Recently, Jess Bravin appeared on “Democracy Now” to discuss his new book, The Terror Courts: Rough Justice at Guantanamo Bay. He spoke on the government’s military commissions at Guantanamo Bay and the legal implications of these actions. Describing his reporting for the The Wall Street Journal, Bravin said: I got wind of work in the Bush […]
As with other elections in the years past, next month’s contest between Obama and Romney will be influenced by vexed issues relating to religion. Health care and citizens’ access to contraception; same-sex marriage; hate speech; the list goes on. The election is furthermore complicated by the two candidates’ religious beliefs (or, in Obama’s case, people’s […]
In his preface to The Voting Wars: From Florida 2000 to the Next Election Meltdown, Richard L. Hasen explains how Americans’ belief in electoral integrity has changed over the years—in particular, since 2000, the year of the presidential election between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore. Prior to the election, people tended to […]
If you are sitting at a restaurant and the waiters arrive carrying a desert and singing “Happy Birthday” to a patron nearby a few thoughts may run through your head. Perhaps you think it’s sweet or even embarrassing, but the question you may want to ask is: is it legal? Copyright issues surrounding the song […]
The Hebrew Bible, the twenty-four books that make up the Old Testament of the Christian Bible, tell the stories of the creation of the earth and the founding of the Jewish religion. In God’s Shadow: Politics in the Hebrew Bible, Michael Walzer engages in a decade-long process of researching how politics is portrayed in and influences […]
The 1831 removal of five Indian tribes from the southeastern United States to Indian Territory near present-day Oklahoma is known to us as The Trail of Tears. In Savages and Scoundrels: The Untold Story of America’s Road to Empire Through Indian Territory,Paul VanDevelder follows the stories from this trail, the legal battles, and historical influence […]
Follow @yaleSCIbooks Merriam Webster defines “natural” as “growing without human care; not cultivated,” but one organization that does not define how the word natural can be used is the Food and Drug Administration. This absence of a definition in the food industry is at the heart of Alissa Hamilton’s Squeezed: What You Don’t Know About […]
American politics is, by definition, divisive, but in the 2012 election perhaps no single word demonstrates this better than Obamacare. In Remedy and Reaction: The Peculiar American Struggle Over Health Care Reform, Paul Starr, a former senior advisor on health policy for the Clinton administration, examines the political and economic forces that have shaped American […]
The debates over religion and religious freedom are almost as American as flying the stars and stripes, fireworks on July 4th, and Friday night football games. In Endowed by Our Creator: The Birth of Religious Freedom in America, Michael I. Meyerson explores the debate between religious freedom and religious idealism, which has been a hot-button […]
Today, cases of reported sexual harassment in government offices, businesses, and universities are ubiquitous. Yet in Sex and the Office: A History of Gender, Power, and Desire, Julie Berebitsky reminds the reader that the very concept of “sexual harassment” is a fairly new one. At least as long as there have been female office workers, […]
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