Category Archives: Author Essays
From Manhattan to Mumbai: Wrestling with the Issues of Our Time
by Katherine Boo, author of the forthcoming Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, death, and hope in a Mumbai undercity (Random House, February 2012). Request an advanced reader’s copy, details below.* As jobs and capital whip around the planet, college students will graduate … Continue reading
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A Message from Anita Hill
by Anita HIll, author of Reimagining Equality: Stories of Gender, Race, and Finding Home (Beacon Press, 2011) It’s hard to believe that almost two decades have passed since the dramatic Clarence Thomas Senate confirmation hearing that had such an impact on … Continue reading
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Israel-Palestine: A Binary Fallacy
by Sarah Glidden, author of How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less (Vertigo, 2011) When I used to think about growing as a person, I visualized my life as a sort of graph: a steadily climbing, sometimes dipping line … Continue reading
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On Historical Fiction
by David Mitchell, acclaimed author of several novels, the latest of which is The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: A Novel (Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2011) Around Christmas in 1994 in Nagasaki I got off at a wrong tram-stop and stumbled upon … Continue reading
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A Debt Crisis…5,000 Years in the Making
by David Graeber, author of Debt: The First 5,000 Years (Melville House, 2011) Debt is all around us. Modern economies run on consumer debt; modern nation-states, on deficit financing; international relations turn on debt. What’s more, for the last three … Continue reading
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Living Half a Life
by Darin Strauss, author of Half a Life(Random House, 2011), Winner of the 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award (Autobiography) When I was 18, I was in a car accident: a girl swerved in front of my car, I couldn’t … Continue reading
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The Complex Reality of Juveniles in Adult Prisons
by David Chura, author of I Don’t Wish Nobody to Have a Life Like Mine: Tales of Kids in Adult Lockup(Beacon Press, 2011), Winner of the 2010 PASS Award from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency Reynaldo is surprised … Continue reading
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How to Run the World
by Parag Khanna, author of How to Run the World: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance (Random House, 2011) The past decade—from the 9/11 terrorist attacks to the global financial meltdown—has taught us the dangers of interdependence and that outsourcing … Continue reading
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Why Africa is Poor, and What We Can Do About It
by Robert Guest, author of The Shackled Continent: Power, Corruption, and African Lives (Smithsonian Books, 2010) I once hitched a ride on a truck through a West African rain forest. The journey was supposed to take less than a day, … Continue reading
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Using Carrots and Sticks
by Ian Ayres, author of Carrots and Sticks: Unlock the Power of Incentives to Get Things Done (Bantam, 2010) Rob Harrison is one of the most beloved teachers at Yale Law School. He has improved the writing and emotional outlook … Continue reading
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