The Essence of Politics

Recent News

• At Boston Review, Democracy by Petition author Daniel Carpenter considered how the path of the “citizens’ petition,” first sent to the U.S. Food & Drug Administration in 2013, proposing a ban on menthol cigarettes recalls a lost political tradition in which the complaints of any citizen could get a hearing publicly in Congress.
• Beronda L. Montgomery, author of Lessons from Plants, discussed plant memory, senses, and communication with UK gardening columnist Jane Perrone on Perrone’s podcast On the Ledge.
• With the deadline for the 2021 FAFSA looming, Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, author of the forthcoming Indentured Students, wrote at the Washington Post about the unfairness and complexity at the heart of the American system of financial aid for higher education.
• William Sturkey, author of Hattiesburg: An American City in Black and White, described at the Atlantic how racism entrenched in the historical record has obscured understanding of past Black American lives—and how advances in technology and new scholarly approaches are helping historians rectify the issue.