Terror and Transformation
Southeast Asia in World War II, Part Two: The Japanese Occupation and Its Repercussions
Imran Said
· 12 min read
History
A collection of 382 posts
Populism’s Self-Defeating Trap
Populist rhetoric is exceptionally effective for pursuing and gaining power, but it provides no program for the complexities of actual governance.
Tomislav Kardum
· 7 min read
The Moral Collapse of Empire
Southeast Asia in World War II, Part One: Japanese Conquests and British Disgrace
Imran Said
· 22 min read
England’s Founding Father
How a 10th-century warrior-statesman forged a unified England and why his legacy still matters in our identity-obsessed day.
Ralph Leonard
· 14 min read
Epstein Mania on the Digital Borderlands
The longevity of the Epstein story owes less to new facts of criminal conduct than to its symbolic utility in alleging deviancy.
Claire Lehmann
· 6 min read
A History of Morality Clauses
The century-old moral panics and persecutions by Anthony Comstock and the Society for the Suppression of Vice are echoed today by cancellation campaigns from the moralistic Left and Right.
E. Lily Yu
· 14 min read
That Other Greenland Standoff
In April 1940, Danes, Germans, Brits, Americans, and Canadians had designs on the world’s largest island. Eighty-five years later, many of their arguments sound eerily familiar.
Greg Koabel
· 22 min read
The Destruction and the Resurrection
An interview with the curators of the Ghetto Fighters’ Museum, the first Holocaust museum founded by Holocaust survivors.
Hannah Gal
· 11 min read
Bodies of Evidence
When combined thoughtfully with traditional historical methods, analysis of ancient DNA can illuminate the lives, characters, and motivations of people long dead.
Patrick Whittle
· 11 min read
The Arabs’ Anti-Colonial Delusion
The Arabs still believe that they are fighting a colonial war against Israel. But they are not.
Hannes Stein
· 6 min read
Weimar Vibes
The fate of the Weimar Republic stands as a warning of what happens when societies and their citizens indulge extremism.
Shalom Lappin
· 18 min read
The Nazi in My Family
Evil pollutes everything it touches; for a long time I wrestled with my own shame, as though I bore some guilt by association.
Jacob Howland
· 11 min read
A Brief History of Inbreeding
How kinship, culture, and genetics shaped one of humanity’s oldest taboos.
Francisco Ceballos
· 12 min read
Red Sheep
An impressive new biography of Jessica Mitford emphasises her sceptical and anti-authoritarian personality. But this was only half of the picture.
Ron Capshaw
· 11 min read
The Line Dividing Good and Evil
What we can learn from the moral and literary failings of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and James Baldwin.
Megan Gafford
· 8 min read