In The Forgotten Presidents: Their Untold Constitutional Legacy, Michael J. Gerhardt, tries, not altogether successfully, to make people like Franklin Pierce and Calvin Coolidge interesting The following review has been posted on the Books page of the History News Network.   In The Forgotten Presidents, University of North Carolina law school ...

In Democracy of Sound: Music Piracy and the Remaking of American Copyright in the Twentieth Century, Alex Sayf Cummings traces churning tides of freedom in the business of distributing music The following review has been posted on the Books page of the History News Network.    It seems like it was so much easier in aristocratic societies: ...

The Horace Chronicles, #6 September 30 Dear Maya, Today Mr. Smith told a story. I recorded it on my phone (I've been doing this lately; he says it's OK). ''So I want to tell you about two people,'' he said about halfway through class about the fights between the British and French in the colonies in the 1700s.  ''One is an old woman named ...

   The Horace Chronicles, #5 September 22 Dear Maya, For the past couple days we’d been learning about slavery. Mr. Smith had us read about stuff like the Triangular Trade. He explained how slavery was different in North America than it was in South America (apparently North American slaves had it a little better because the weather ...

 The Horace Chronicles, #4 September 15 Dear Maya, I paid a visit to Mr. Smith's office on Friday morning. We had a DBQ -- a Document-Based Question -- to write an essay about. All the documents (they were more like little pieces from bigger documents) related to the English colonies in the 1600s. We read the documents for homework, spent a day ...

    The Horace Chronicles, #3in which we see a teacher make an opening move September 5 Dear Maya, The first day of school was really long, because it was really hot. By the end of first period I could feel the sweat trickle down the back of the new Beatles vintage Abbey Road t-shirt my mother got me at Target. Mr. Alfonsin took mercy on ...

-->  The Horace Chronicles, #2   in which we see two people trying to balance their books  August 27  Dear Maya, When I got home after my last shift at the pool, I was surprised to find my dad sitting at the dining room table. He had his laptop open and a calculator at his side, and he was peering at his checkbook. These were not good ...

The Horace Chronicles, #1August 20 Dear Maya, I guess the first time I remember thinking much about Mr. Smith was at the end of last summer when I ran into Sean Catalano at the pool. My shift at the front desk had just ended and I headed over to the snack bar for a cheeseburger when I saw him drinking a coke by himself at one of the tables. ...

In The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail -- But Some Don't, statistician extraordinaire Nate Silver argues for the value of calculation The following review has been posted on the Books page of the History News Network.   This one that almost got away. Though I was a faithful reader of Nate Silver's 538 blog in The New York ...

In How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia Mohsin Hamid captures the green light -- again. The following review has been posted on the Books page of the History News Network.   How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia solidifies Mohsin Hamid's claim as a major contemporary novelist. It showcases what have become a familiar set of gifts, among them a ...