A collection of 385 posts
Around 1987, Sagan gave an uncannily prescient lecture to the Illinois state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
As the Holy Roman Empire descended into religious conflicts, its Habsburg ruler surrounded himself with magicians, astrologers, and scryers.
An American family descended from Serbian and Croatian immigrants finds a way to overcome old-world hatreds.
Herf tells the complicated and often surprising story of the internal political struggles in Western capitals, as well as in the halls of the United Nations, that erupted at the end of the Second World War.
Williams, W. A. (1962). The Tragedy of American Diplomacy. New York: Dell Pub. Co. When the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) pinned Putin’s recent invasion of Ukraine on NATO’s “imperialist expansionism,” many policymakers and journalists on both sides of the political spectrum lambasted the organization for its half-hearted
Six imperial rulers expanded the Mexica domain from 1430 until 1519, until the Spaniards first set foot in Tenochtitlan and disrupted the Aztec imperial agenda.
From the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, justifications offered for Moscow’s aggression must have struck most non-Russian observers as unrealistic, to say the least. Many observers were incredulous that any educated Russian could possibly believe Putin’s claim that Ukraine required “denazification and demilitarization,” or that the country
The story of how I came to know one of those survivors, and chronicle her life.
Jennifer Raff’s Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas was published with much fanfare in February, garnering a rave New York Times review. And as of this writing, it is listed as one of the top 10 books about genetics on Amazon. The success reflects the fact that the
There is no firmly established technical term for the Bible in Judaism. The Hebrew scriptures may simply be referred to as “the Bible,” and the term “Jewish Bible” is sometimes used to distinguish it from the Christian Bible. In Hebrew, terms such as miqra (“scripture”) or kitve haqqodesh (“sacred texts”
An earlier version of this article appeared in the German language newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung on March 4th, 2022. February 24th, 2022, constituted a shock to the European psyche. The invasion of Ukraine, without any plausible casus belli, the massive use of military force against civilians, the attempted hunting down
In 1338, the story has it, a notorious French exile named Robert of Artois strutted into the London palace of King Edward III, bearing a stuffed heron on a silver platter. “Clear the way, you miserable failures,” he said to the assembled lords. “I have a heron … the most cowardly
Maus was important to my life, but there's nothing wrong with protecting kids from encountering the world’s worst horrors before they are old enough to understand them.
Few novels become institutions, to have departments rigged up around them, whole constituencies and spheres of scholarship, as works of lifelong study, fascination and confusion. Ulysses, whose publication centenary will be observed on February 2nd, is one such book. Like Marx’s Kapital, Joyce’s door-stopping opus has kept academics
The connection with the Beit family and its financial generosity has continued almost unbroken since the founding of the College.