How longer lives, greater prosperity, and policy shifts are reshaping aging and retirementOnce considered a period of frailty and physical decline, aging and retirement have transformed into a chapter of continued vitality and growth for many Americans. Indeed, medical advancements and government policies have opened opportunities for people to live longer and healthier lives.Written from the perspective of a retired historian, On Retirement reveal...

Two decades punctuated by the financial crisis of the Great Recession and the public health crisis of COVID-19 have powerfully reshaped housing in America. By integrating social, economic, intellectual, and cultural histories, this illuminating work shows how powerful forces have both reflected and catalyzed shifts in the way Americans conceptualize what a house is for, in an era that has laid bare the larger structures and inequities of the economy.Daniel Horowitz casts an expansi...

As a scientist, philosopher and scholar in Jewish thought, Yeshayahu Leibowitz was one of the most noteworthy thinkers in the twentieth century. He was endowed with a remarkable intellect and was knowledgeable across a variety of fields.Born in Riga (Latvia) in 1903, he later immigrated to Israel, where he taught organic chemistry, biochemistry, neurology, biology, neurophysiology, philosophy and Jewish thought at Haifa and Jerusalem University. He was Chief Editor of the Hebrew en...

From teddy bears and Winnie-the-Pooh to Smokey Bear, Yogi Bear, and Cocaine Bear, American popular culture has been fascinated with real and fictional bears for more than two centuries. Bears are ubiquitous, appearing in advertisements, as logos for sports teams, and as central characters in children’s books, cartoons, movies, and video games. In Bear With Me, Daniel Horowitz presents a vibrant history of the pedestrian and celebrity bears who have captured our imaginations and in...

When a cultural movement that began to take shape in the mid-twentieth century erupted into mainstream American culture in the late 1990s, it brought to the fore the idea that it is as important to improve one's own sense of pleasure as it is to manage depression and anxiety. Cultural historian Daniel Horowitz's research reveals that this change happened in the context of key events. World War II, the Holocaust, post-war prosperity, the rise of counter-culture, the crises of the 1970s, the...

How is it that American intellectuals, who had for 150 years worried about the deleterious effects of affluence, more recently began to emphasize pleasure, playfulness, and symbolic exchange as the essence of a vibrant consumer culture? The New York intellectuals of the 1930s rejected any serious or analytical discussion, let alone appreciation, of popular culture, which they viewed as morally questionable. Beginning in the 1950s, however, new perspectives emerged outside and within the Un...

The Great Recession threatened the well-being of tens of millions of Americans, dramatically weakened the working class, hollowed out the middle class, and strengthened the position of the very wealthy. Against this backdrop, the hit reality show Shark Tank premiered in 2009. Featuring ambitious entrepreneurs chasing support from celebrity investors, the show offered a version of the American Dream that still seemed possible to many, where a bright idea and a well-honed pitch coul...

Vance Packard’s bestselling books — Hidden Persuaders (1957), Status Seekers (1959), and Waste Makers (1960) — taught the generation that came of age in the late 1950s and early 1960s about the dangers posed by advertising, social climbing, and planned obsolescence. Like Betty Friedan and William H. Whyte, Jr., Packard (1914– ) was a journalist who played an important role in the nation’s transition from the largely complacent 1950s to the tumultuous 1960s. He wa...

How is it that American intellectuals, who had for 150 years worried about the deleterious effects of affluence, more recently began to emphasize pleasure, playfulness, and symbolic exchange as the essence of a vibrant consumer culture? The New York intellectuals of the 1930s rejected any serious or analytical discussion, let alone appreciation, of popular culture, which they viewed as morally questionable. Beginning in the 1950s, however, new perspectives emerged outside and within the Un...

We are confronted with a jarring reality that the Left has succeeded in growing the power of the courts. Obama has replaced roughly 30 percent of the district and appellate judges on the federal benches. We are now facing a judicial time bomb, the likes of which we’ve never seen before. With the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling the courts have usurped the will of the people and set a precedent that has become a de facto law of the land.In STOLEN SOVEREIGNTY Horowitz reveals jus...

Some years—1789, 1929, 1989—change the world suddenly. Or do they? In 2020, a pandemic converged with an economic collapse, inequalities exploded, and institutions weakened. Yet these crises sprang not from new risks but from known dangers. The world—like many patients—met 2020 with a host of preexisting conditions, which together tilted the odds toward disaster. Perhaps 2020 wasn’t the year the world changed; perhaps it was simply the moment the world finally understood its deadly diagnos...

In jeder Kultur oder Gruppe, in jedem Volk oder Individuum gibt es eine geschichtliche Ansammlung, auf deren Grundlage die Welt gedeutet wird. Die Ideale, Befürchtungen und Hoffnungen eines Volkes sind nicht als „kalte Ideen“ verankert, sondern als dynamische Bilder, welche die menschlichen Verhaltensweisen in die eine oder andere Richtung antreiben. Jede geschichtliche Epoche besitzt solche grundlegenden und zweifelsfreien Gewissheiten, deren kollektive mythische Struktur – ob sakralisier...