Spring officially arrived this past weekend, bringing with it the reminder that roughly one year has passed since the United States first entered lockdown. Maya C. Popa’s poem, “Spring,” recalls that initial period when time and season seemed to “persist” without us. It suggests the grief and isolation felt amidst
Alex Brummer— Here is something you are unlikely to have read about in the pandemic year. Of all the countries in the world fighting Covid-19, Britain, in spite of its chaotic response to the pandemic and high death count, has done more than most countries on earth to meet the challenge
Mark Leopold— From the beginning of my research into the life of the notorious Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin, I noticed the frequency with which contemporary commentators (especially but not only British ones) described him as a “buffoon.” So I was interested when, sometime around 2015, the same word became increasingly applied,
David S. Areford— Sol LeWitt. For the dedicated or even occasional museum visitor, the artist’s name conjures up expansive and colorful murals (his “wall drawings”) and equally commanding, large-scale cubic sculptures (his “structures”). Often installed in grand public interior or exterior settings, these artworks collaborate with the architectural and spatial
Last month, Yale University Press published The Orphanage by Serhiy Zhadan, translated from the Ukrainian by Reilly Costigan-Humes and Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler. Recalling the brutal landscape of The Road and the wartime storytelling of A Farewell to Arms, The Orphanage is a searing novel that excavates the human collateral damage wrought by the ongoing conflict
Paula Marantz Cohen— Before I ever read Shakespeare, I read George Eliot. I was inspired to study Victorian literature by George Eliot’s novel, Middlemarch. I love all Eliot’s work, and I especially love Middlemarch. Yet I want to argue with the general belief that Eliot is a hugely empathetic writer. Eliot shows a
Sal Nicolazzo— In his Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue, and Arms—the precursor to The Wealth of Nations—Adam Smith defines “the objects of police” as “the cheapness of commodities, public security and cleanliness.” This broad mandate for “police”—most of which has little or nothing to do with crime prevention—may sound idiosyncratic to
Vernon Bogdanor— Is Britain part of Europe? Of course, geographically we certainly are part of Europe. But politically? The answer is by no means clear. Britain has long had an ambivalent relationship with the Continent. It is apparent even in the way that we speak. We speak of entering Europe
Peter E. Gordon— In 1770, the empress Maria Theresa summoned to the Viennese court an imperial counselor named Wolfgang von Kempelen, a man from the Hungarian city of Pressburg who was already well esteemed for his services to the state. In an era when the German language was displacing Latin
Micah Goodman— Modernity burst onto the stage of history some three hundred years ago, when free thinkers of all stripes—philosophers, revolutionaries, political leaders—struck blow after blow at the traditions of the past. They strove for a future in which humanity would slough off the heavy burdens of history, including the