A collection of 387 posts
Where local collaboration is absent, foreign intervention imposes enormous costs or simply stalls. Where it exists, intervention can succeed with surprising velocity.
The structural case for why collectivist systems fail.
Naoíse Mac Sweeney’s new book tries to convince readers that Western civilisation doesn’t exist.
Southeast Asia in World War II, Part Three: Independence Movements under Japanese Occupation
Why Germans fear American religion, and what this reveals about Europe.
Southeast Asia in World War II, Part Two: The Japanese Occupation and Its Repercussions
Populist rhetoric is exceptionally effective for pursuing and gaining power, but it provides no program for the complexities of actual governance.
Southeast Asia in World War II, Part One: Japanese Conquests and British Disgrace
How a 10th-century warrior-statesman forged a unified England and why his legacy still matters in our identity-obsessed day.
The longevity of the Epstein story owes less to new facts of criminal conduct than to its symbolic utility in alleging deviancy.
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.
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.
An interview with the curators of the Ghetto Fighters’ Museum, the first Holocaust museum founded by Holocaust survivors.
When combined thoughtfully with traditional historical methods, analysis of ancient DNA can illuminate the lives, characters, and motivations of people long dead.
The Arabs still believe that they are fighting a colonial war against Israel. But they are not.