History - Quillette (Page 10)

Blessed Are the Sense-Makers

Years from now, if anyone looks at a line graph (in the OED or Google dictionary) tracking the frequency with which a word is mentioned in print, they may notice the current affinity for the word “narrative.” An already overworked word (by virtue of its abstractness), it is now almost

Jared Marcel Pollen

5 Jul 2021 · 11 min read

The Prophet of Dystopia at Rest: Margaret Atwood in Cuba

Canada has never supported the US embargo, and the countries’ good relations are for many Canadians a symbol of our independence.

Yvon Grenier

2 Jul 2021 · 13 min read

The Route to Re-Enchantment

Moving from Cain and Abel to Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, with some Egyptian myths thrown in, he reconnects his young audience to the religious tradition that was always theirs to inherit, but from which they have been estranged by their modern education.

Harrison Pitt

26 Jun 2021 · 9 min read

Why Fake News Flourishes: Emitting Mere Information Is Easy, But Creating Actual Knowledge Is Hard

Digital media, by contrast, had hardly any paying customers and lured advertisers with fleeting “impressions” and “engagement,” launching a no-holds-barred race to attract eyeballs.

Jonathan Rauch

25 Jun 2021 · 9 min read

Tocqueville and Us

People joining a political movement don’t usually consider its logic or consequences; they react to an injustice or grievance.

Eric Clifford Graf

21 Jun 2021 · 9 min read

Why Is the Society for American Archaeology Promoting Indigenous Creationism?

The most expansive interpretations of NAGPRA’s provisions now serve to place Indigenous oral traditions, which typically include religious stories, on equal footing with traditional forms of scientific evidence such as DNA analysis.

Elizabeth Weiss and James W. Springer

13 Jun 2021 · 16 min read

How the (Much Maligned) Mongol Horde Helped Create Russian Civilization

The Jochid khans considered the Russian principalities part of their dominion.

Marie Favereau

11 Jun 2021 · 9 min read

White Lotus, Red Dragon—China’s History of Millenarian Dissent

When one woman refused and snapped at them to “go away,” they attacked her with a chair and mop handle.

Aaron Sarin

29 May 2021 · 14 min read

Black Lives Matter and the Psychology of Progressive Fatalism

There is nothing wrong with elevating anti-racism in one’s own life. But there is something wrong with imposing one’s moral reality upon total strangers.

Samuel Kronen

28 May 2021 · 18 min read

Book Burning at Midnight, May 10th, 1933

Following the Nazis’ defeat by the Allies, the imagery lived on. In succeeding decades, projections of the book burning were never long out of sight or reference.

Thomas Doherty

10 May 2021 · 7 min read

Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe—A Review

A review of Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe by Niall Ferguson. Allen Lane, 496 pages (May 2021) Viewed from a certain angle, history appears to be the legacy of our errors—the record of humanity risking too much and anticipating too little, getting things wrong and getting them wrong all

Jared Marcel Pollen

6 May 2021 · 10 min read

Interrogating Jane

In fact, the single most common technique for insisting that Austen is anti-slavery is for the critic to draw an equivalence between slavery and her depiction of social class, or her portrayal of the status of women.

Lona Manning

26 Apr 2021 · 12 min read

The Ugly History of Rape Panics

As sexual violence was reaching historic lows, the narrative was demanding the opposite. The definition of sexual violence began to be broadened, and so the numbers grew.

Jerry Barnett

22 Apr 2021 · 11 min read

Stopped Cold: Remembering Russia's Catastrophic 1939 Campaign Against Finland

Many Finnish soldiers felt pity for their opponents, prodded into battle by merciless commissars.

Sean McMeekin

20 Apr 2021 · 13 min read

Rinaldo Walcott’s On Property—A Review

Indeed, the title misleads: On Property focuses more on the historical threads linking the slave plantations to the abuses of modern policing than it does on its purported subject matter.

Jonathan Salem-Wiseman

18 Apr 2021 · 8 min read