Steven B. Smith— In Woody Allen’s film Hannah and her Sisters, a dyspeptic artist played by Max von Sydow remembers watching a boring television show about Auschwitz with “puzzled intellectuals,” all of whom were asking how could the Holocaust could have happened. That’s the wrong question, the artist says. “Given
Laura Trevelyan, journalist and author of The Winchester, discusses the history of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company and the story of the family behind the famous name.
Michael Walzer— National liberation is an ambitious and also, from the beginning, an ambiguous project. The nation has to be liberated not only from external oppressors—in a way, that’s the easy part—but also from the internal effects of external oppression. Albert Memmi, the Tunisian Jew who wrote perceptively about the
Christopher Phillips— The acrimonious breakdown of the latest Syrian ceasefire and the renewed assault on Eastern Aleppo serve as reminders that Syria’s highly internationalized civil war seems unlikely to be resolved any time soon. The conflict originated in a largely peaceful uprising against President Bashar al-Assad that turned violent in
Connor J. Fitzmaurice & Brian J. Gareau— It’s fall in New England, and in the region’s many farmers’ markets, mountains of corn and heirloom tomatoes have given way to bountiful displays of pumpkins, apples, cabbages, cranberries, and leafy greens. It’s a relief for many. This summer’s harvest was a lean
Jessica M. Marglin— Terrorism; attacks on a kosher supermarket in Paris; fights over who can pray on the Temple Mount, known in Arabic as the Haram al-Sharif. When we juxtapose Jews and Muslims today, these are the sorts of associations that usually come to mind. The conflict in Israel/Palestine, and
Keramet Reiter— Arthur Johnson, sixty-four, has spent thirty-seven years in solitary confinement, locked in a cell no bigger than a wheelchair-accessible bathroom stall. He is living his fourth decade without once having shared a meal—or even a handshake—with another human being. Astonishingly, Johnson has committed only three extraordinarily minor disciplinary violations
How have humans evolved and what drives this evolution? Evolutionary biologist Scott Solomon, author of Future Humans, discusses the science of human evolution.
Kati Suominen— In 2010, Gary Hufbauer and I published Globalization at Risk, our fierce defense of the open trading system that, many feared, would be reversed amid the economic angst of the 2008-09 Great Recession. Drawing on countless empirical studies, we showed that cross-border trade and investment have critically helped
Caroline Winterer— In the dark years of World War II and the Cold War, Americans invented a national mythology that we hold dear to this day: the myth of the “American Enlightenment.” Like a bomb shelter made of ideas rather than concrete, the American Enlightenment (capital A, capital E) spun