Lincoln, President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860-1861
In the four months between Abraham Lincoln’s election and inauguration, the president-elect made the most important decision of his coming presidency: there would be no compromise on slavery or secession of the slaveholding states, even at the cost of an inevitable Civil War. Two scholars examine this pivotal four-month period, Lincoln’s public stance, and the [...]
President George W. Bush on the Current Economic Climate
President George W. Bush addresses the Manhattan Institute, discussing the current economic climate and the upcoming G20 Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy. He touches on our global interdependence, the causes of the current economic climate, and the steps that have been taken so far in order to prevent an economic meltdown. He [...]
Covering the Cultural Revolution: A Conversation with John Burns
Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner John Burns has been a foreign correspondent in Peking, Toronto, Sarajevo, Belgrade, and Johannesburg. He discusses his time based in Beijing from 1971 to 1975, during which he covered China’s Cultural Revolution as well as the life and politics of mainland China. He is joined by Orville Schell, the Arthur Ross [...]
Can Asia Weather the Storm of the Global Financial Crisis?
In light of the current financial crisis, Asia’s economy is suffering too. Haruhiko Kuroda, Asian Development Bank President, discusses Asia’s economic development in light of the current financial crisis, fluctuations in commodity prices, and the environmental challenges that the region currently faces. Prior to his appointment as President of the Asian Development Bank, Haruhiko Kuroda [...]
Housing New Yorkers in the 21st-Century
Urban visionary and activist Jane Jacobs wrote that a strong sense of community is critical in creating dynamic and diverse neighborhoods. But today, it is increasingly difficult for New Yorkers of low and moderate income to live here. In the midst of these precarious economic times, how can planners, architects, city officials, and developers work [...]
Salvaging the Wreckage: What’s Next Globally?
The slump in the United States housing market has become a synchronized global downturn. The world economy is headed for its worst year in more than a quarter century. With governments committing more than $3 trillion to rescuing banks and protecting depositors, the fall-out still continues to spread. Leo Abruzzese, the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Editorial [...]
Salvaging the Wreckage: What’s Next for New York?
Some might argue that the global financial crisis started in New York. But whether the heart of the problem is on Main Street or on Wall Street, it is clear that the heart of the New York economy, the financial industry, has changed forever. Zanny Minton Beddoes, The Economist’s global economics editor, hosts a conversation [...]
Kingmakers: The Invention of the Modern Middle East
Kingmakers is the story of how the modern Middle East came to be, told through the lives of the Britons and Americans who shaped it. Some are famous (Lawrence of Arabia and Gertrude Bell); others infamous (Harry St. John Philby, father of Kim); some forgotten (Sir Mark Sykes, Israel’s godfather, and A. T. Wilson, the [...]
The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too
While liberals continue to believe in the free market, conservatives have abandoned it all together. If conservatives no longer take free markets seriously, why should liberals? Why keep liberal thought in the straitjacket of pay-as-you-go, of assigning inflation control to the Federal Reserve, of attempting to “make markets work”? Why not build a new economic [...]
The Case for a National Electric Grid
Electricity, not oil, is the heart of the U.S. energy economy. Power plants consume as much raw energy as oil supplies to all cars, trucks, planes, homes, factories, offices, and chemical plants, and deliver much more useful power because they process the fuel much more efficiently. Hear remarks from Howard Husock, Vice President of Policy [...]
