The following are the top ten best books I’ve read since this time last year — in alphabetical order by the author’s last name because agonizing over a precise order would take all the fun out of remembering these books: 1. Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government by Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels(Princeton University Press, 2017):  assails the romantic folk-theory at the heart of contemporary thinking about democratic politics and government, and offers a provocative alternative view... Read more

Fifty years ago, the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) invited The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to deliver the renowned Massey Lectures, a series of talks broadcast live over the radio that continues annually to this day. And whereas some lectureships have a narrow focus, the tradition of the Massey Lectures is broad. Speakers are asked to “explore the ideas that make us who we are and ask the questions that make us better human beings.” If you are interested... Read more

Cass Sunstein is a Harvard Professor who also happens to be the most frequently-cited legal scholar in America by a wide margin. I first learned about him in 2008 through his bestselling book Nudge, which he co-authored with Richard Thaler, who recently won the Nobel Prize for economics. It’s a fascinating study of how we can tweak systems in our world to—you guessed it—nudge people toward making better decisions. I bring up Sunstein because last year I was delighted to... Read more

Carrie Newcomer is a Quaker singer-songwriter. And there is a line from one of her songs that has lingered with me since I first heard it a few years ago. She laments—or maybe she confesses—that we’ve “Been traveling faster than our souls can go.” Can you relate? In our globalized, always-connected, Internet Age, I suspect that at some point most of us have found ourselves “traveling faster than our souls can go.” Don’t get me wrong. I like to move... Read more

The best guide I have found recently for glimpsing into forthcoming bioethical challenges to come is Our Grandchildren Redesigned: Life in the Bioengineered Society of the Near Future (Beacon Press, 2016) by Michael Bess, a professor at Vanderbilt University who specialized in the history of technological change.  Bess also helpfully points beyond the pages of his writing to some of the best science fiction films and TV shows, which are among the more fun ways of opening our minds to the ethical... Read more

Have you ever wondered where creativity comes from? And why do some people seems to have so many original ideas? The best book I have read about how each of us is much more creative than we have sometimes been taught is The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. Relatedly, one of my favorite quotes about why each of us should explore our creative side is from the modern dancer and choreographer Martha Graham (1894-1991) who said: There is a vitality,... Read more

Democracy was born in ancient Athens. 2,500 years ago, around the turn from the 5th to the 4th century B.C.E., when revolts against the rule of tyrants gave people (δημο/dēmo–) the power (κρατία/-kratia) to rule. Those uprisings gave us the word democracy (δημο-κρατία/dēmo-kratía) (Crick 14). But beyond that basic definition of “rule by the people,” we need to be honest that democracy is a word that is widely used and abused. Indeed, democracy is an example of what philosophers call “an... Read more

Today, the celebration on most people’s minds is Halloween. Don’t get me wrong: I’m all for trick-or-treating! But today is also: the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation. On October 31, 1517,  a thirty-four year-old monk nailed a large parchment with Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. Typically, a list of propositions for debate would find a limited audience within the ivory tower of academia. But in this case, Luther’s ideas spread quickly, sparking a controversy that... Read more

This month marks both the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation in 1517. And I would like to reflect on these two events, in turn, in this post and next week’s post. What lessons are there for us today from looking back on these two historic events? To begin responding to that question, I invite you to consider one of my favorite quotes from the late American Pragmatist philosopher Richard... Read more