These days, whether you’re a college student or a retiree, it’s pretty hard not to reside on the edge of a financial panic. After all, if mega-institutions like Lehman Brothers and AIG can’t weather our current financial storm, how is one middle class individual or family, struggling even before the you-know-what hit the fan, supposed…

What is “urban wilderness?” It is a paradox: the experience of the wild in the city. I recently completed a six-year voyage of discovery, not of untraveled locations—for at the turn of the millennium there are none left—but of my own vicinity. What I discovered was a rich and worthwhile experience of nature in the…

I am most commonly asked, when I speak with writing students, “How do I get published?” and the only answer I can come up with is, “Beats me.” I’m not being facetious with this less than helpful response. But when I look back, I see my writing life as a series of (mostly happy) accidents.…

Just as I was about to head out the door, I received this email from Maxine Giammo, a publicist here at Beacon: "Reading today’s lovely interview with Suzanne Kamata over at the blog “Creative Construction”, I realized that some of us at Beacon may not be aware of the recent loss experienced by Love You…

Yale Environment 360, a new online magazine from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental studies, launched last week. Among the stellar commentary from leading voices in the environmental movement is Beacon’s own Fred Pearce, whose piece “Water Scarcity: The Real Food Crisis” ties the growing food crisis to water overconsumption (the article was also…

What am I doing wrong? In writing Not Keeping Up With Our Parents, I heard this question over and over again. It was the same question I’d been asking myself. I was a successful freelance writer, working on my third book. I typically held down one to two additional jobs — at the time I…

I am almost reluctant to mention it, since I don’t want to clue their editors in if they didn’t notice, but Beacon Press was all over the Boston Globe this weekend. A review of Renée Bergland’s Maria Mitchell and the Sexing of Science, an interview with Suzanne Strempek Shea about her book Sundays in America,…

In Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes, William H. Gates (dad of Bill Gates) and Chuck Collins argue that large fortunes should be taxed, both because of the societal benefit of wealth redistribution, and because it’s appropriate payback to the society that provided the mechanisms for wealth. Wealthy philanthropist Warren Buffett…

Katherine Newman appeared on Bill Moyers Journal last week (you can watch the show here) to talk about the subjects raised in her new book (with Victor Tan Chen), The Missing Class. The book (reviewed recently in the Boston Globe) focuses on the struggles nearly 50 million American families cope with as they try to…

by Meredith Hall When I wrote my memoir, Without a Map, I understood that I was breaking unspoken but powerful rules of silence.  Pregnant at sixteen in 1966, I was one of the thousands (or are there tens of thousands of us?  Hundreds of thousands?  I have heard millions.  Even the number seems to be…