Foster Hirsch discusses Hollywood’s most turbulent decade – the fifties

Hollywood in the 1950s was a period when the film industry both set conventions and broke norms and traditions—from Cinerama, CinemaScope, and VistaVision to the epic film and lavish musical. It was a decade that saw the rise of the anti-hero; the smoldering, the hidden, and the unspoken; teenagers gone wild in the streets; the

Read more

FROM THE PAGE: An excerpt from Vauhini Vara’s Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age

From the author of The Immortal King Rao, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, a personal exploration of how technology companies have both fulfilled and exploited the human desire for understanding and connection.   Chapter 1 Your Whole Life Will Be Searchable I first encountered the internet at the home of a girl from school whose parents were

Read more

FROM THE PAGE: An excerpt from Raymond Antrobus’s The Quiet Ear: An Investigation of Missing Sound

Raymond Antrobus was first diagnosed as deaf at the age of six. He discovered he had missing sounds—bird calls, whistles, kettles, alarms. Teachers thought he was slow and disruptive, some didn’t believe he was deaf at all. The Quiet Ear tells the story of Antrobus’s upbringing at the intersection of race and disability. Growing up in

Read more

Books for Constitution Day

Constitution Day commemorates the formation and signing of the United States Constitution on September 17th, 1787. This collection of titles provides insight into how the Constitution has been amended and utilized to define the basic rights of United States citizens and highlights the cases and people who fought for those rights.

Read more