User Profile

Thelin has assembled a formidable, incisive, and extremely engaging work of scholarship on the US higher education industry. Starting with the colonial period and moving until 2019 in the latest edition, Thelin catalogues and analyzes the development of these institutions from a variety of perspectives - financial, admissions processes, the development of research, philanthropic connections, the growth of administration and college sports revenue, and so much more.

Beyond learning a ton about the path the sector took to get where it is today and other potential paths that could be taken, there are a ton of fascinating tidbits included throughout the book. Did you know that the University of Kentucky was originally called Transylvania University? Or that colleges attempted to raise more revenue by selling tickets to lectures? This book is an absolute delight. Highly recommend.

This book reviews the audible communication approaches of a variety of different species, interrogating the evolutionary advantages of different signals and how they relate to cognition and socialization. The audiobook version is particularly good because they play recordings of the different vocalizations Kershenbaum discusses. I would have liked this book to go beyond audio communication only, as most communication is multimodal, and if you've read "Alex and Me" the chapter on parrots is almost entirely superfluous. Still, this book stands as an interesting entry in the animal communication canon.

Aly traces the arc of antisemitism in Europe, showing the Holocaust as an evolution of previous practices across most of the continent (particularly in the east). The details here are genuinely shocking in both their breadth, seeming randomness, and then the systematic oppression that was heaped on top of pogroms through legal dispossession and professional and educational restrictions. The genesis of Zionism is also examined here, and while Aly is sympathetic to many of that movement's motivations given the atrocities constantly flaring up against Jews across the continent, he clearly identifies the colonial fingerprints in it - particularly the blatant disregard for the Muslims that lived in Palestine.

I could've done without the sections on the Holocaust itself, mostly because that history has already been well covered in other volumes. The short sections on post-WW2 were equal parts interesting and horrific to read, though. Highly recommend.

MacPhail goes through the scientific history of the identification and investigation of allergies, following with a good examination of the biological mechanisms at play. There's still a lot we don't know here and this book embraces that uncertainty, running through experiments and the data and then making it clear where the science currently stands. The effects of different allergies on people and their treatments was illuminating as well. Highly recommend.

Zipperstein starts this deeply researched book by reviewing the history of Jews in Eastern Europe in the 19th century and the dawn of the 20th - detailing how my ancestors migrated, lived, and worked in societies that sometimes tolerated them and was given to spurts of violence against them. Then he digs into the Kishinev pogrom and its aftermath, going into (probably too much) detail about the events themselves and the role that the telegraph played in quickly transmitting those atrocities to the world. The strong connection with the subsequent publication of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and other movements across the world are also considered in fascinating detail. Highly recommend.