Brad Howell Tag

By Maggie Chen Unlike the previous college application blog sections that were writing based, this section does not have an essay to write and submit. Much of this section deals with you requesting either your guidance counselor or  College Board to send official materials like your transcript, test scores, and AP scores to...

Make Better Purchases With Consumer Reports Through HEPL By Brad Howell Looking for a new dishwasher but aren’t sure which features are necessary?  Need to replace your sweeper but are inundated by 224 choices with a wide variety of opinions from Amazon.com?  Wondering what are the best...

Imbeciles:  The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck By Adam Cohen "Three generations of imbeciles are enough."  This quote from the much vaunted Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendall Holmes is shocking to modern ears.  However, Holmes' statement was reflected by many Americans in the...

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt By: Edmund Morris If you're like me, it's possible you're underwhelmed by the choices of candidates for the upcoming presidential election. The press coverage has been unrelenting and nauseating. Neither candidate has high approval ratings and it's likely a large number of Americans...

Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times By: H.W. Brands Unless you’ve been living under a rock you’ve likely heard the news that our nation’s twenty dollar bill will look different after the year 2020.  Former slave and abolitionist Harriet Tubman will replace President Andrew Jackson in order...

Mad Men, The Final Season, Part 2 (DVD) We live in the golden age of television.  There are simply so many good television shows being created that it’s difficult to pick which ones are most deserving of our time.  I’ll admit to being a fan of...

Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush By: Jon Meacham I'm typically wary of any biography that seeks to assess a president scarcely a quarter of a century after his tenure. Nevertheless, Jon Meacham's new biography of George Herbert Walker Bush is both...

Katrina: After the Flood By: Gary Rivlin Most of us were aghast ten years ago as we watched eighty percent of New Orleans go underwater when Hurricane Katrina struck and the levees failed.  We watched the failed federal and state response to the disaster as thousands were left...

Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town By: John Krakauer John Krakauer grabbed my attention many years ago when he wrote “Into Thin Air” regarding his breathtaking adventures climbing Mt. Everest. His ability to put the reader on that mountain with sub-zero temperatures and horrific...