BOOK BY STEPHEN P. WELDON JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2020 Stephen P. Weldon’s book, which originated with his 1997 doctoral dissertation and is part of the publisher’s series Medicine, Science, and Religion in Historical Context,... Read More

BY WILLIAM F. SCHULZ AND SUSHMA RAMAN HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2020 Civilization is undergoing tremendous technological change. Computers and the internet have opened huge new areas of information and surveillance opportunities. Biotechnology and genetics have... Read More

BY ARIEL SABAR DOUBLEDAY, 2020 Ariel Sabar probably considered “veritas”—Latin for “truth” and the motto of Harvard University—the perfect ironic title for this book. “Ironic,” however, is too mild to describe the contents of Veritas:... Read More

BY KURT ANDERSEN RANDOM HOUSE, 2020 If you like conspiracy theories, Kurt Andersen has a good one for you. Once upon a time there was a well-functioning democratic society that valued fairness, opportunity, and public... Read More

BY RICHARD WRANGHAM VINTAGE BOOKS, 2019 Already in the preface, Richard Wrangham’s The Goodness Paradox put a smile on my face. Wrangham there advocates the position that humans are naturally capable of both good and... Read More

With the Supreme Court vacancy created by the death Friday of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the idea of any semblance of balance on the high court seems remote. However, as put forth in Adam Cohen’s... Read More

BY BRIAN GREENE KNOPF, 2020 It doesn’t get much more ambitious than this. In Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe, Columbia University physicist and mathematician... Read More