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Among the many unexpected findings that I uncovered while researching my book on the Second Seminole War (1835-1842), the most startling was the major role of malaria. Previous historians of this often-marginalized war have focused on traditional wartime...

One of my most vivid memories from my experience as a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Senegal occurred soon after I moved to my assigned village. A group of NGO and government workers arrived to immunize children. Village elites enthusiastically told them to...

The journal Perspectives in Biology and Medicine recently published a special issue on decisions involving medical futility. The issue features 21 responses to a paper written by Lawrence J. Schneiderman, Nancy S. Jecker and Albert R. Jonsen. Editor Martha...

CHANCE PARTICULARS: A WRITER’S FIELD NOTEBOOK… Why did I write Chance Particulars, a guide to keeping a field notebook? Most of my books, I have written spurred by my own curiosity or lust, or from a need to sort something out--books about the creeds of lonely...

With the announced retirement of Rep. Rick Nolan of Minnesota, a milestone in congressional history will be reached next January. For the first time in 48 years, the House will contain no one elected to the historic post-Watergate 94th Congress, the Class of...

MORALIZING THE MARKET This book started as an inquiry into a very specific case of policy transfer from the United States to France in the late 1960s: prompted by the outrage generated by a spectacular insider trading scandal at the Paris Bourse, French policy...

After finishing my previous book about lie detection technologies (The Lying Brain), I went in search other machines that monitor various physiological data, analyze them according to a specific algorithm, and produce information about what a subject is...

Why One Refrigeration History Book Was Not EnoughI first became interested in the history of refrigeration while I was in graduate school, when I started leafing through back issues of a late-nineteenth century trade journal housed in the engineering library...

Remembering Llewellyn Thompson by Jenny and Sherry Thompson Llewellyn Thompson died forty-six years ago, on February 6, 1972, shortly after his retirement at the age of 68. He was one of the most critical players in the Cold War, engaging directly with Soviet...

I wanted to be an airline pilot since I was young, and began reading as much as I could about flying from age 10. I largely credit my father, Dr. James Hedges, an English Professor, for kindling my love of reading. Books about planes filled my youth. I started...