Sublime

My mother was proud, vain, and competitive. Despite evidence to the contrary, she claimed she never had fevers, detected spots on her clothing no one else could see, and kicked higher and harder than anyone else in her exercise classes. She spent long hours writing deep papers for a book club to which she belonged. She wanted those papers to shine,

During my first two years as an undergraduate, and a little less austerely during the third year, I lived as an intellectual. From 6:00 in the morning, when I rose, until 10:00 at night, when I went to bed, seven days a week, I was immersed in books and talk of books. That included mealtimes and most of my socializing hours. The survey courses prov

We want to avoid nearing the crisis point to begin with because it is so stressful, and so we naturally start putting structures in place to prevent our kids from even coming close to a failure.

In this group of chapters on decline and regeneration, I intend to dwell on several powerful forces that can influence, for good or for ill, the growth of diversity and vitality in cities, once an area is not crippled by lack of one or more of the four conditions necessary for generating diversity. These forces, in the form that they work for ill,

In 1997, anticipating the vast potential of online teaching, Peter Drucker even proclaimed that the traditional college campus would become as obsolete by 2020 as the typewriter and the quill pen.

Homework accounted for most of the loss, falling from 24.38 hours per week in 1961 to only 14.40 hours in 2004.

Starting in the 1960s, the social and legal institutions of America were remade to try to eliminate unfair choices by people in positions of responsibility. The new legal structures reflected a deep distrust of human authority in even its more benign forms—a teacher’s authority in the classroom, or a manager’s judgments about who’s doing the job, o