Books & Media Reviews

Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis

In the late 1950s, Robert Putnam, the distinguished social scientist whose 'Bowling Alone' (2000) has become one of the most influential books of our time, lost his campaign for the presidency of his high school class in Port Clinton, Ohio. The victor was one of the few African Americans in the scho...

Reviewed By: Alan Wolfe

Down the Up Escalator: How the 99 Percent Live in the Great Recession

“Something bad has been creeping up the occupational ladder,” warns Barbara Garson, author of Down the Up Escalator: How the 99 Percent Live in the Great Recession. The author sees a broad transformation happening, and through her interviews with average Americans, is able to help us see the Gre...

Reviewed By: Blair Dudik

The Good Lie (movie)

October 16, 2014 The Good Lie is not merely a great movie, it’s also a beautiful movie. What can you say about a movie where the scenes depicted in the closing credits are more powerful than most whole movies from the last decade? The Good Lie, released in October, 2014 in the Unite...

Reviewed By: Steve Hansch

Atlas of African Agriculture Research & Development

The work of agricultural researchers and development workers in Africa has the potential to significantly improve the lives of the poor. But that potential can only be realized with easy access to high-quality data and information. The Atlas of African Agriculture Research & Development highligh...

Reviewed By: International Food Policy Research Institute

Food and Nutrition in Numbers

See full report (249 page PDF)...

Good Food: Grounded Practical Theory

ATLANTA — Emory University’s Jennifer Ayres knows good food. For her, it’s not just about the taste and presentation but rather the item’s history, how it was produced and distributed....

Reviewed By: the General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church

Killing with Kindness: Haiti, International Aid and NGOs

If they knew him at all, the world knew Nigerian Oronto Douglas as the former attorney for the writer, playwright and Ogoni human rights activist Ken Saro Wiwa. Despite Oronto's and even President Bill Clinton's best effort, Ken was framed and hanged in 1995 together with 8 other Ogoni men who dared...

Reviewed By: Beverly Bell

Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain

“An overseas empire produces a vast sea of paper,” John Darwin writes. That sea — wide, deep and often treacherous — is what remains of the British Empire for historians to trawl, though few attempt to chart the whole of it in one relatively compact volume. Darwin managed something similar w...

Reviewed By: Alex von Tunzelmann

Detroit: An American Autopsy

Detroit is one of those taxing places that require you to have an opinion about them. This opinion expresses no mere preference. It amounts to a stance, from which may be inferred your electoral leanings, your racial politics, your union sympathies and the general sunniness of your disposition. The ...

Reviewed By: Paul Clemens

There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra

Chinua Achebe, Nigeria’s distinguished Professor of Literature based in the United States, has recently published ‘There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra’, his war time memoirs and reflections on the process leading to Nigeria’s darkest page in history and its outcome. The 333-pag...

Reviewed By: Tarila Marclint Ebiede