RETHINKING ALCOHOL ADDICTION … LEON KASS … LIFE AFTER INCARCERATION … SLEEPING PRESIDENTS PRESIDENTS SLEEPING … INCARCERATION AFTER LIFE … KASS LEON … ADDICTION ALCOHOL RETHINKING SUMMER 2021 SUMMER SUMMER 2021, VOLUME 113, NUMBER 4 UCH_summer2021 cover and spine_v4.indd 1 7/27/21 11:29 AM UCH_ADS_v1.indd 2 7/26/21 2:12 PM EDITORˆS NOTES VOLUME 113, NUMBER 4, SUMMER 2021 EDITOR Laura Demanski, AM’94 SENIOR EDITOR Mary Ruth Yoe ASSOCIATE EDITOR Susie Allen, AB’09 MANAGING EDITOR Rhonda L. Smith ART DIRECTOR Guido Mendez ALUMNI NEWS EDITOR Andrew Peart, AM’16, PHD’18 GRAPHIC DESIGNER Chloe Reibold BUSINESS ADMINISTRATOR Denise Dentley CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Jeanie Chung; Carrie Golus, AB’91, AM’93; Lucas McGranahan; Maureen Searcy Editorial Office The University of Chicago Magazine, 5235 South Harper Court, Chicago, IL 60615 TELEPHONE 773.702.2163 EMAIL [email protected] University of Chicago Alumni Relations and EAT, MEMORY Development has its offices at 5235 South Harper Court, Chicago, IL 60615 TELEPHONE 773.702.2150 BY LAURA DEMANSKI, AM’94 ADDRESS CHANGES 800.955.0065 or [email protected] WEB mag.uchicago.edu The University of Chicago Magazine ’ve long had my suspicions about you readers, and now I’m sure. (ISSN-0041-9508) is published quarterly (Fall, Let me begin at the beginning. We love to get letters to the Winter, Spring, Summer) by the University editor. The first missive to hit the Magazine’s in-box after each of Chicago in cooperation with Alumni Relations and Development, 5235 South issue goes out into the world is, for us, akin to the first robin in Harper Court, Chicago, IL 60615, and sent to spring or a new green shoot—a happy sign of life and, we hope, a all University of Chicago alumni. Published harbinger of more to follow. Even when the words are harsh, we continuously since 1907. Periodicals postage paid at Chicago and additional mailing want to hear from you. offi s. POSTMASTER Send address changes to But what makes readers write? Like anything one cares about The University of Chicago Magazine, Alumni a lot, we turn this question over and over, reason and hypothesize and Records, 5235 South Harper Court, Chicago, Ipredict. Those predictions are frequently off the mark. Last year, fol- IL 60615. © 2021 University of Chicago lowing an issue that covered the early months of COVID-19, medical Advertising Contact uchicago-magazine imaging breakthroughs, and Pulitzer Prize–winning journalism, I noted @uchicago.edu or visit mag.uchicago.edu/ to friends that we received more letters about Ribs ’n’ Bibs, the much- advertising. The Magazine is a member of the Ivy League Magazine Network, whose clients lamented 53rd Street barbeque joint, than about any other topic. include other colleges and universities. These One year later, the evidence has become conclusive. The encomi- advertisements help the Magazine continue to ums to Morry’s and Salonica in this issue’s Letters section, heartfelt deliver news of the University of Chicago and its alumni to readers. Please contact the editor and eloquent, tell the tale: nothing gets your fingers typing more than with any questions. when we invoke Hyde Park eating establishments. IVY LEAGUE MAGAZINE NETWORK And hooray for that. If University of Chicago alumni love their food Heather Wedlake, Director of Operations TELEPHONE 617.319.0995 WEB ivymags.com memories, well, don’t we all? One of my favorite writers, M. F. K. Fisher, EMAIL [email protected] points out in the foreword to The Gastronomical Me (1943) that our memories of the meals we’ve eaten are tightly tangled with our whole The University does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual life stories. “It seems to me,” she writes, “that our three basic needs, orientation, gender identity, national or ethnic for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined origin, age, status as an individual with a that we cannot straightly think of one without the others.” That has disability, protected veteran status, genetic information, or other protected classes under rung true to me since I first read it. the law. For additional information, please see So when you find yourself in a Medici reverie, a T-Hut trance, or a equalopportunity.uchicago.edu. Shake Day daydream, free associate from there and, if the spirit moves, write us about it. We and your fellow hungry readers will eat it up. Oh, and me? I will never stop missing Caffe Florian’s veggie pizza and ©istock.com/blindspot AM’94 Demanski, Laura by Photography hope I never have to start missing Jimmy’s grilled cheese and fries. ◆ THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO