Renowned American sociologist William Julius Wilson takes a look at the social transformation of inner city ghettos, offering a sharp evaluation of the convergence of race and poverty. Rejecting both conservative and liberal interpretations of life i...

We didn't always eat the way we do today, or think and feel about eating as we now do. But we can trace the roots of our own eating culture back to the culinary world of early modern Europe, which invented cutlery, haute cuisine, the weight-loss diet...

One of the most well-established relationships in the economics of aging is that between health and wealth. Yet this relationship is also changing in conjunction with a rapidly aging population as well as a broad evolution in how people live later in...

The thirteenth century saw such a proliferation of new encyclopedic texts that more than one scholar has called it the "century of the encyclopedias". Variously referred to as a "speculum", "thesaurus", or "imago mundi" – the term encyclopedia was no...

Much of the history of the evolutionary debate since Darwin has focused on the level at which natural selection occurs. Most biologists acknowledge multiple levels of selection – from the gene, the trait, and the organism, to the family, the group, a...

In the thirty years since the first "test-tube baby", in-vitro fertilization and other methods of reproductive assistance have become a common aspect of family life and medicine in developed nations – and, increasingly, throughout the world. This col...

In the second half of the nineteenth century, American cities began to go dark. Hulking new buildings overspread blocks, pollution obscured the skies, and glass and smog screened out the health-giving rays of the sun. Doctors fed anxities about these...

The definitive history of pawnbroking in the United States from the nation's founding through the Great Depression, "In Hock" demonstrates that the pawnshop was essential to the rise of capitalism. The class of working poor created by this economic t...

Located in the heart of England's Lake District, the placid waters of Thirlmere seem to be the embodiment of pastoral beauty. But under their calm surface lurks the legacy of a nineteenth-century conflict that pitted industrial progress against natur...

The act of interrogation, and debate over its use, pervade our culture, whether through fictionalized depictions in movies and television or discussions of real-life interrogations on the news. But despite daily mentions of the practice in the media,...