Corrective measures
A UChicago professor spearheads an initiative to end mass incarceration.
Talking back
Reflections on the life and literature of Philip Roth, AM’55.
Bibliomania!
College students go head-to-head in a competition for the best undergraduate book collection.
Towering insights
English associate professor Adrienne Brown explores the complicated racial history of the American skyscraper.
Food for thought
Former White House chef Sam Kass, LAB’98, AB’04, is serving up new recipes and improvements to food policy. Plus: Kass’s recipe for brussels sprouts Caesar salad.
Ground truth
Chris Begley, AM’92, PhD’99, is an archaeologist with a taste for adventure. Just don’t call him Indiana Jones.
Letʼs get lost
Finding our way in the age of GPS doesn’t have to mean sacrificing serendipity.
Shades of meaning
Twenty-nine years after his death, the work of Faber Birren, EX’23, still colors the world around us.
Babyography
Since 1928, families have documented childhood landmarks in a book rich with history.
Past and present
Questions for geologist Susan Kidwell on her work in the emerging discipline of conservation paleobiology, teaching students out in the field, and what artists and scientists share.
Out of the shadows
According to Hollywood legend, Eliot Ness, PhB’25, brought down Al Capone. The reality is more complicated.
Criminal mastermind
Sara Paretsky, AM’69, MBA’77, PhD’77, on being the mystery genre’s “aging diva” and more.
Where the art is
After a decades-long hiatus, Art to Live With is back.
Looking back
As we grow older, how beneficial is it to reflect on our youthful actions and experiences? Two UChicago professors weigh the virtues of living fully in the present and reliving the past.
Chicago Pile-1
The story of the first controlled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction is one of science, of war, and of people.
Bellowʼs papers
What is it like to sort through the papers of one of America’s most celebrated writers?
Mammals like us
Two newly discovered species bring humans closer to understanding our lineage.
Maroon menagerie
Meet some of the fantastic beasts UChicago faculty helped introduce to the scientific record and the popular imagination.
First amendment scholar
Constitutional scholar Sonja R. West, JD’98, on press freedom and its future.
Martin Luther
Remembering Martin Luther’s far-reaching legacy 500 years after the 95 Theses.
In full bloom
The University’s botanic garden celebrates its 20th anniversary.
Lexicographer
(Noun, an author or editor of a dictionary)
Mission to the Sun
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe gets ready to meet a star.
Seminary Co-op
Jeff Deutsch has a plan to save the Seminary Co-op.
Arctic legacy
From his first trip north as the youngest hand on a two-masted schooner, anthropologist Ernest “Tiger” Burch Jr., AM’63, PhD’66, was driven to learn about the Arctic and its peoples.
After internment
Mitsuye Yamada, AM’53, transformed her family’s internment experience into poetry.
Language learning
What if you took a language class and actually learned to speak?
A life in math
How Ken Ono, AB’89, found life in and outside of math.
Bodies of work
Photographer Lewis Hine, EX 1904, captured the changing face of American labor.
America’s historian
Henry Steele Commager (1902–1998), PhB’23, AM’24, PhD’28, was a US historian for the people.
Folk singer
How Lucy Kaplansky, LAB’78, made a career of folk music.
Small school talent
In the 1960s the Small School Talent Search sought promising young scholars in rural areas. Fifty years later, one of those students gives his perspective on the program and its legacy.
Ex-racehorses
Retired Racehorse Project founder Steuart Pittman Jr., AB’85, advocates for off-track Thoroughbreds.
War stories
Photojournalist Jonathan Alpeyrie, AB’03, shoots from the front lines.
Pioneering MD
Pioneering pathologist Nancy Warner, SB’44, MD’49, is helping other women scholars follow in her path.
Book smarts
Retired University of Chicago Press editor T. David Brent, AB’70, AM’71, PhD’77, brought imagination and enthusiasm to scholarly publishing.
Odyssey scholars
Launched in 2007 with an anonymous $100 million gift, the Odyssey Scholarship Challenge has transformed financial aid in the College. Meet six of the young people whose lives were also changed.
Cronin 1931–2016
Nobelist James Cronin twice expanded our sense of the possible, first in particle physics and then in astronomical observation.
Zoos and blues
In blues clubs, cocktail bars, and zoos, David Grazian, AM’96, PhD’00, investigates the artifice of authenticity.
Funmi Olopade
Olufunmilayo Olopade is attacking cancer from all sides.
Utopia Park
The Transcendental Meditation movement’s goals were utopian but life for its followers wasn’t always blissful, Claire Hoffman, AM’05, writes in a new memoir. Plus—“The Field of All Possibilities”: An excerpt from Greetings from Utopia Park: Surviving a Transcendent Childhood.