A collection of 353 posts
It wasn’t lost on black soldiers that they were being called upon to liberate oppressed peoples overseas, even as they faced prejudice in the United States.
Oxford ethicist Nigel Biggar’s controversial reassessment of Britain’s imperial record has reignited an important academic quarrel over the meaning and legacy of empire.
A terrific new account of America’s social and political turmoil during the 1910s and ’20s provides some much-needed perspective on the problems afflicting the country today.
How an enterprising doctor, an elite university, and negligent public officials turned a city prison system into the largest human research factory in America.
Liberal democracy has again proved itself capable of overcoming its internal challenges and contradictions.
The profound difference in quality of life on opposing sides of the 38th parallel today offers a rebuke to those who portray the US-led intervention in Korea as immoral or futile.
Jim Garrison’s theory of the presidential assassination was based on false evidence and homophobic paranoia. Yet many still believe he was right.
Whatever the literary strengths of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the book has done much to harm both the mentally ill and their communities.
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.