Zócalo Public Square

No matter how many Silicon Valley-bound software engineers, Texan-imitating call center operators, or Pepsi-endorsing movie stars it produces, India retains a promise of untrammeled, ancient spirituality. But how is modernity changing some of the country’s oldest traditions? Children of businessmen and engineers disobey their parents to join obscure, exacting religious orders; holy men hold work-a...

Iraq isn’t the first war that began with an overestimation of American power. Woodrow Wilson and the pro-war progressives believed World War I would transform the world. Lyndon Johnson and the Camelot intellectuals thought America could stop any communist movement from taking power anywhere on earth. George W. Bush and the neoconservatives imagined they could usher in their very own 1989 in the Mi...

Barack Obama rose to the presidency at a critical time in American history. Propelled by a galvanized left, admired for his cool temperament and high intellect, challenged as inexperienced, and provoking fierce and often racially-tinged opposition, the young Senator from Illinois took the oath of the highest office amid celebration despite the challenges ahead. The country faced its worst economic...

Wilbert Rideau spent 44 years in one of the country’s most infamous prisons, Louisiana’s Angola penitentiary. After killing a woman in a moment of panic following a botched bank robbery, Rideau was sentenced to death at 19, later amended to life imprisonment. From within Angola, long the sight of prison reform activism because of its brutal living and working conditions, Rideau worked to transform...

The Hoover Dam was once thought to be a remote regional project, approved as an afterthought by a Republican president before the stock market crashed. But by the time it was completed, and in the 75 years since it was dedicated, the Dam has come to symbolize American resilience and ingenuity at one of the worst times in our history. Construction at the height of the Depression employed thousands...

Zurich and Los Angeles share an intriguing political distinction: each is the largest city in the world’s two greatest centers of direct democracy. California and Switzerland use initiatives and referenda more often than any place in the world, and have for more than a century, when Los Angeles followed Zurich’s model and instituted the first municipal system of direct democracy in the U.S. But di...

With internationally acclaimed novels that sell millions of copies in 45 countries and 30 languages, Carlos Ruiz Zafón is a writer for a global age. Zafón, born in Barcelona and living in Los Angeles, where he first came to write screenplays, cites as his influences the 19th century British, Russian, and French giants — Dickens, Tolstoy, Balzac. But he also takes inspiration from the great America...

To the Western world, women’s rights and political Islam can appear incompatible. Deeply ingrained social norms and particular interpretations of Islamic law leave women in most Middle Eastern countries without legal protection from domestic violence or spousal rape. Women generally have fewer rights than men when it comes to education, work, divorce, and daily life — from dress to driving to bein...

In his most recent novel, Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi, Geoff Dyer creates the character Jeff Atman. Much like Dyer, he’s a writer charged with attending and covering the 2003 Venice Biennale. Jeff ignores various masterpieces, stumbles upon one particularly moving piece only by accident, takes in a major light installation while hung over, and participates in a toast to the Bellini—the cockt...

As college degrees become an ever more essential qualification for earning a living, students are going further than ever before to get them — and creating a new and rapidly changing worldwide marketplace for higher ed. Nearly three million students leave their home countries to pursue college degrees, a 40 percent increase since 1999. American institutions have set up shop in over 40 countries an...

From the invention of the suburb to the birth of Home and Garden Television, homeownership has long been a central part of the American dream. Americans build ballooning mansions, hunt for hidden architectural gems, drop thousands of dollars per square foot of urban condo or seaside shack, endlessly renovate fixer-uppers, and carefully outfit interiors. Why are we so desperate to own? Meghan Daum,...

Before travel shifted to the highways and the skies, the railroad connected Americans and developed the country. Trains built the Eastern seaboard cities, connected the distant coasts, populated and glamorized the West, determined the outcomes of wars, and, when regulated and subsidized, shaped our ideas of government and economy. Today, barring some commuter rails and urban subways, trains are un...

