Rising Above the Gathering Storm Two Years Later: Accelerating Progress Toward a Brighter Economic Future summarizes a convocation held in April 2008 to commemorate the release of the original Gathering Storm report. The convocation featured participation by Members of Congress, Cabinet Secretaries, leaders from industry and academia, and other experts. The discussions reviewed progress made thus far in implementing the Gathering Storm recommendations to strengthen K-12 education in math and science, research, higher education, and the environment for innovation. Participants also noted that much additional work is needed to ensure that America remains a leader in science and engineering in the long term.

Two years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the health, economic, and social disruptions caused by this global crisis continue to evolve. The impacts of the pandemic are likely to endure for years to come, with poor, marginalized, and vulnerable groups the most affected. In COVID-19 & Global Food Security: Two Years Later, the editors bring together contributions from new IFPRI research, blogs, and the CGIAR COVID-19 Hub to examine the pandemic’s effects on poverty, food security, nutrition, and health around the world. This volume presents key lessons learned on food security and food system resilience in 2020 and 2021 and assesses the effectiveness of policy responses to the crisis. Looking forward, the authors consider how the pandemic experience can inform both recovery and longer-term efforts to build more resilient food systems.

Get ready for Cat and Reese’s story to continue in this novel that will test Cat and Reese’s relationship. Reese is preparing and trying the second hardest trial of his career when the past comes back to haunt him and Cat, just as their lives are getting ready to change irrevocably.

On a sunny afternoon in August of 1970, the Eastern Caribbean was, without warning, confronted with a terrible and tragic event. The Christena, a well-used ferry that regularly crossed the eleven-mile expanse between the twin islands if St. Kitts and Nevis sank. The two British colonial societies were suddenly thrown into turmoil, finding themselves unprepared to deal with such sudden tragedy. The ferry was registered to carry 155 passengers, but it was severely overloaded. While ninety-nine people survived that afternoon, nearly 250 other passengers perished disaster. As if their struggle to heal after the tragedy was not taxing enough, the islands had yet more adversity to conquer. However, both societies were determined to overcome that terrible event, even as they fought to achieve greater political independence. Told from the perspective of Whitman T. Browne, PhD, a native if Nevis, who lived on the island at the time of the tragedy. The Christena Disaster Forty-Two Years Later is a moving, firsthand account of how these sister communities banded together, not only to win their political autonomy, but also to overcome their emotional suffering as a result of greater tragedy.

The Two Faces of American Freedom boldly reinterprets the American political tradition from the colonial period to modern times, placing issues of race relations, immigration, and presidentialism in the context of shifting notions of empire and citizenship. Today, while the U.S. enjoys tremendous military and economic power, citizens are increasingly insulated from everyday decision-making. This was not always the case. America, Aziz Rana argues, began as a settler society grounded in an ideal of freedom as the exercise of continuous self-rule—one that joined direct political participation with economic independence. However, this vision of freedom was politically bound to the subordination of marginalized groups, especially slaves, Native Americans, and women. These practices of liberty and exclusion were not separate currents, but rather two sides of the same coin. However, at crucial moments, social movements sought to imagine freedom without either subordination or empire. By the mid-twentieth century, these efforts failed, resulting in the rise of hierarchical state and corporate institutions. This new framework presented national and economic security as society’s guiding commitments and nurtured a continual extension of America’s global reach. Rana envisions a democratic society that revives settler ideals, but combines them with meaningful inclusion for those currently at the margins of American life.