Dec 15, 2015
1 Min read time
Share:
Read our most-loved (and most-clicked) stories of the year.
In no particular order, here are some of our most-loved, and most-read, stories from 2015:
1. The Logic of Effective Altruism | Peter Singer believes that charitable giving is central to an ethical life and should only be directed to organizations that are highly efficient at lifesaving interventions. Daron Acemoglu, Angus Deaton, and others respond.
2. The Lure of Luxury | Paul Bloom leads a forum exploring why luxury items possess value that far surpasses their practical utility.
3. The Virtue of Scientific Thinking | Steven Shapin writes that science can offer unexpected moral guidance.
4. Forensic Pseudoscience | Nathan Robinson argues that forensic science sends innocent people to jail.
5. Wounded Women | Jessa Crispin warns against making victimhood a central component of contemporary feminism.
6. Lena Dunham Wasn’t a Pedophile, and Neither Were You | Judith Levine debunks psychology that conflates childhood sexual curiosity with molestation.
7. Did Christianity Create Liberalism? | Samuel Moyn questions a new book that looks to medieval Christianity for the origins of liberalism’s focus on the individual.
8. “Poetry Makes Nothing Happen” | Robert Huddleston examines how W. H. Auden sought to distance the poetic project from political discourse.
9. Training for Neoliberalism | John McMahon critiques behavioral economics, which reduces life’s complexities to a set of economic choices, helping to create the neoliberal subject.
10. A Science of Literature | Ben Merriman asks whether the digital humanities are capable of being scientific—and who benefits from all that machine reading.
11. Your Own Worst Enemy | Vivian Gornick observes that “every day of our lives we transgress against our own longing to act well.”
12. Who’s to Blame for Mass Incarceration? | Donna Murch rejects the claim that a majority of midcentury African Americans advocated for mass incarceration. Michael Javen Fortner offers a response.
13. Keepers of History | Elizabeth Metzger reviews Mary Jo Bang’s “intensely metaphysical collection” of poetry, The Last Two Seconds.
14. A Matter of the Skies | Dave Byrne reflects on divorce and the life of a solitary birder in this personal essay.
15. American Cynicism | Jess Row examines the unbearable cynicism and depressed affect in white American popular culture.
Plus, check out our top articles of 2014. And stay tuned for our Top 20 Poems of 2015, coming tomorrow!
While we have you...
...we need your help. Confronting the many challenges of COVID-19—from the medical to the economic, the social to the political—demands all the moral and deliberative clarity we can muster. In Thinking in a Pandemic, we’ve organized the latest arguments from doctors and epidemiologists, philosophers and economists, legal scholars and historians, activists and citizens, as they think not just through this moment but beyond it. While much remains uncertain, Boston Review’s responsibility to public reason is sure. That’s why you’ll never see a paywall or ads. It also means that we rely on you, our readers, for support. If you like what you read here, pledge your contribution to keep it free for everyone by making a tax-deductible donation.
December 15, 2015
1 Min read time
