background on Transitions

Have you ever heard of "Stein’s Law"? Named after University of Virginia economics professor Herbert Stein, it states: "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." Do you...

Sociologist Ann Swidler has written persuasively about the difference between “settled” and “unsettled” times. Settled times consist of “traditions and common sense; [within which we] refine and reinf...

Not long after the December 2012 Newtown shootings, and all the speeches by civic leaders, memorial services, and funerals were over, Samuel G. Freedman wrote a column in The New York Times titled “In...