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"Luke Ford reports all of the 'juicy' quotes, and has been doing it for years." (Marc B. Shapiro)
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff) LATEST POSTS:
- Robert Putnam: The Man Who Counted What America Lost
- W. Bradford Wilcox: The Sociologist Who Tells America to Get Married
- Peter Moskos: The Cop Who Talks to People
- Julius Krein
- Ryan Burge: The Numbers Man in the Empty Church
- Emily Oster: The Economist in the Delivery Room
- The Most Ridiculous Story Ever Told
- Tanner Greer
- Economist Tyler Cowen
- Richard Reeves: A Life in Institutions
- Jake Adelstein: The Reporter Who Became His Story
- Jim Goad (1961-2026)
- Moira Greyland
- Robert Oscar Lopez: The Inconvenient Witness
- Two Ledgers: Decoding the Gurus and the Price of Talk
- The Pervert’s Progress: Costin Vlad Alamariu and the Making of Bronze Age Pervert
- Curtis Yarvin: A Life Against Democracy
- Mark Helprin: Against the Current
- Mark Brandt: The Man Who Asked Who Else Is Prejudiced
- John T. Jost: The Psychologist of Acquiescence
BEST POSTS:
- * The Enlightenment Wasn’t Enlightened (6-23-26)
* Mr. Burge Draws The Line (6-23-26)
* 'Improving on Democracy' (6-17-26)
* People Leak To People Who Are Fun (6-11-26)
* Why Does Australia Produce So Many Great Journalists? (6-11-26)
* Steve Wynn and the Press: Power, Litigation, and the Contest Over Las Vegas (6-3-26)
* Sheldon Adelson and the Journalists (6-3-26)
* The Vigilant Animal: Thinkers Who Reject the Myth of Human Gullibility (6-2-26)
* The Cost of Refusing the Misunderstanding Myth (6-2-26)
* Show Me How It Travels (6-2-26)
* The Norm Explainers (6-2-26)
* Centering Marginalized Voices (6-1-26)
* What would it look like if the Washington Post put its reader first? (6-1-26)
* What would it look like if the Financial Times put its reader first? (6-1-26)
* What It Would Mean for the Los Angeles Times to Put the Reader First? (6-1-26)
* What It Would Mean for The New York Times to Put the Reader First? (6-1-26)
* Why Wembanyama Lives on the Perimeter (5-31-26)
* The Emotional Palettes Of San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco & Sacramento (5-27-26)
* The Administrative Capital: Sacramento Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* San Diego - The Quiet Republic (5-27-26)
* The Quiet Bar: San Diego Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* SF v LA Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* Why Talent Travels Poorly Between San Francisco and Los Angeles (5-27-26)
* San Francisco and Los Angeles as Rival Models of Urban Access (5-27-26)
* Social Cliques in New York, 2026 (5-25-26)
* Social Cliques in San Francisco, 2026 (5-25-26)
* The Rival Courts of Washington (5-25-26)
* The City of Private Rooms (5-25-26)
Category Archives: California
Orthodox Life In Northern California?
Michael emails: I stumbled across your site today, and got a sense that you have a good feel for Jewish life in Northern California. Is there no Orthodox life to be found north of SF and Berkeley? Seems so beautiful … Continue reading
Posted in California, Orthodoxy
Tagged jewish life, northern california, northern frontier, orthodox life, wife and kid
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‘Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California’
Here is the Amazon.com page for the book and here is the website for the author Frances Dinkelspiel. We did this interview a couple of weeks ago via email. I told Frances to only answer the questions she found interesting. … Continue reading
Posted in Author Interviews, California, Jews
Tagged amazon, hall dances, jewish immigrant, teutonic hall, uc berkeley library, wilshire boulevard temple
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Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California
My favorite part of this biography by Hellman’s great-great-granddaughter Frances Dinkelspiel came on page 181. It describes how affluent German Jews in the San Francisco Bay Area reacted with ambivalent feelings to the arrival of Russian Jewish immigrants. Why were … Continue reading
Posted in Book Reviews, California, Charity, Jews
Tagged ambivalent feelings, german jews, government bureaucracy, government welfare, jewish immigrant, russian jewish immigrants
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A Lesson From Smokey
Rabbi Avi Shafran writes: Which brings us back to more recent flames, those of the unprecedented California fires – which fire-management experts have dubbed “mega-fires,” since they are ten times larger and more intense than wildfires of a mere decade … Continue reading
Posted in California
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Paradise Lost
Luke at Stanford gay rights sculpture May 9 Another Stanford Taboo Cheeky At Albion Luke at CA/OR border May 10 Another Another Battle Creek, OR May 11 Another Another Luke at Angwin, CA May 13, the home I lived in … Continue reading
Posted in Adventist, California, Personal, PUC
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