Articles by Department: Books

Economists have always been very good at detailing the material consequences of modern economic growth. It makes us taller: we are perhaps seven…

The Talking Ape: How Language Evolved, by Robbins Burling, Ph.D. ’58 (Oxford University Press, $29.95). A persuasive, urbane, and…

He was an admiralty lawyer whose second career was to effect improvements in public affairs—“meddling,” as he put it. CCB: The…

It began with Isaac Newton. With the publication of his Principia in 1687, Newton became the first scientist to demonstrate that nature’s…

The Philosopher Fish: Sturgeon, Caviar, and the Geography of Desire, by Richard Adams Carey ’73 (Counterpoint, $26) is a captivatingly…

François Jacob, one of the pioneers in molecular biology, was interviewed a few years ago for an educational video now used in…

Harvard’s Secret Court: The Savage 1920 Purge of Campus Homosexuals, by William Wright (St. Martin’s Press, $25.95). A…

A child has been killed in war every three minutes during the last decade. Many were not civilians. Irregular armies from Sudan to the…

Revolutionary Generation: Harvard Men and the Consequences of Independence, by Conrad Edick Wright ’72 (University of Massachusetts Press…

Seventeen authors, several of them Harvardians, reread a book or a poem (or the Sgt. Pepper lyrics) that impressed them in their youths and…

Few Supreme Court justices, after their appointments, have drastically changed their fundamental views of law and life. Most justtices, after…

Miss Leavitt’s Stars: The Untold Story of the Forgotten Woman Who Discovered How to Measure the Universe, by George Johnson (W.W. Norton…

The polymathic Nicholas D. Humez ’69—silversmith, author, banjoist, classical philologist, composer of operas and string quartets…

Novelist and teacher of writing Nicholas Delbanco ’63 explores a box in the attic in one of nine essays, “In Defense of…

Saving Higher Education in the Age of Money, by James Engell ’73, Ph.D. ’78, Gurney professor of English and professor of…