The Atlantic

Yesterday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences produced yet another all-male slate for the Best Director category of the Oscars—and provoked yet another round of outrage that America’s culture industry is incapable of recognizing the achievements of women. But there is, in fact, a major creative industry in which women are routinely awarded the top honors. It’s called publishing.

The big literary awards this year have been positively dominated by female writers and—remarkably—this is considered totally unremarkable. This is the good-news story contradicting persistent gender inequities in, it often seems, every other field.

The New York Times

We analyzed some of the most popular social studies textbooks used in California and Texas. Here’s how political divides shape what students learn about the nation’s history.

The textbooks cover the same sweeping story, from the brutality of slavery to the struggle for civil rights. The self-evident truths of the founding documents to the waves of immigration that reshaped the nation.

The books have the same publisher. They credit the same authors. But they are customized for students in different states, and their contents sometimes diverge in ways that reflect the nation’s deepest partisan divides.

Hundreds of differences — some subtle, others extensive — emerged in a New York Times analysis of eight commonly used American history textbooks in California and Texas, two of the nation’s largest markets.

In a country that cannot come to a consensus on fundamental questions — how restricted capitalism should be, whether immigrants are a burden or a boon, to what extent the legacy of slavery continues to shape American life — textbook publishers are caught in the middle. On these questions and others, classroom materials are not only shaded by politics, but are also helping to shape a generation of future voters.