Jefferson and the Source of Human Rights
To understand the intent of the US Declaration of Independence, recall that its primary author was a deist rather than a Christian.
Coel Hellier
· 7 min read
American History
A collection of 53 posts
Gloomy Optimist
Jefferson emerges as a man who doubted democracy's permanence yet placed his faith in future generations. Onuf and Cogliano rescue him from caricature—even if one dimension of his thought remains in shadow.
Ron Capshaw
· 6 min read
Radical Lessons in Solidarity and Resistance
The son of Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers has written a perceptive, fascinating, and rather sad book about his lonely life as the child of violent revolutionaries.
Ron Capshaw
· 11 min read
Apocalypse ’92
A new account of the 1992 siege at Ruby Ridge attempts to straighten out the record and place the story in a broader political and theological context.
Ron Capshaw
· 9 min read
American Liberalism and Illiberalism
Americans who may have ferocious disagreements about the size of government, foreign policy, and a wide range of other issues must find a way to unite around their shared commitment to the liberal idea.
Matt Johnson
· 15 min read
Murder Most Foul
William J. Mann’s new book about the notorious Black Dahlia case is a valuable corrective to the cottage industry of speculative theories that proliferated after her murder in 1947.
Ron Capshaw
· 10 min read
Stormclouds Over the Capitol
Mary Clare Jalonick’s oral history of the 6 January riot is an important corrective to the second Trump administration’s vandalism of the historical record.
Ron Capshaw
· 7 min read
Defaming the Dead
Is telling lies about someone after they die okay if that someone was a very bad person?
Holly Lawford-Smith
· 6 min read
Folk, Feedback, and Fury
Neil Young is eighty.
David Cohen
· 16 min read
A Subterranean Celebration
How the 6 Gallery reading in San Francisco on 7 October 1955 changed the counterculture.
David S. Wills
· 13 min read
Podcast #303: When New Netherland Became New York
Quillette podcast host Jonathan Kay speaks with Russell Shorto, whose new book chronicles the extraordinary events in 1664 that delivered Manhattan from the Dutch to the British.
Quillette
· 27 min read
Another JFK Assassination Nothingburger
Jefferson Morley’s dogged pursuit of a CIA connection in Miami is all smoke and no fire.
Fred Litwin
· 16 min read
Disco Inferno
Disco Demolition Night was an early episode of culture and counterculture being saddled with far greater political significance than they deserved.
George Case
· 10 min read
The Firing of Wolf Ladejinsky
What a Cold War scandal can teach us about democracy.
Michael Conlon
· 9 min read
Red Spies and Lies
Clay Risen’s new book about the American “Red Scare” emphasises the injustices of anti-communism but minimises the true extent and danger of communist infiltration.
Ronald Radosh
· 24 min read