A collection of 345 posts
Embracing a sport that combines nationalism, mass spectacle, and physical refinement, Il Duce set out to make Italy a World Cup champion.
A widely praised new series by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein distorts the historical record to rehabilitate a flawed US president.
Biden, Putin, and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
Adam Curtis’s new BBC series provides a unique insight into Russia’s late-twentieth-century collapse.
David Graeber and David Wengrow’s tendentious assault on the Enlightenment and its modern defenders is a bust.
We cannot rethink history to console those it embarrasses.
Ken Burns’s new six-hour documentary is a work of extraordinary synoptic power and intelligence.
The idea of an Australian republic is attractive to some, but there's a strong case for a humble head of state.
The diaries of Elizabeth’s wartime companion illustrates the special burdens faced by royalty—and Elizabeth’s fitness to bear them
Those who repress inconvenient facts or produce fictitious evidence to nourish a politically convenient story are simply not historians.
A review of Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet by Marian Tupy and Gale Pooley. (August 2022)
We should reject an unfalsifiable frame that can make anything and everything offensive or problematic, no matter how innocuous.
Reflections on Polish resistance.
Academics who study ancient Paleoindian populations are increasingly being denied access to skeletons, artifacts, and even old x-rays and research reports. We need to start fighting back
A new book by Orlando Figes explores the role of Russian history in the Ukranian war.