A day before his fifty-second birthday in February 1861, Abraham Lincoln boarded the Presidential Special to begin a 1,900-mile journey by rail from his Illinois home to his inauguration in Washington. It was to be a long, tumultuous and dangerous trip through hundreds of towns where millions saw and heard Lincoln as he prepared to take office with the country hurtling toward the Civil War. Historian Ted Widmer, a Distinguished Lecturer at Macaulay Honors College and former presidential advisor, tells the dramatic story of Lincoln’s passage to history in Lincoln on the Verge: 13 Days to Washington. 

“It’s the story of thirteen days in the life of Lincoln. He’s been elected president, the South is seceding, Washington is falling apart and somehow out of all of this chaos he’s got to get on a train, go two thousand miles, meet millions of Americans and try to avoid an assassination attempt. . .  It’s not just to save the North, it’s to save the entire country, the United States of America, the most successful democracy on earth . . . It felt to me like something out of Greek mythology or any of the old epics from a lot of different civilizations where someone has to fight against terrible odds, almost as if the gods are against him to get to his destination to fulfill his quest. It felt bigger than a story out of American history to me.” –Ted Widmer

 

RELATED LINKS

More about Lincoln on the Verge

More about Ted Widmer 

The Guardian: Amid a new crisis, a timely new book on Lincoln 

From The New York Times “Disunion” series: Lincoln on the Move

CUNY SUM: Abraham Lincoln’s Harrowing 13-Day Mission to Secure the Presidency

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. Bruce Y. Lee, CUNY’s leading expert on the spread of the coronavirus, talks about the latest: What the last two weeks tells us about the next two and beyond. Why social distancing is so critical right now, how some Asian countries have used it to stop the virus and what we can learn from them. (For one thing, New Yorkers need to stop doing this.) What to make of  stories about treatments and vaccines. And more.

Lee is an MD and professor in the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy,  specializing in infectious disease modeling. He’s a member of the CUNY coronavirus task force, which has been guiding the University’s response since early March. And he’s a writer who’s been covering the pandemic for Forbes.com. His latest column reports on two studies that show how China’s measures have worked against the coronavirus.

Related Links

CUNY Coronavirus Page: Complete up-to-date information for students, faculty and staff

More about Dr. Bruce Y. Lee, including his coronavirus columns on Forbes.com

Dr. Lee on Twitter

 

In her latest collection of poems, Donna Masini, a professor of English at Hunter College, moves back and forth in time–and human experience–as she copes with her younger sister’s death and celebrates life through the communal act of movie-watching. She talks with Joe Tirella about 4:30 Movie, which is now out in paperback.

 

In March 1950, 70 years ago this month, City College made college basketball history by winning both the NIT and NCAA championships. But CCNY’s season of glory was followed by unimaginable disgrace: a point-shaving scandal that led to the arrests of seven players, traumatized the college, shook the city and forever changed college basketball. In The City Game, Matthew Goodman tells the dramatic story–a tale of post-war New York, of City College in its prime and of imperfect young heroes who paid dearly for their mistake.

Related Links

About Matthew Goodman

Recalling City’s epic victory over Kentucky

NPR review of The City Game

NOTE: This podcast was recorded on Wednesday, March 11.  

Dr. Bruce Y. Lee of the CUNY School of Public Health, one of our top experts on the outbreak and a member of the task force guiding the University’s response, offers a frank assessment of the state of the emerging pandemic – and some good advice for protecting yourself and everyone else.

Related Links

CUNY Coronavirus Page: Complete up-to-date information for students, faculty and staff

More about Dr. Bruce Y. Lee, including his coronavirus columns on Forbes.com

Dr. Lee on Twitter

 

Seven years ago, Anuz Thapa hit the lottery–the U.S. Diversity Immigrant Visa lottery. He and his new wife, Dipika Shrestha, left successful media careers in Nepal and came to New York, where they’ve both since earned graduate degrees at CUNY (she at Baruch, he at the School of Journalism). And for the past two years they’ve been hosting At the End of the Day, a weekly podcast to help other immigrants navigate life in a new land and make the jump from “survival jobs” to professional careers. It was only natural that we invited the podcasting couple over for a podcast.

 

Related Links

Listen: Dipika and Anuz’s At the End of the Day podcast

Read:  Dipika Wins Women’s Leadership Award

 

 

CUNY School of Public Health Dean Ayman El-Mohandes says the next few weeks should reveal a lot about how widely the COVID-19 virus might spread. His advice for now: Stay calm, wash your hands (which you should be doing anyway) and check the CDC website for advisories on travel and other important updates about the coronavirus.

Related Links

Up-to-date coronavirus information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

CUNY Coronavirus Guidance

Forbes.com: CUNY SPH’s Bruce Y. Lee on the challenges for scientists

About Dr. Ayman El-Mohandes

About the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy

One of the most influential groups of the radical ’60s was the Young Lords, an organization of poor and working class Puerto Ricans that began as a street gang and rose to confront the racism of institutions from government to religion. Johanna Fernandez, a professor of history at Baruch College, traces their roots and tells the story of their rise and fall in The Young Lords: A Radical History. She talks about it with Beth Harpaz.

The 1940 discovery of a radioactive version of carbon — the element that is the basis for all life — led to the technique of carbon dating that transformed virtually every field of science. Carbon-14 has been used to study everything from Stone Age cultures to modern elephant poaching. How it all happened is the story John Marra, an environmental scientist at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, tells in Hot Carbon: Carbon 14 and a Revolution in Science. The book was long-listed for the 2020 PEN-E.I. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award.

Related Links

From The Graduate Center: John Marra’s ‘Hot Carbon’ Nominated for PEN-E.I. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award

From Nature: Radiocarbon revolution: the story of an isotope

From Times Higher Education: Applause for a book celebrating the many applications of carbon dating

 

Rates of depression, anxiety and other mental disorders have doubled in the past decade among college students nationwide– a serious obstacle to academic success and graduation.  CUNY recently held a day-long conference on the issue, in partnership with The Steve Fund, an organization that promotes mental health for students of color. This episode of the CUNYcast features a conversation with Nicholas Freudenberg, a Distinguished Professor of Public Health who was a leader in organizing the conference; Wendy Paulino, a mental health specialist in the counseling center at Lehman College; and Azeez Alimi, a social work major at Lehman who shares his own story of seeking help.

 

 

RELATED LINKS

Learn more at Healthy CUNY

Find information on CUNY mental health services

About The Steve Fund