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A letter is presented from U.S. writer and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson to his uncle, Samuel Ripley, in which Emerson discusses his impressions of Charleston, South Carolina.

Examines issues and events that made Theodore Parker the most understudied major writer of the transcendentalist period, as discussed in the book 'American Heretic: Theodore Parker and Transcendentalism,' by Dean Grodzins. Image of Parker as a preacher; Arguments for the American heretic label for Parker; Parker's intellectual accomplishments.

Presents an essay on the biographies of several women during the transcendentalist period in the New England. Struggle of women in establishing societal and artistic roles; Efforts of women for intellectual education; Impact of scholarship programs in promoting female writers.

Presents accounts by Rebecca Codman Butterfield of the Brook Farm founded in 1841. Aims of the community; Transcendentalism; Operations at the Farm; Description of the Farm; Fourier's ideas.

If the tendency to discount rewards reflects individuals' general level of impulsiveness, then the discounting of delayed and probabilistic rewards should be negatively correlated: The less a person is able to wait for delayed rewards, the more they should take chances on receiving probabilistic rewards. It has been suggested that damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) increases individuals' impulsiveness, but both intertemporal choice and risky choice have only recently been assayed in the same patients with vmPFC damage. Here, we assess both delay and probability discounting in individuals with vmPFC damage (n = 8) or with medial temporal lobe (MTL) damage (n = 10), and in age- and education-matched controls (n = 30). On average, MTL-lesioned individuals discounted delayed rewards at normal rates but discounted probabilistic rewards more shallowly than controls. In contrast, vmPFC-lesioned individuals discounted delayed rewards more steeply but probabilistic rewards more shallowly than controls. These results suggest that vmPFC lesions affect the weighting of reward amount relative to delay and certainty in opposite ways. Moreover, whereas MTL-lesioned individuals and controls showed typical, nonsignificant correlations between the discounting of delayed and probabilistic rewards, vmPFC-lesioned individuals showed a significant negative correlation, as would be expected if vmPFC damage increases impulsiveness more in some patients than in others. Although these results are consistent with the hypothesis that vmPFC plays a role in impulsiveness, it is unclear how they could be explained by a single mechanism governing valuation of both delayed and probabilistic rewards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reviewed: Ordinary Mysteries: The Common Journal of Nathaniel and Sophia Hawthorne, 1842-1843. Hawthorne, Nathaniel and Hawthorne, Sophia.

Reviewed: Elizabeth Manning Hawthorne: A Life in Letters. Hawthorne, Elizabeth Manning.

Reviewed: Sophia Peabody Hawthorne: A Life. Vol. 1, 1809-1847. Valenti, Patricia Dunlavy.

Reviewed: Hawthorne in Concord. McFarland, Philip.

Reviewed: Elizabeth Palmer Peabody: A Reformer on Her Own Terms. Ronda, Bruce A.

Reviewed: The Remarkable Mrs. Ripley: The Life of Sarah Alden Bradford Ripley. Goodwin, Joan.

Reviewed: Transcendental Wife: The Life of Abigail May Alcott. Barton, Cynthia H.

Reviewed: Mary Moody Emerson and the Origins of Transcendentalism: A Family History. Cole, Phyllis.

Reviewed: The English Notebooks, 1853-1856. Hawthorne, Nathaniel.

Reviewed: The English Notebooks, 1856-1860. Hawthorne, Nathaniel.