America’s Grief Cycle: The Negotiation Phase
How Trump’s tariffs and foreign policy signal the third phase of US decline on the world stage.
Andrew Roberts
· 7 min read
History
A collection of 345 posts
How to Tell if You’re Living in a Patriarchy
Arguments that patriarchy exists in the West today are largely dependent on reinventions of the concept that would be better dispensed with.
Helen Pluckrose
· 16 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
· 23 min read
Stalin, Putin, and the Corruption of History
The history of Soviet totalitarianism is now being rewritten.
Andy Owen
· 13 min read
Architecture as Revenge
Brady Corbet’s panoramic epic, ‘The Brutalist,’ may be technically brilliant, but it is a cheat and a fraud.
Charlotte Allen
· 15 min read
Shakespeare Versus the Girlboss
Jodi Picoult’s latest novel is a ham-fisted expression of cultural rage, embodying the most anodyne values of corporate human-resources departments.
Marilyn Simon
· 14 min read
Agitprop at the AHA
If the American Historical Association formally adopts a resolution accusing Israel of “scholasticide,” it could destroy the organisation’s reputation for serious scholarship.
Jeffrey Herf
· 15 min read
The (First) Conquest of Quebec
In the 24th instalment of ‘Nations of Canada,’ Greg Koabel describes how British adventurers briefly seized Quebec and Acadia following the Anglo-French War of 1627–29.
Greg Koabel
· 29 min read
A Very American Madness
America is not fallen; it is simply given to periodic bouts of insanity. The patient is tiresome; the patient is ridiculous; but the patient is stable.
Ronald W. Dworkin
· 17 min read
Oversimplify and Vilify
‘The Message’ is a lopsided, unserious, and frequently embarrassing essay, the real target of which is the very existence of Israel.
Mark Horowitz
· 12 min read
The Recline of the West
Since the 18th century, the very process of innovation was uniquely institutionalised in the West. That is now precisely what is being globalised.
Lawrence Cahoone
· 18 min read
Trump and the Academic Cocoon
A New York Times op-ed by a Yale historian tries to see universities from the vantage point of an outsider. Instead, it unwittingly illustrates why universities will not self-correct without external intervention.
Heather Mac Donald
· 12 min read
Anti-Zionism’s German Roots
While Islam traditionally treated Jews with contempt, antisemitic conspiracy theories imported from Germany escalated this animosity by vilifying Jews as agents of diabolical evil.
Gerfried Ambrosch
· 11 min read
A Fashionable Madness: The Obsession with ‘Settler Colonialism’
The works of literary critic Adam Kirsch and of novelist and memoirist Joan Didion provide a salutary rebuttal of settler colonialist theory.
Robert Huddleston
· 14 min read
Podcast #253: A Brief History of Communism
Jonathan Kay speaks with Bard College historian Sean McMeekin about his new book, To Overthrow the World: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism.
Quillette, Sean McMeekin
· 16 min read