John A. Pérez, a former labor leader and the first openly gay Speaker of the Assembly in California, ascends to the seat at a particularly challenging time for the state, and with only a year's experience. Not only has California been struggling with a devastating budget crisis, but federal policies expected to assist the state might fail. Transportation and education dollars slated for California...

Internet commerce has boomed in the last decade. Americans alone spend over $150 billion in online transactions, and over 50 million U.S. households bank on the web. But how safe are the sites computer users around the world trust with their most sensitive information, and how precarious is the system? Isolated cases of identity theft and computer viruses fail to capture the vast risk crime poses...

One hundred sixty years ago, California, newly independent from Mexico, chose statehood. Since then, California has spurred change around the country. Its progressive policies inspired other states to follow suit, and the innovations sparked in Silicon Valley and fueled by venture capital — more of which is invested in California than in the other 49 states combined — have transformed the way we l...

Oil may make more headlines, but water is the world’s most indispensable resource, and a dwindling one. Water’s scarcity spawns war, epidemic diseases and the collapse of states across parts of Africa and Asia; its faltering supplies imperil the rise of China and India. What should we do about water? Journalist Steven Solomon, author of Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization,...

Since the devastating economic crisis of 2008, new regulations have aimed to reign in the big banks that helped bring down the world economy. But six “megabanks” still rule the financial markets. They are bigger, more profitable, and more resistant to regulation than ever before. They control assets amounting to 60 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. And their rise from the ashes of t...

Photographers have turned their lenses on food since the invention of their art. Early images captured simple, soft arrangements that showcased seasonal bounties — fruits and vegetables in vases and bowls, like still-life paintings. Photographed still lives — whether elaborate or bare — evoked not only taste and appetite, but the experience of a meal, the process, the drama, the company. Shots of...

Well before the rise of political evangelicalism, Americans have blurred the church-state divide, whether for spurring major social movements like women’s suffrage or civil rights or for hitting the campaign trail. But how well does democracy mix with God? As Europeans and Americans worry about radical Islam undermining Western-style liberal democratic government. Journalist and scholar Ian Buruma...

Americans celebrated the election of Barack Obama as a “triumph over race.” But in major U.S. cities today, the majority of young black men are locked behind bars or labeled felons for life. Jim Crow laws may have been wiped off the books decades ago, but an astounding number of African Americans today, much like their grandparents before them, are trapped in a permanent second-class status — unab...

Roads bind our world. The dense patchwork of an urban grid, looping and soaring city highways, long and straight country trails and narrow, curving mountain passes connect people everywhere with goods, knowledge, disease, and each other. Roads define the way we speak — our careers run in the fast lane; our integrity takes us on the high road; our fates follow paths less traveled — and underpin our...

California has long led the country on environmental initiatives — the state has pledged to produce a third of its energy from renewable sources by 2020. Today, California has an estimated 159,000 green jobs, and over the last 13 years, green jobs have grown by 36 percent, while Californian jobs in general have grown by 13 percent. But despite these forward-looking trends, how can policymakers ens...

Steve Westly is founder and managing partner of The Westly Group. Mr. Westly previously served as the Controller and Chief Fiscal Officer of the state of California, chairing the State Lands Commission and serving on 63 other boards and commissions. During his term, Mr. Westly led an effort to commit more than $1 billion to clean technology investments. Mr. Westly is a former a Senior Vice Preside...

Violence affects young African American men more than any other group. Homicide is the leading cause of death for black men between the ages of 15 and 34. In every major U.S. city, black men are more likely than others to be shot or stabbed. But what about the psychological wounds of trauma? Like victims of combat violence or sexual assault, victims of urban violence often suffer post traumatic sy...

Americans have long been fascinated by Cuba. A mere 90 miles divide the two countries, and their histories have been entangled since the turn of the last century, when the U.S. occupied Cuba after the Spanish-American war. The countries’ relations only grew more complicated from there. Fidel Castro assumed power in 1959, building a one-party Communist state that controlled land, the economy, and t...