One learns, in other words, about Marcel Mauss the man and the thinker, and these two aspects are rather well-meshed (but more about this below). Mauss, who is best known for his short essayThe Gift, was an armchair anthropologist—by that I mean that he never traveled to the American Northwest nor to the Pacific islands and never observed the customs of the indigenous peoples he wrote about; this has left him open to various criticisms. (This being said, Mauss did direct the field works of his numerous students who brought back useful data.) The originality and incisiveness of his ideas has earned him the respect of scholars in a number of disciplines. Fournier provides an apt summary of this essay and underscores its central theme, namely, that in pre-modern societies economic exchanges consist of “total services” affecting entire communities rather than among isolated individuals, and that these often have a religious dimension, such as the Polynesian belief in the hau, a spiritual power that “forces gifts to circulate, to be given and returned” (242). Mauss did not limit his attention to these arguably odd and disconcerting practices; he took pain to trace parallels with more western, and somewhat more individualized mores such as could be found in ancient Rome, and he thought about ways in which the spirit of the gift and the obligation of reciprocity could be rediscovered in modern times. But the value of this book, especially for readers who might not know more about Mauss than the fact he was the author of The Gift, is that it will help them to situate this essay in the context of a much larger and quite encyclopedic work. Read More...

My most vivid lesson on volunteering came from an African–American woman who ran an after-school program for disadvantaged youth in Washington, DC, where I considered volunteering. Her program gave children a safe haven from homes and communities that were plagued by violence, drugs, and poverty. Speaking to an audience of potential volunteers made up mostly of white, middle-class professionals, she warned: “Don’t volunteer to help me unless you can make a real commitment. These kids have had enough disappointment in their lives.” Her frank comments stunned many in the audience but were borne out by experience with well-intentioned volunteers who appeared once or twice to help, only never to return. Read More...

“Authentic patriots do not set out to change the world. They set out to solve a problem.” Meet some people who will make you deeply proud to be an American, whether you are a liberal progressive, a Tea Party member, or somewhere in between. Stephen Kiernan’s Authentic Patriotism focuses on the demands democratic republics make on their citizens. Optimism and patriotism have become loaded concepts in the past few years. That may be because the media focuses us on major politicians and celebrities. That leaves the rest of us to watch and listen, 24/7. We watch flat screens, whatever size. Kiernan snaps our sets off. He introduces regular people, citizens like Dr. Howard Freeman, Barry Scheck, and Majora Carter. Kiernan’s casts are doers, not watchers. Read More...

James Workman has achieved what few authors can: he has written a gripping story that engages the reader’s moral passions and he has explored some of the most troubling economic and political problems facing our world without polemic or hyperbole. At the heart ofHeart of Dryness is the challenge of value: how do we value water? How do we value natural resources which are not being renewed? Who knows how to live in a world of depleted and diminishing resources? What can we learn from them? What do we need to do now? Read More...

“If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands!” goes the children’s song. According to Arthur C. Brooks, in his carefully researched Gross National Happiness: Why Happiness Matters for America—and How We Can Get More of It, those who are clapping are significantly more likely to be married rather than single, religious rather than secular, and conservative rather than liberal. Read More...

The more biology and economics inform each other, the better. Cross-pollination of ideas from one discipline to the next can yield great insights and shed light on answers to questions once hidden by the intellectual silos.

The late naturalist Stephen Jay Gould wrote: “[Th]e theory of natural selection is a creative transfer to biology of Adam Smith's basic argument for a rational economy: the balance and order of nature does not arise from a higher, external (divine) control, or from the existence of laws operating directly upon the whole, but from struggle among individuals for their own benefits.”¹ Read More...