Public Books
B. R. Cohen
Public Books
a magazine of ideas, arts, and scholarship
  • Essays
  • Interviews
  • Sections
    • View All
    • Anthropology & Religion
    • Antiquities
    • Art
    • Borderlands
    • Capitalism
    • Digital Humanities
    • Film
    • Global Black History
    • Higher Education
    • Literary Fiction
    • Literature in Translation
    • Poetry
    • Politics
    • Print/Screen
    • Sociology
    • Sports
    • Systems and Futures
    • Technology
    • TV
    • Urbanism
    • Videogames
  • Series
    • View All
    • B-Sides
    • The Book That Made Me
    • Crisis Cities
    • An Engineer Reads a Novel
    • Migrant Futures
    • On Our Nightstands
    • Public Streets
    • Public Thinker
    • Quizzical
    • Shoptalk
    • Syllabi
    • Virtual Roundtables
    • @X
  • Podcasts
    • Public Books 101
    • Novel Dialogue
    • Primary Sources
  • Donate
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
B. R. Cohen

B. R. Cohen

B. R. Cohen is an associate professor at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. He is the author, most recently, of Pure Adulteration: Cheating on Nature in the Age of Manufactured Food (2019) and coeditor (with Michael Kideckel and Anna Zeide) of Acquired Tastes: Stories about the Origins of Modern Food (2021). icon

  • Visit website

“Just Use the Telephone, Please”: Hannah Zeavin on the Power of Teletherapy

By B. R. Cohen

“You can have really intense intimacy over distance, sometimes only because distance is there.”

Meghan O'Gieblyn

Public Thinker: Meghan O’Gieblyn on God, Machines, and Intelligence

By B. R. Cohen

“We can’t always explain how algorithms reach their decisions. The reasoning of algorithms, like the will of God, is unfathomable.”

Public Thinker: Ashanté Reese on Food Geographies and Food Justice

By B. R. Cohen

"So many people don’t think about food as political."

Public Thinker: Donna M. Riley on Engineering, Ethics, and Social Justice

By B. R. Cohen

Donna Riley is a lifelong social activist and student of liberation theology who also happens to be a ...

T. L. Taylor

Public Thinker: T. L. Taylor on Gamergate, Live-Streaming, and Esports

By B. R. Cohen

The qualitative sociologist T. L. Taylor is a professor of Comparative Media Studies at MIT and cofounder and director of research for AnyKey, an organization dedicated to ...

Siva Vaidhyanathan

Public Thinker: Siva Vaidhyanathan on Facebook and Other “Antisocial” Media

By B. R. Cohen

Siva Vaidhyanathan has built a career as a media studies and communications ...

Jill Lepore explains 2

Public Thinker: Jill Lepore on the Challenge of Explaining Things

By B. R. Cohen

Scholars who want to write beyond the academy often ask, where are the ...

This Morning Was a Poem: On and Near Rebecca Solnit’s The Faraway Nearby

By B. R. Cohen

Rebecca Solnit’s new memoir, The Faraway Nearby, is a morning poem. Last summer, I sat outside on a covered patio beneath the awning and read it straight through. I read for hours. The book had been ...

The Confidence Economy: An Interview with T. J. Jackson Lears

By B. R. Cohen

Questions about trust, faith, and chance in American cultural history are at the core of your work as I see it. Your interest in confidence and con men is especially striking ...

Get Our Weekly Newsletter

Most Viewed

  • Data Free Disney
  • Virtual Roundtable on Women Directors
  • Reading after the University
  • “It Is Not How You Feel”: Batja Mesquita on How Different Cultures Experience Emotions
  • Where Is All the Book Data?

LISTEN TO PRIMARY SOURCES

  • Ta-Nehisi Coates on Tony Judt
    Eyal Press 5.9.2022

Subscribe to RSS

Support Public Books

Editors’ Pick

  • Where Is All the Book Data?
    Melanie Walsh 10.4.2022
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Submissions
  • Partners
  • News/Events
  • Contact
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram

Public Books Logo
© 2023 Public Books.TM All Rights Reserved