"Is It Possible to Imagine a Different Politics"?

"At a time of national division some 57 years ago, Robert Kennedy attracted disparate groups of voters who were otherwise at each other's throats. Today, as we have just come through a set of elections in which many Americans expressed dissatisfaction with their choices, RFK's example points to something more inspiring: a politics that tamps down, rather than sows, racial division; that seeks to treat all Americans with dignity; that crosses political ideologies to seize on the best ideas; and that can instill a deep pride in country. It will be fascinating to watch in the years to come which set of political leaders, if any, will seek to take up his mantle."

At The Liberal Patriot, Richard Kahlenberg and Ruy Teixeira present a "deep dive into the political worldview of Robert F. Kennedy [Sr.]."

"A Book That Will Change Both the Way We Think about Society and the Way We Do Economics"

"Still, today’s economic elite is very different from that of the nineteenth century, isn’t it? Back then, great wealth tended to be inherited; aren’t today’s economic elite people who earned their position? Well, Piketty tells us that this isn’t as true as you think, and that in any case this state of affairs may prove no more durable than the middle-class society that flourished for a generation after World War II. The big idea of Capital in the Twenty-First Century is that we haven’t just gone back to nineteenth-century levels of income inequality, we’re also on a path back to 'patrimonial capitalism,' in which the commanding heights of the economy are controlled not by talented individuals but by family dynasties."


In The New York Review of Books, Paul Krugman reviews Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century.


As does Robert M. Solow in The New Republic.


And Noah Millman in The American Conservative.

"The First Direct Evidence of Black Drink"

"Crown explains that because the bushes weren’t native to Cahokia but to the coastal region between eastern Texas and Florida, the leaves must have been brought to the inland city through trade routes connecting the two areas, which suggests the drink had huge cultural importance. Whether the Cahokians used black drink ritually isn’t known, but its appearance in fine-quality beakers suggests it was highly prized, if not sacred."

Elizabeth Norton in Science magazine reports on new evidence of an old beverage in pre-colonial America.