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Long Read

A collection of 161 posts

The Chandos portrait, likely Shakespeare, early 17th century

The Paranoid Style in Shakespeare Denialism

Against conspiracist trends, there is an obligation on defenders of a liberal society to uphold the integrity of its intellectual methods.

Oliver Kamm

2 May 2024 · 25 min read

A black and white portrait of Henry Wallace with a background of colourful Soviet-era stamps.

Misadventures of a Stalinist Stooge

Benn Steil’s engrossing new biography of Henry A. Wallace is a timely cautionary tale and a masterpiece of 20th-century American history.

Ronald Radosh

25 Apr 2024 · 23 min read

A still of Anne Wiazemsky and Jean-Pierre Leaud in Le Chinoise. They are sitting at a table reading and smoking cigarettes.

Jean-Luc Godard in Retrospect Part II: Fanaticism and Failure (1966–2022)

After half a decade of critical adulation, Godard’s career slumped into doctrinaire Maoism, bitterness, incomprehensibility, and irrelevance. It never recovered.

Charlotte Allen

16 Apr 2024 · 36 min read

A woman and two men, snapping their fingers. Image from Band à Part (Jean-Luc Godard, 1964)

Jean-Luc Godard in Retrospect Part I: Abstraction Hero (1930–65)

A brief five-year period produced nearly all the Godard movies that film aficionados still remember, but even these celebrated works have dated poorly.

Charlotte Allen

10 Apr 2024 · 33 min read

James Spader as James Ballard in Crash

Sex and Smashed Steel

A look back at J.G. Ballard's ‘Crash’—one of the the 20th century’s greatest and most disturbingly prophetic novels.

Benjamin Kerstein

2 Apr 2024 · 25 min read

Werner Herzog in 2011. Wikimedia Commons.

Mystic Without a Church

Werner Herzog’s new memoir provides a look back on the magisterial and occasionally maddening career of a cinematic visionary.

Jaspreet Singh Boparai

28 Mar 2024 · 17 min read

The author, pictured on a bridge in Amsterdam, in 1993, a few weeks before she was attacked.

Toward Ruin or Recovery?

The modern feminist response to rape is failing women, and it is failing victims of rape most of all.

Larissa Phillips

20 Mar 2024 · 34 min read

The Amityville Horror—A 50-Year Old Lie That Won’t Die

The Amityville Horror—A 50-Year Old Lie That Won’t Die

Jay Anson’s haunted-house yarn was a highly lucrative hoax, but it struck a popular chord amid the financial precarity of 1970s America.

Kevin Mims

7 Mar 2024 · 26 min read

Motorpsycho Nightmare

Motorpsycho Nightmare

Robert Pirsig’s insufferable cult novel about philosophy and bike maintenance turns 50.

Kevin Mims

20 Feb 2024 · 17 min read

On Biology and Politics

On Biology and Politics

Why the Left must take human evolution seriously.

Patrick Whittle

18 Feb 2024 · 22 min read

Chaos at the End of History

Chaos at the End of History

Even in rights-based and law-bound democratic societies, people tend to find new things to struggle over.

Matt Johnson

12 Feb 2024 · 28 min read

The Limits of Good Intentions

The Limits of Good Intentions

The payday-loan debate revisited.

Aaron Hanna

9 Feb 2024 · 22 min read

Here Comes the Bite

Here Comes the Bite

Peter Benchley’s ‘Jaws’ turns 50.

Kevin Mims

31 Jan 2024 · 23 min read

The Vilnius Fiasco

The Vilnius Fiasco

There is a better way to protect Ukrainian sovereignty and security—and long-term Western interests—than NATO membership.

Adam Garfinkle

4 Jan 2024 · 23 min read

How Effective Altruism Lost Its Way

How Effective Altruism Lost Its Way

It is time for the EA movement to rediscover humanism.

Matt Johnson

21 Dec 2023 · 29 min read