Since before recorded history, people have congregated near water. But as growing populations around the globe continue to flow toward the coasts on an unprecedented scale and climate change raises water levels, our relationship to the sea has begun to take on new and potentially catastrophic dimens[...]
Our whole society may be obsessed with "family values," but as John Gillis points out in this entertaining and eye-opening book, most of our images of "home sweet home" are of very recent vintage. "A World of Their Own Making" examines our idealized notion of "The Family," a mind-set in which myth a[...]
Memory is as central to modern politics as politics is central to modern memory. We are so accustomed to living in a forest of monuments, to having the past represented to us through museums, historic sites, and public sculpture, that we easily lose sight of the recent origins and diverse meanings o[...]