I almost always focus on recent books, but this month I want to mention one from 2014 that’s received new life because of—to quote last month’s University World News headline—“Dismay over university’s sacking of scholar denied a visa.” Rowena Xiaoqing He, author of Tiananmen Exiles: Voices of the Struggle for Democracy (Palgrave Macmillan), currently lives in Austin and until recently Read More ›
We’re one year away from what promises to be a tumultuous presidential election. You might prepare by reading any or all of these four books. 1. The Presidents: Noted Historians Rank America’s Best—and Worst—Chief Executives, by Brian Lamb and Susan Swain (Public Affairs, 2019), turns their C-SPAN interviews with historians into chapters on presidents in order from best to worst, Read More ›
Here’s a baseball metaphor as the World Series approaches: Many pastors and deacons have trouble throwing strikes when a poor person approaches a church for financial help. Instead of giving him a chance to hit, they hand him a walk to first base by treating the requestor as helpless and merely asking “What do you need?” Michael Mather’s Having Nothing, Read More ›
Discovery Institute Senior Fellow and American Center for Transforming Education Director Keri D. Ingraham joined the She Thinks Podcast to discuss her recently released Policy Focus: Education Savings Accounts.
American History teachers sometimes send me letters asking for advice about textbooks. I make suggestions — for example, Thomas Kidd’s American History (B&H, 2019) is a good main text to use — but also emphasize use of old newspapers to see how people in their own eras viewed important developments. As a teenager I started doing that on my own Read More ›
Recommendation of the month: If you want to learn about both black history and current opportunities for progress, read Black Liberation Through the Marketplace: Hope, Heartbreak, and the Promise of America (Emancipation Books, 2022). Authors Rachel Ferguson and Marcus Witcher cover the free market tradition in Black America and the racist tradition that Jim Crow laws encapsulated. There’s no need Read More ›
