Recommended by Professor Musser

Cathy O’ Neil’s Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy warns us that the pervasive use of large collections of data can be dangerous. O’Neil, with a Ph.D. in mathematics (“algebraic number theory”), has taught at Barnard, and also has worked at a hedge fund (as a “quant”) and at an e-commerce start-up.…

Recommended by Michael Barr

In one of Delaware’s antique stores I recently stumbled on a lived-in copy of Herbert Read’s “The Meaning of Art” that seemed worth my $1.25. Read, who was a Fine Arts scholar in the first half of the 20th century touches on various movements, elements, and figures in a way that isn’t daunting for those who, like myself, aren’t quite proficient in its language.…