Essential Knowledge

Articles by authors in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series. Written by leading thinkers, the series offers accessible, concise books on subjects that range from the cultural and the historical to the scientific and the technical.

Latest Articles

Science & Tech	What Are Flashbulb Memories? An excerpt from “Memory,” a primer on human memory, its workings, feats, and flaws, by two leading psychological researchers. Fergus Craik and Larry Jacoby \| Jun 26, 2023
Science & Tech	A Brief History of Secret Communication Methods, From Invisible Ink to Tattooed Heads Despite the dangers, secret communication is at the heart of espionage operations and essential for spy work. Kristie Macrakis \| Apr 20, 2023
Culture	If Walls Could Speak: Echoes as a Link to the Past Both acoustic and metaphorical, echo evokes the void left by what had been and is no longer. Amit Pinchevski \| Mar 13, 2023
Science & Tech	The Future of Fertility Technology, From Technosemen to Uterine Transplants How will future generations come to be? There is no straightforward answer. Donna J. Drucker \| Mar 9, 2023
Science & Tech	How Expectations and Conditioning Shape Our Response to Placebos Kathryn Hall, an expert on placebos, considers the ways that expectations and learning affect our response to them. Kathryn T. Hall \| Jan 12, 2023
Science & Tech	History's Great Recommenders: From Ancient Times to Tomorrow For as long as humans have existed, they have sought new tools, techniques, and technologies in their personal quests for actionable advice. Michael Schrage \| Dec 5, 2022
Science & Tech	Finding Language in the Brain Psycholinguist Giosuè Baggio sheds light on the thrilling, evolving field of neurolinguistics, where neuroscience and linguistics meet. Giosuè Baggio \| Nov 25, 2022
Culture	When Elites Tried to Monopolize Hunting A brief history. Jan E. Dizard & Mary Zeiss Stange \| Oct 18, 2022
Culture	The New Art of Making Books On "bookworks." Amaranth Borsuk \| Sep 19, 2022
Culture	Gender Has a History and It’s More Recent Than You May Realize The story of how society, ignorant of medical research, made a stigma out of something our bodies do quite naturally: not conform to a sexual binary. Kathryn Bond Stockton \| Jun 8, 2022