A Living Constitution

In Constitutional Illusions & Anchoring Truths, Hadley Arkes tries find a path between a conservative interpretation of the US Constitution and the living Constitution.  The Wall Street Journal reviews it here.

Ravenna in Context: Where Kings and Emperors Once Lived

In Ravenna in Late Antiquity, Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis looks at one of the most important cities of late antique Europe over the course of 350 years – tracing its expansion as well as its artistic growth. Many remarkable works of art and architecture from this late ancient world still survive today.

With this weekend’s Wall Street Journal, scholar Stuart Ferguson puts the unique legacy of Ravenna in context – and calls Ravenna in Late Antiquity “fascinating and dense” – “both a narrative history of the city’s ruling elites and a survey of its architectural and artistic treasures. . . . [treasures] worth pausing over.”

The Science and Politics of Climate Change

Writing for the Wall Street Journal, Mike Hulme has given us the most eloquently clear and reasonable outlook on the intersection of science, politics, economics, and the public that I have yet come across.

WSJ Five Best – Novels About Mental Disorders

Psychology historian Douwe Draaisma writes for the Wall Street Journal’s “Five Best” column on the best novels dealing with mental disorders. Draaisma’s “Disturbances of the Mind” is a sensitive, fascinating set of histories of a dozen disorders.

The Climate-Industrial Complex

The tight relationship between the groups echoes the relationship among weapons makers, researchers and the U.S. military during the Cold War. President Dwight Eisenhower famously warned about the might of the “military-industrial complex,” cautioning that “the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” He worried that “there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties.”