The literary world is abuzz over Lionel Shriver’s new novel The New Republic, a satire about international terrorism and oppression. If that wasn’t controversial enough, the polemic author concludes with a prickly handling of the 9/11 attacks. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is abuzz over another tale of terrorism and oppression, The Hunger Games, which concludes with the prickly fiasco of children [...]

“Let us not be defeated by the tyranny of the world financial markets that threaten peace and democracy everywhere,” bellows ninety-three year old Stéphane Hessel. Hessel, a German Jew born in Berlin and raised in Paris, is a political writer, human rights advocate, and diplomat, who survived most of the last one hundred years. As a young man during the [...]

For those of us who were children during September 2001, learning the bellicose realities of  the Taliban and the history of Afghanistan has often felt like running down a dark hallway towards a door that leaps further away every time you get close enough to grasp the knob. At twelve, predictably, an unauthorized biography of Posh Spice won out over Kuwait: [...]

On the evening of April 17, 1790, over twenty thousand citizens of Philadelphia walked the city streets in solemn procession mourning the death of their local hero, Benjamin Franklin. “The Clergymen of the city, all of them, of every faith” led the march writes David L. Holmes, author of The Faiths of the Founding Fathers. Why would clergymen of various–and sometimes [...]

Like most young people, as an eager girl at St. Martin of Tours Parish School in Philadelphia, I learned a lot about dead people. Saints, scientists, presidents, dictators, the Holy Family. I pondered their accomplishments, memorized their cardboard faces taped on Catholic chalkboards, and repeated my prayers to the sky in their honor. I even had favorites. One was Alexander [...]

What do Mark Zuckerberg and Johannes Gutenberg have in common? For starters, they both owe a lot of their success to their predecessors, Andrew Weinreich (creator of Sixdegrees.com, the first of our modern day social networking sites) and Bì Shēng (inventor of movable type), respectively. Secondly-and more relevant to this book review-they both can be regarded as major contributors to the externalization of [...]

If there was ever a time to brush up on Physics, 2012 is that time. Large Hadron Collider? Not going away anytime soon. That so-called God-Particle, the Higgs boson? It may end up making more headlines than the Kardashians (well, I can only hope). The Big Bang Theory? On Thanksgiving, a repeat episode scored more viewers than A Very Gaga Thanksgiving, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, and the annual Macy’s [...]

Diane Keaton was a Millennial before the word Millennial existed. For this reason, though her birthdate places her squarely in the Baby Boomer box, her story and ambition can resonate with those of us waltzing with quarter-life crises. In her new memoir, Then Again, the actress explores this overruling ambition, which eclipsed her complex relationship with her mother and  even those [...]

  I chose Mindy Kaling’s Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me for my first review not because I watch The Office (I should) nor because I somehow relate to Mindy Kaling’s upbringing as a New England offspring of an OB-GYN and an architect (I’ve never met a real architect and I hate going to the OB-GYN). Rather, I like successful [...]