The Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center
From College Hall | A library transformed for a new century.
Rewriting the Final Chapter
As medicine advances, the choices associated with end-of-life care grow more complex — especially when patients or their families clash with doctors, the state, and occasionally each other, over when to treat and when to let go.
Big Shoes
From the Editor | June 1998
The Best on the Greatest
The greatest of our time. The Muhammad Ali Reader.
Side effects. Bitter Pills: Inside the Hazardous World of Legal Drugs.
Coal Miners’ Doctor
Forty years ago, a freshly-minted M.D. learned about life and death -- and how to drink home-brewed beer and (almost) eat squirrel's brains -- while practicing medicine in the hills of eastern Kentucky.
Rising, Falling, Hanging On
Less in common than meets the eye. Tempest Rising and Pride.
Dear Doc Schelling
The original copies of the following letters, written by Ezra Pound to Felix Schelling and other people at Penn over a 20-year period, are in the special-collections department of Van Pelt Library. No attempts have been made to correct Pound's idiosyncratic spelling and grammar.
Bridging Two Worlds
Penn -- like universities across the country -- is helping more faculty move ideas from the lab to the marketplace through a process called technology transfer. But, some caution that these industry-academy collaborations may compromise publishing and research.
The Commissioner of Curiosity
"Information architect" Richard Saul Wurman has made a life's quest -- and a very comfortable living -- out of forgetting everything he ever knew about lots of things the rest of us take for granted.
The Gift
George Weiss gave 112 West Philadelphia students a chance to go to college. He says he's gotten much more in return.
The West Philadelphia Story
As Penn launches a series of initiatives to bolster its urban environment, it has to contend with a lot of history—including its own.
Welfare Reform
Flawed Process, Faulty Policy.
American Alchemy
Immigrants are the "yeast" whose rise renews U.S. cities.
Nature’s Way
On the trail with his new daughter, a father's perspective changes.
Scholarship and Service
From College Hall | Penn's role in the community.
The Catch of the Day, Fresh from the Tank
"The future lies in these artificial tanks."
Making the Cultural Scene at the Writers House
Writers on campus get a room -- several, actually -- of their own.
Wired Man
Twenty years after he helped created the Internet, Dave Farber is working to keep it open to all manner of unconventional ideas -- inlcuding his own -- and pondering the next big thing in cyberspace.
Report from the Greeks
A comprehensive examination of and blueprint for Greek life at the University and beyond.