Sea Power: Then and Now
June 26, 2024
Evan Mawdsley— Sea power is back in the news. In April 2022, the cruiser Moskva was sunk by Ukrainian anti-ship missiles. Since last November, American and British warships have actively… READ MORE
Category: Essays
What the Founders Didn’t Know—But Their Children Did—About the Constitution
June 10, 2024
Alison L. LaCroix— Conflicts between the federal government and the states dominate our current moment in American law and politics. From controversies over who governs at the southern border, to… READ MORE
Loneliness and Screens: Causes and Consequences
June 7, 2024
Jeffrey A. Hall and Andy J. Merolla— Loneliness is complex. You keenly feel its touch when missing someone close to you, but it can also linger dully in the background… READ MORE
Writing a Life
June 5, 2024
Chitralekha Zutshi— For historians, writing biographies can be challenging. We are trained to think in terms of broader social and political processes, not individual lives. But while writing the life… READ MORE
The American Revolution, Today
May 28, 2024
Richard Brookhiser— History leans heavily on words—and that’s fine, says every publishing house. But there are other media that tell the story. The civil rights movement and America’s wars from… READ MORE
Plastic Money: The Rise of Credit Cards and the Banks that Created Them
May 21, 2024
Sean H. Vanatta— Big banks charge the highest credit card interest rates, at least according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). In February, the agency reported that some of the largest… READ MORE
A New Audience for the World’s First Author
May 6, 2024
Sophus Helle— Authors in antiquity knew from prolonged experience the labor that is needed to carry a text through time. Books do not move across centuries on their own. They… READ MORE
The Musics of Michel Leiris
May 2, 2024
Richard Sieburth— Autobiography and autofiction are all the rage in France, viz. Annie Ernaux’s recent Nobel Prize. Anticipating this trend, ex-surrealist Michel Leiris devoted much of his literary career to… READ MORE
Writing a History of Ignorance
April 30, 2024
Peter Burke— Since the 1990s, a new kind of history has been flourishing: the history of knowledge—or better, the history of different kinds of knowledge, knowledges in the plural. Turning… READ MORE
We Can’t Innovate Our Way Out of Ecocide
April 22, 2024
Gregory M. Thaler— Palm oil is the world’s most traded vegetable oil, popping up in everything from ice cream to packaged bread to lipstick. This global glut of cheap palm-based… READ MORE
A Conversation with Trudier Harris on Bigger: A Literary Life