Peachy Reads

My wife has a passion for polar adventures, which is odd considering she absolutely hates being cold.  Or, maybe that’s why it makes it so compelling for her—it’s like her own personal horror literature.  Anyway, we both heard the author of In the Kingdom of Ice speak last week, and not being a fan of icy journeys myself, I was nevertheless eager to read this book. The story of the USS Jeannette is history, not fiction, and although the expedition was celebrated when it occurred during America’s Gilded Age at the end of the 1800s, there are few people in 2015 who know anything about it.  At the time the crew set out on its course past the Bering Strait little was known about what lay at the northernmost extreme of the globe—it was either the stuff of fiction—Santa Claus’s abode was placed there in the 1800s, for example, or of scientific conjecture—some speculated that an ice-free sea stretched across the North Pole.  The US was beginning to test global ambition...

Several conversations with friends and family members about the ultra-competitive high-stakes college admissions process that seems to have become the norm today, have often ended with the sentiment, “It’s so different than it used to be.”  The enormous emphasis on test scores, GPAs, private tutors and consultants, taking the "right" courses, padding your teenage resume with charitable and entrepreneurial experiences, US News & World Report’s rather infamous rankings-- all these things have contributed to the single-minded push to gain admission to the most elite colleges and universities.  Is it all part of our obsession with name brands?  And does it really matter in the larger context? In this book New York Times contributor Frank Bruni gives compelling evidence that suggests that students who attend off-brand state universities and “foundation” schools are oftentimes equally, if not more successful, as those who graduate from the ivies and their ilk.  ...