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: American character
Encounters with Freedom, Optimism, and Exploration at 10,000 Feet
By Taya Weiss
March 31, 2015
When I quit my first real job, I didn’t have a plan. I just walked out with the recklessness of a Harvard graduate who had come of age during the Clinton era Internet bubble. I was barely out the door when reality set in, and elation gave way to doubts about the wobbling post-Y2K economy. What if I had doomed myself to poverty? I wanted catharsis. That’s when I got the idea to jump out of an airplane.
Soon after, …
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Are We Still Searching for ‘The Great American Novel’?
By Lawrence Buell
February 3, 2015
Most credentialed literary critics disdain it as a grandiose hyperbole, and creative writers tend to speak of it in jest. But for almost 150 years, all of us—writers, readers, cultural trend-watchers—have been obsessed with the idea of “The Great American Novel,” a piece of literature that somehow captures the gestalt of the whirling multitudes that make up our ambitious country at a crucial or defining moment.
Why this unkillable mantra about the preeminent American novel? The Russians, the French, and …
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Our Ability to Opt in—or Out—Defines Our National Character
By Claude S. Fischer
September 22, 2014
Over the course of the last 15 years or so, there’s been an explosion in the number of charter schools around the country. According to the latest figures (from 2012), some 2.1 million students are enrolled in schools run by private groups awarded public money.
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