As a child growing up in Savannah, Georgia, Mary Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) felt a strange and powerful connection to her father, Edward. Some of this naturally stemmed from their striking physical resemblance—the same large, piercing eyes, the same facial expressions. But more important to Mary, their whole way of thinking and feeling seemed completely in […]

On September 11, 2001, around 8:00 A.M., thousands of eager investment analysts, successful stockbrokers, bankers, traders, security guards, and secretaries made their way on the New York subway, on the city’s harbor ferries, and in its yellow cabs to southern Manhattan. The offices that awaited them filled 220 vast floors in the twin towers of […]

How well or poorly are teachers and schools teaching beyond the knowledge society? Recent patterns of educational reform in England and the United States begin to provide an answer. An appraisal of how England’s educational reforms fared under Tony Blair’s first period of Labor government found much to commend in its first wave of initiatives. […]

Teachers who teach beyond the knowledge society develop not only intellectual capital in their students but also social capital: the ability to form networks, forge relationships, and contribute to as well as draw on the human resources of the community and wider society. Francis Fukuyama defines social capital as “a set of informal values or […]

THE SOUTH SEA BUBBLE Three centuries ago, in 1711, a business called the South Sea Company was established to assume 10 million pounds of Great Britain’s national debt, at 6 percent interest. In exchange, the company was granted a monopoly by the British government to trade in the South Seas. In these times preceding the […]

Late in 1933, Adolf Hitler appointed the forty-six-yearold Rear Admiral Wilhelm Canaris chief of the Abwehr, the secret intelligence and counterespionage service of the German General Staff. Hitler had recently won dictatorial powers as the ruler of Germany, and, with an eye on future conquests in Europe, he wanted Canaris to make the Abwehr an […]