Earlier this year I read Charles Mann’s 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus and was rewarded with another reminder of how thin my understanding of our hemisphere’s history is and how much new knowledge is being added by multiple disciplines. Here was a whole new world to be --->> read more -->>

Book Review: Page Smith, A New Age Now Begins: a people’s history of the American revolution. 2 vols., 1896pp. Index. Bibliographic note.(New York: Penguin Books, 1976.) This huge work on the American Revolution covers everything from the politics of the war in England to obscure interactions with Indian tribes in --->> read more -->>

The healthcare crisis in the US is growing in severity and yet is not the subject of any real public debate. More than 44 million Americans are without health insurance, and almost 65 million will experience a lack of coverage during the year. Emergency rooms are the primary care provider --->> read more -->>

Through our friend Esther Hanig we attended a showing of Errol Morris’s new documentary, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara  at the Kennedy Library in Dorchester MA on December 14, 2003. This documentary is an extended adventure into the historico-biography of Robert S. McNamara, --->> read more -->>

an essay from the original markorton.com website: Greenland and Global Warming When I looked down into the Grand Canyon for the first time, I paused only for a moment at its immensity and moved right onto a more self-centered thought, “How tiny human history is in all of this, and --->> read more -->>

January 23, 2002 (revised 1/29/02) The collapse of energy giant Enron over the last six months has produced a surprising level of outrage especially for a cynic like me. As this drama continues to unfold, I have been trying to understand how Enron structured their business and made money. Until --->> read more -->>

January 23, 2002 (revised 1/29/02) The collapse of energy giant Enron over the last six months has produced a surprising level of outrage especially for a cynic like me. As this drama continues to unfold, I have been trying to understand how Enron structured their business and made money. Until --->> read more -->>

Whose Opinion (Advice) Is This? The Problem At a time when we are quite aware of the need for and value of transparency in the reporting of the activities of corporations (thanks most recently to the Enron affair), we could quite usefully extend this transparency metaphor to other parts of --->> read more -->>