Blog
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Trusting Your News Feed
10 Investigative Reporting Outlets to Follow January 13, 2017 This post first appeared on BillMoyers.com. We’ve just started a new series highlighting some of the best, in-depth investigative journalism that is uncovering real news, revealing wrongdoing and fomenting change. As a compendium, here are 10 investigative reporting outlets that are worth following if they’re not
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2017 Isn’t ‘1984’
2017 isn’t ‘1984’ – it’s stranger than Orwell imagined John Broich, Case Western Reserve University A week after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, George Orwell’s “1984” is the best-selling book on Amazon.com. The hearts of a thousand English teachers must be warmed as people flock to a novel published in 1949 for ways to think about
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The Shoe Room: A Visit to the U.S. Holocaust Museum
Today, January 27, is Holocaust memorial Day. An appropriate day to re-post this bit about my visit to the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. a few years ago. Let’s read and remember and understand that by the time the bad guys (of any stripe) start the expulsions, legalize the executions, and dig the mass
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Renewing an Oath
Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall educate people, answer any question, and read to children. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my reference desk. I am the candle in the darkness. I am the watcher
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Reader’s Advisory: The Handmaid’s Tale
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is an old favorite of those who would make unpleasant books go away, and was listed 37th on the American Library Association’s list of 100 Most Banned Books from 1990 to 1999. It was challenged in 2001 in Dripping Springs, Texas by a group of parents who declared it
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The Smartest Ones in the Room: A Review of Hidden Figures
In 1961, America was all about the mission. A directive that sounds simple was but was anything but. The Space Race between the USA and the USSR was on. Both sides were engaged in a game of technological Can You Top This? and the Russians were winning. Cold War America was held in the grip
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My Expocalyptic Stomping Ground
The rule is: write what you know. Years ago, I worked in a retail software store in lower Manhattan in the financial district. I had regular contact with the locals, the NYSE market makers, the stock brokers, the office workers and the early finance types who orked in the area. When the idea for The
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The Expocalypse Arrives!
“The Taste Makers serves up an apocalypse easily worthy of The Joker’s most diabolical of schemes. Frater executes The Gotham/NYC food scene with a savvy panache and a spicy menace that, pardon the pun, cuts like a knife. This is one weird serving of an Apocalypse that’s singular, and frightening, in vision. Try a slice