Muslim Vikings — Abuses of History
Why did a flimsy interpretation of a small artefact from provincial Sweden seem so important to the English-language world’s most powerful news outlets?
Blake Smith
· 5 min read
History
A collection of 451 posts
Rethinking Gender, Sexuality, and Violence
We should work to devise effective solutions to continue that progress, rather resorting to using all men as scapegoats for the violence that remains.
Gideon Scopes
· 14 min read
The Biological Case for Criminal Justice Reform
“We’ve successfully banished the notion of punishment in that realm,” Sapolsky writes. “It may take centuries, but we can do the same in all our current arenas of punishment.”
Hal Conick
· 6 min read
From Ancient Times to the Present — Transferring Guilt Makes a Mockery of Justice
Transferring guilt across generations from ancient ancestors to their heirs was highly convenient for religious authorities.
T.M. Murray
· 12 min read
Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle — Science, Commerce, Freedom, and the Origins of Modernity
They witnessed the defeat of the Ottoman Turks at the siege of Vienna, ending a thousand years of implacable Islamic expansion.
Robert Darby
· 31 min read
Applebaum vs Fitzpatrick — History and the Political
It is important to follow the lead of both Applebaum and Fitzpatrick in standing firm in pursuit of the truth, whatever it might be.
Anna Lukina
· 7 min read
Yes, Romans Were Diverse — Not in the Way You Understand
For Aristides, Rome was the ultimate polis: the dispenser of just government, and through its unique constitution the embodiment of principled republicanism.
Ben Bassett
· 13 min read
What to Do with Confederate Statues
Many Russian people lived through the Soviet experience. Not so for the Confederacy.
James Glaser
· 5 min read
Trump's Warsaw Speech — Defending the West or Defending Illiberalism?
Donald Trump’s first major speech in Europe reminds me of the old Jewish joke in which two men ask a rabbi to resolve a dispute.
Cathy Young
· 8 min read
America's Real Pivot
Trump’s speech highlighted these key aspirations, and struck the right notes, for his intended audience—the socially conservative.
Sumantra Maitra
· 6 min read
Bald Men Fighting Over a Comb: Arguments About the Classical Tradition
Most of the praise comes only from Classics teachers, or others easily impressed by a thin veneer of learning.
Sandra Kotta
· 19 min read
Bald Men Fighting Over a Comb — Arguments from the Classical Tradition
The Culture Wars and Beyond is an exemplary study: thorough, balanced, judicious, elegantly written, and all the better for its notably even tone and scrupulous sense of fairness.
Sandra Kotta
· 20 min read
A Hundred Years of Communism
Ben Sixsmith
· 7 min read
Review: Inglorious Empire — British India by Shashi Tharoor
All the European powers combined didn’t manage to kill that many people throughout all Asia during their entire colonial histories.
Sumantra Maitra
· 11 min read
The Troubles and The Terror
Ben Sixsmith
· 4 min read