MAGAZINE | SUMMER 2021 1 UCM_Ednotes_Summer21_v4.indd 1 7/27/21 9:48 AM Vol. 113 / No. 4 SUMMER 2021 mag.uchicago.edu Pipes and pomp A bagpiper prepares for the University’s 534th Convocation, which included both virtual and in-person celebrations of the Class of 2021. On the cover No Hyde Park summer would be complete without an afternoon basking in the splendors of Promontory Point. Illustration by Nick Lu. Smith Jason by Photography TOC_v3.indd 2 7/27/21 12:44 PM 1 Editor’s Notes 4 Letters 9 On the Agenda Features A measure of pleasure By Maureen Searcy For nearly two decades psychologist Andrea King has followed a group 24 of social drinkers to find out why only some develop alcohol use disorder. A questioning mind By Laura Demanski, AM’94 32 Leon Kass, LAB’54, SB’58, MD’62, continues the conversation. Abiding convictions By Susie Allen, AB’09 Punishment doesn’t end after incarceration, writes Crown Family School 36 associate professor Reuben Jonathan Miller, AM’07. Plus: An excerpt from Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration. Executive dreaming By Carrie Golus, AB’91, AM’93 In Sleeping Presidents, artist and writer John Ransom Phillips, AB’60, 44 PhD’66, takes viewers inside the minds of (almost) every one from George Washington to Joe Biden. 11 49 UChicago Journal Peer Review Research and What alumni are Photography by Jason Smith Jason by Photography news in brief thinking and doing TOC_v3.indd 3 7/27/21 12:44 PM The University of Chicago Magazine welcomes letters about its contents or about the life of the University. Letters for publication must be signed and may be edited for space, clarity, and civility. To provide a range of views and voices, we encourage letter writers to limit LETTERS themselves to 300 words or fewer. Write: Editor, The University of Chicago Magazine, 5235 South Harper Court, Chicago, IL 60615. Or email: [email protected]. 53rd Street to Wall Street to the Chicago Journal office with my after each Sox homer or directed deri- Thanks to Chip Forrester, AB’77, for copy, barely on time. sively at departing opposition pitchers. cofounding the Chicago Journal and James Graff, AB’81 The 1978 season would prove a writing such an engaging account of WASHINGTON, DC disappointment, turning the previous its glory years (“Alternative History,” year’s very respectable 90–72 record Spring/21). When I got to the Univer- almost on its head. But the games were sity, the Journal had more going for it Reporting from Comiskey fun to go to nonetheless, especially than the Maroon: a great office with I’m writing to offer my thanks, twice, with a press pass in my pocket (I still windows overlooking Harper and to Chip Forrester. The first thank- carry it). I even turned in a cover story, 53rd, an aim to cover the communi- you is for his reminiscence about the a lengthy interview with the Sox’s ty rather than the University, and a Chicago Journal, which brought back showman owner, Bill Veeck (in the masthead of slightly older and vastly happy memories of my days as the September 13, 1978 issue—you can look more sophisticated people than me. A Journal’s sporadic baseball columnist. it up, as the baseball statisticians say). tip from Chip landed me my first suit- Sometime late in the winter of By the late summer of 1979 I had de- and-tie interview, with the president 1978, I came across a copy of the cided to move to the Boston area, which of Hyde Park Bank. He fumed at be- paper in the basement of Swift Hall turned out to have far more aspiring ing asked by someone of my callow and read an entertaining column baseball writers than it needed. Shortly ilk about the loss the bank had taken about horse racing (perhaps a reader after I moved, a check for $40 arrived due to fraudulent acts of a former vice can identify who the author was). from the Journal, payment for my last president—who by then was working At the time I was in the middle of a couple of columns. I had badly mis- at a tollbooth on the Tri-State. quite undistinguished career as an judged how long it would take me to find It was heady stuff, as was button- MA student in the Divinity School, a job in Boston, and that money (about holing the YMCA about its uncon- and my mood was as gloomy as the $150 today) kept me fed for a while. So, scionable closing of the Hyde Park Y. Chicago season. The column made me more than 40 years too late but for the Other friends—including Curtis Black, realize that I would much prefer to second time in one letter: thanks, Chip. EX’79, and Nancy Cleveland, who also write about sports than plod through Steven Feldman, AB’76, AM’79 wrote for the Journal—eventually Heidegger’s Being and Time.