Richard Axel

When you were a child, it is very likely that someone read a bedtime story to you before you went off to sleep. Normally, these fairytales would begin with, “once upon a time” and end with, “…lived happily ever after.” The ending suggested a positive future outcome for its protagonists, but unfortunately for most people, real life does not always play out this way. This is especially true if you belong to one or more of America’s historically marginalized groups: women, ethnic minorities and…

In 1980, Dr. Michael Lipsky released an award-winning book on the concept of street-level bureaucracy. According to his biography on the Georgetown University, Dr. is a Research Professor at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute. He received his Ph.D. in politics from Princeton University and has taught a number of institutions including University of Wisconsin and Harvard University. Along with teaching, Dr. Lipsky has worked with the Ford Foundation and is a Senior Program Director at Demos.…

People encounter memes in their everyday lives, whether it be on message boards, social media websites, or in conversations with friends and colleagues, memes are an inescapable aspect of American society. The first use of the term “meme” was by Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist and author, who first used the term to describe the spread of cultural information between individuals within a culture. Internet memes, in particular, are used to spread the culture of the internet among…

The Watergate incident simultaneously had the three results of changing the American people’s public view of the president, the relationship between the government and media, and the media from a somewhat collaborative to competitive industry. These all contributed to several areas of exploration. On June 17, 1972, five men were taken into custody for the act of burglary. They were found lurking inside the Democratic National Committee headquarters which was in Washington D.C. inside the…

Blood In a nonfiction book, In Cold Blood, the author, Truman Capote, tells the story of the murder case of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, in 1959. The novel is based on real-life crime which was committed by two convicts: Perry Smith and Richard Hickock. The crime is mentioned early on a book before the story begins: "four shot gun blasts that, all told, ended six human lives" (Capote 5). Those six lives are the four members of the Clutter family, and the two murderers who are…

The Vietnam War The Vietnam War was by far the most violent and traumatic of America’s three wars in Asia in the fifty years since Pearl Harbor. In August of 1964 two U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin were attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats. President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered the bombing of military targets in North Vietnam as retaliation. By February 1965 the United States had begun regular bombings of North Vietnam (History.com). The war did nothing but cause problems for the…

The first chapter that could be applied to The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien from How To Read Like A Professor by Thomas C. Foster would be Chapter 11: … More Than It’s Gonna Hurt You: Concerning Violence. For the most part, violence and death are everywhere in The Things They Carried. Explosions, gun shots, open wounds, all in a typical war setting that was fought by people who did not even need to be in the war. “By daylight they took sniper fire, at night they were mortared, but it was…

age is constitutional. President Nixon argued that the voting age requirements was discriminating would eventually caused a reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the Voting Act Rights would be disastrous.On June 22, 1970, President Richard Nixon signs the Voting Rights…

John Bowden Connally Jr. was given birth on February 2, 1917, by John Bowden Connally Sr. and Lela Wright Connally, in Floresville, Texas. He went to Floresville High school, he later went to the University of Texas, where received his undergraduate and law degree. He also became president of the UT Student Association, and his passion for politics sparked. While attending college there, he met Idanell Nellie Brill in 1940, to which he later married and had four kids with. While serving the…

Giving rabbits human qualities is a curious idea for a book. Nonetheless, Richard Adams took this idea and wrote Watership Down, a novel that follows a group of rabbits as they flee their warren. The band of misfits is led by a rabbit named Hazel who, at the encouragement of his brother, takes his people out of their old warren and leaving the promise of upcoming danger behind. They travel across farmland until they reach the downs and build their own warren, safe from the looming danger of men.…