Public Philosophy

Dorothy A. Brown became a tax lawyer to get away from race. As a young black girl growing up in the South Bronx, she’d seen how racism limited the lives of her family and neighbors. Her law school classes offered a refreshing contrast: Tax law was about numbers, and the only color that mattered was green. But when Brown sat down to prepare tax returns for her parents, she found something strange: James and Dottie Brown, a plumber and a nurse, seemed to be paying an unusually high percentage of their income in taxes. When Brown became a law professor, she set out to understand why.

A History of the World in Six Plagues shows that throughout history, outbreaks of disease have been exacerbated by and gone on to further expand the racial, economic, and sociopolitical divides we allow to fester in times of good health. Princeton-trained historian Edna Bonhomme’s examination of humanity’s disastrous treatment of pandemic disease takes us across place and time from Port-au-Prince to Tanzania, and from plantation-era America to our modern COVID-19-scarred world to unravel shocking truths about the patterns of discrimination in the face of disease.

Why is the Atlantic slowly filling with crude petroleum, threatening a millions-of-years-old ecological balance? Why did traders at prominent banks take high-risk gambles with the money entrusted to them by hundreds of thousands of clients around the world, expanding and leveraging their investments to the point that failure led to a global financial crisis that left millions of people jobless and hundreds of cities economically devastated?

In 1954, the Supreme Court's Brown decision ended segregated schooling in the United States, but regrettably, as documented in congressional testimony and transcripts, it also ended the careers of a generation of highly qualified and credentialed Black teachers and principals. In the Deep South and northern border states over the decades following Brown, Black schools were illegally closed and Black educators were displaced en masse. By engaging with the complicated legacy of the Brown decision, Leslie T. Fenwick illuminates a crucial chapter in education history.

There are few visible markers of the accomplishments of public health. When epidemiologists do their jobs, nothing happens. An outbreak does not grow into an epidemic. A child does not go hungry. A would-be smoker never lights up. In this fascinating window into the secret life of public health, Caitlin Rivers weaves together stories of triumph and tragedy to show that by making sure things don't happen, she and legions of scientists, practitioners, and policymakers change the course of history.

Minouche Shafik takes us through stages of life we all experience - raising children, getting educated, falling ill, working, growing old - and shows how a reordering of our societies is possible. Drawing on evidence and examples from around the world, she shows how every country can provide citizens with the basics to have a decent life and be able to contribute to society. But we owe each other more than this.

Pandora's Lab takes us from opium's heyday as the pain reliever of choice to recognition of opioids as a major cause of death in the United States; from the rise of trans fats as the golden ingredient for tastier, cheaper food to the heart disease epidemic that followed; and from the cries to ban DDT for the sake of the environment to an epidemic-level rise in world malaria.

Efforts to address inequities within our schools tend to ignore the underlying beliefs that sustain injustices, and focus instead on short-lived policies and practices. This book takes a different approach to eradicating educational disparities. Drawing on more than 40 interviews with teachers, principals, and district leaders, Manya C. Whitaker offers educators guidance for leading a school or district grounded in social justice that centers teachers - not just teaching practices - and that focuses on the belief systems that shape decision-making.

Despite being immensely popular - and immensely lucrative - education is grossly overrated. In this explosive book, Bryan Caplan argues that the primary function of education is not to enhance students' skill but to certify their intelligence, work ethic, and conformity - in other words, to signal the qualities of a good employee.

In every issue of modern society - from climate change to vaccinations, transportation to technology, health care to defense - we are in the midst of an unprecedented expansion of scientific progress and a simultaneous expansion of danger. At the very time we need them most, scientists and the idea of objective knowledge are being bombarded by a vast, well-funded, three-part war on science: the identity politics war on science, the ideological war on science, and the industrial war on science.

For generations, teachers have been excellent role models, investing their time and energy into fundamental lessons. However, today a growing number think they, the school board, and their school system know more than parents about what should be taught to students. You need to know what is going on in your child’s school and be prepared for the conflict of values that you may have to face.

In 2014, after a brief orientation course and a few fingerprinting sessions, Nicholson Baker became an on-call substitute teacher in a Maine public school district. He awoke to the dispatcher's five-forty a.m. phone call and headed to one of several nearby schools; when he got there, he did his best to follow lesson plans and help his students get something done. What emerges from Baker's experience is a complex, often touching deconstruction of public schooling in America.

Urgent as ever, Like a Thief in Broad Daylight illuminates the new dangers as well as the radical possibilities thrown up by today's technological and scientific advances and their electrifying implications for us all.

In Modern Social Imaginaries, Taylor continues his recent reflections on the theme of multiple modernities. To account for the differences among modernities, Taylor sets out his idea of the social imaginary, a broad understanding of the way a given people imagine their collective social life. Retelling the history of Western modernity, Taylor traces the development of a distinct social imaginary.

"Climate change is a hoax - and so is coronavirus." "Vaccines are bad for you." These days, many of our fellow citizens reject scientific expertise and prefer ideology to facts. They are not merely uninformed - they are misinformed. They cite cherry-picked evidence, rely on fake experts, and believe conspiracy theories. How can we get them to change their minds and accept the facts when they don't believe in facts? In this book, Lee McIntyre shows that anyone can fight back against science deniers, and argues that it's important to do so. Science denial can kill.

The Sane Society is a continuation and extension of the brilliant psychiatric concepts Erich Fromm first formulated in Escape from Freedom; it is also, in many ways, an answer to Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents. Fromm examines man’s escape into over conformity and the danger of robotism in contemporary industrial society: Modern humanity has, he maintains, been alienated from the world of their own creation. Here Fromm offers a complete and systematic exploration of his “humanistic psychoanalysis.”

This compassionate, personal, and illuminating work of nonfiction draws on the author's celebrated work as a director of socially conscious theater to connect listeners with the power of an ancient artistic tradition. For years Bryan Doerries has been producing ancient tragedies for current and returned servicemen and women, addicts, tornado and hurricane victims, and a wide range of other at-risk people in society.

From the time Courtney E. Martin strapped her daughter, Maya, to her chest for long walks, she was curious about Emerson Elementary, a public school down the street from her Oakland home. She learned that White families in their gentrifying neighborhood largely avoided the majority-Black, poorly-rated school. As she began asking why, a journey of a thousand moral miles began. Learning in Public is the story, not just Courtney’s journey, but a whole country’s.

From the former secretary of defense and author of the acclaimed #1 best-selling memoir Duty, a characteristically direct, informed, and urgent assessment of why big institutions are failing us and how smart, committed leadership can effect real improvement regardless of scale.

A call to save ourselves and our planet by targeting the root of our inaction: extreme shortsightedness.