Journalist Kamal Al-Solaylee is deeply invested in writing about people and ideas in a way that journeys outward from the self. His most recent book, Return: Why We Go Back to Where We Come From, published by HarperCollins (2021), examines the complex relationships that immigrants have with the countries they leave and what compels them to return home.

Evan Thompson is the author of Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy (Columbia University Press 2015). The book offers a fascinating exploration of consciousness at the limits of both neuroscientific knowledge as gleaned from Western science and phenomenological insight as established through many centuries of meditative practice in Asian traditions. 

Gregory Mackie's new book is Beautiful Untrue Things: Forging Oscar Wilde’s Extraordinary Afterlife, published by University of Toronto Press (2019). This charmingly written monograph is an innovative study of Wilde’s afterlives, which is to say, all the ways in which his legend continued to circulate after his trials and death by way of literary forgeries and impersonations.

What is the relationship between the public health and the health of democracies? What part do effective communications play in establishing and maintaining their mutual well-being? Heidi Tworek, Ian Beacock, and Eseohe Ojo investigate these questions in their policy report “Democratic Health Communications during COVID-19: A RAPID Response.”