Covid-19

Your Neighbors Can Help You Battle Adversity and Disaster

Zócalo’s First Book Prize Winner Reflects on the Power of the People Nearby to Ease Both Pandemics and Politics

Your Neighbors Can Help You Battle Adversity and Disaster | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

My book, In the Neighborhood, published 10 years ago this spring, asked how Americans live as neighbors—and what we lose when the people next door are strangers.

These questions are just as timely today. Not only is the country dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, it is also facing a political crisis. And on top of these global and national issues, there are often painful personal matters, such as the sort of health crisis that my own family recently experienced. In each instance, neighborhoods have a critical role to play …

by Peter Lovenheim |

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How Warren Harding’s Campaign for ‘Normalcy’ Led to Catastrophe | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

How Warren Harding’s Campaign for ‘Normalcy’ Led to Catastrophe

The 29th President’s Promise of Safety to a Nation Shaken by WWI and the 1918 Flu Led to Freewheeling Consumption and Giddy Speculation

by William Deverell |

What is normalcy? And what does it mean when we tell ourselves that we want to get back to it?

When American historians hear talk of “normalcy,” we think of Warren …

A Letter From Beirut, Where the Taxis Have Resumed Honking | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

A Letter From Beirut, Where the Taxis Have Resumed Honking

Amid Lebanon’s Economic Collapse, Fear of the Virus Briefly Amended the Social Contract

by Abby Sewell |

The eeriest thing about Beirut’s streets during the first weeks of the quarantine—the lull between two storms, before the protesters returned to the streets and started throwing Molotov cocktails at …

I Deserve an ‘A’ For Flunking My Kids’ Distance Learning | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

I Deserve an ‘A’ for Flunking My Kids’ Distance Learning

Yes, I’m Doing a Poor Job—But Parents Have Become the Scapegoats for a Failing System

by Joe Mathews |

I’m proudly doing my duty as a California parent. I’m flunking distance learning.

Distance learning is the term for our new COVID 19-era educational regime, which forces teachers and students to …

Aztec Kings Had Rules for Plagues, Including ‘Do Not Be a Fool’ | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Aztec Kings Had Rules for Plagues, Including ‘Do Not Be a Fool’

But When Cortés’s Soldiers Arrived Carrying a Novel Virus, the Empire First Succumbed to Smallpox and Then Fell to Spain

by David Bowles |

Every civilization eventually faces a crisis that forces it to adapt or be destroyed. Few adapt.

On July 10, 1520, Aztec forces vanquished the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés and his men, …

Poetry’s Unique Power to Change Its Readers and Sustain Them Too | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Poetry’s Unique Power to Change Its Readers and Sustain Them Too

During a Pandemic, Poems Offer ‘a Space of Words Where You Can Dwell’

What is it about poetry that allows us to escape our greatest anxieties, find space for introspection, or even achieve catharsis? What is it about the poetic combination of meter, …


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