Jonathan E. Hillman— In 1995, Mahathir revived a plan for a “pan-Asian” railway network. Versions of the idea have existed since the early 1900s, when British and French colonialists built some of the region’s first tracks and began drafting plans for more extensive networks. The concept resurfaced in an even
Anthony Alofsin— When you think about Frank Lloyd Wright, you think of him as the architect of the prairies and Chicago, but there’s another story—Wright and New York—that reveals a person and a life we’ve never known. Between 1925 and 1932 the city turned him around, moving him from personal
Gloria Groom— In April 1932, the Art Institute of Chicago, under the auspices of the Antiquarian Society, showed some thirty-nine Impressionist and modern paintings, plus works on paper by American, British and French artists, belonging to the collection of Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn. The Antiquarians (the oldest support group for
Thomas P. Crocker— One of the intriguing developments during the COVID-19 crisis is how absent claims about presidential power to solve national security crises have been. There have been no calls for exercising unilateral and exclusive presidential power to engage in possible extralegal action deemed necessary to save American lives
Witold Rybczynski— Cities endure. Nine out of ten seventeenth-century Londoners lost their homes in the Great Fire, yet they rebuilt and the city pulled through; Berlin was devastated by the Second World War and divided during the Cold War, yet it stubbornly persevered; New Orleans was decimated by Hurricane Katrina,
Two thousand and eleven, when palm trees without numberRustled, shading tomatoes and cucumbersAll around Timbuktu,And mental trees, planted by the town council,Offered orchards to every studious sibylAnd to sleepers too! This is the opening stanza of “The Orchards of Timbuktu” by Jean-Paul de Dadelsen, translated from the French by Marilyn
Stephen Bates— Conspiracy theories are much in the news, most notably the QAnon tangle of claims about the Deep State, child-trafficking, and cannibalism. Although the details change, allegations of secret machinations have been a staple of American politics since before the Revolution. Some are harmless entertainment, but others foster bigotry,
Laura Tunbridge— In 1840, the Berlin publisher Heinrich Schlesinger published a short piano piece as the Dernière pensée musicale de Louis van Beethoven. It was not, in fact, Beethoven’s “last musical thought”; it was not even the first time it had been published. The same music had appeared in a supplement
Kent Blansett— On Sunday at 3 a.m. Richard Oakes and ninety other members of UIAT [United Indians of All Tribes] assembled at a rendezvous point in downtown Seattle. A veteran and leader of the Alcatraz takeovers, Oakes must have been transported back to the three attempts it had taken IAT
Geoffrey F. Gresh— During a recent trip to Djibouti, I was invited to a luncheon following a lecture I delivered on the western Indian Ocean at the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) local headquarters by a commander of Italy’s military base. Along with the Italians, my luncheon partners for this special