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Black and white photo of children holding signs about remembrance, at a depot in New York City to greet their parents after a mass strike parade in 1911.

The Building Blocks of History

A lively defense of narrative history and the lived experience that informs historical writing.
by Walker Mimms, Richard Cohen via The Nation on August 17, 2022
Francis Fukuyama

Last Man Standing

Francis Fukuyama pines for that old-time liberalism.
by Michael Brenes via The Baffler on June 27, 2022
Left: Headshot of Shoichi Yokoi in uniform Right: Yokoi sobbing in his wheelchair when he returns to Japan in 1972

The Japanese WWII Soldier Who Refused to Surrender for 27 Years

Unable to bear the shame of being captured as a prisoner of war, Shoichi Yokoi hid in the jungles of Guam until January 1972.
by Meilan Solly via Smithsonian on January 21, 2022
Painting by Jean-Baptiste Oudry, "Africa: A European Merchant Bartering with a Black Chief"

Inventing the Science of Race

In 1741, Bordeaux’s Royal Academy of Sciences held an essay contest searching for the origin of “blackness.” The results help us see how Enlightenment thinkers justified slavery.
by Andrew S. Curran, Henry Louis Gates Jr. via New York Review of Books on November 24, 2021
Illustration of Henry David Thoreau and Lidian Emerson looking into each other's eyes

Thoreau in Love

The writer had a deep bond with his mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson. But he also had a profound connection with Emerson’s wife.
by James Marcus via The New Yorker on October 11, 2021

Ralph Waldo Emerson Would Really Hate Your Twitter Feed

For Ralph Waldo Emerson, political activism was full of empty gestures done in bad faith. Abolition called for true heroism.
by Peter Wirzbicki via Psyche on August 9, 2021
Abstract drawing of Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe, Crank Scientist

The great discoveries of the age captivated Poe’s imagination. He almost always misunderstood them.
by Colin Dickey via The New Republic on July 21, 2021
A diagram of the phases of the Moon.

Man-Bat and Raven: Poe on the Moon

A new book recovers the reputation Poe had in his own lifetime of being a cross between a science writer, a poet, and a man of letters.
by Mike Jay via London Review of Books on June 24, 2021
Photo of economist Albert Hisrchman surrounded by abstract drawings

We Don't Know, But Let's Try It

For economist Albert Hirschman, social planning meant creative experimentation rather than theoretical certainty.
by Simon Torracinta via Boston Review on June 17, 2021
Science under Fire: Challenges to Scientific Authority in Modern America

Anti-Anti-Anti-Science

A new book tackles the deep and persistent American intellectual tradition we might call Science-hesitant.
by Michael D. Gordin via Los Angeles Review of Books on April 20, 2021
A mosaic of freedom and associated ideas

How Americans Lost Their Fervor for Freedom

The New Yorker critic's new book is a sequel of sorts to "The Metaphysical Club."
by Evan Kindley via The New Republic on April 14, 2021
A couple eating dinner by candlelight in Texas

Experiments in Self-Reliance

Thoreau’s life is a lesson not in self-reliance, but in discerning whom and what to rely on, whether you’re one person or a state of 29 million.
by Jonathan Malesic via Commonweal on February 24, 2021

The Library of Possible Futures

Since the release of "Future Shock" 50 years ago, the allure of speculative nonfiction has remained the same: We all want to know what’s coming next.
by Samantha Culp via The Atlantic on February 1, 2021
Thorstein Veblen in 1880, the year he graduated from Carleton College

The Prophet of Maximum Productivity

Thorstein Veblen’s maverick economic ideas made him the foremost iconoclast of the Age of Iconoclasts.
by Kwame Anthony Appiah via New York Review of Books on January 3, 2021
Thorstein Veblen

The Gadfly of American Plutocracy

Far from a marginal outsider, a new biography contends, Thorstein Veblen was the most important economic thinker of the Gilded Age.
by Simon Torracinta via Boston Review on November 30, 2020

The Radical History of Corporate Sensitivity Training

The modern-day human-resources practice is rooted in avant-garde philosophy.
by Beth Blum via The New Yorker on September 24, 2020
The Alchemy of Conquest book cover

The Alchemy of Conquest: Science, Religion, and the Secrets of the New World

How scientific thought informed colonization and religious conversion during the Age of Discovery.
by Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra via Not Even Past on September 22, 2020

The Revolutionary Thoreau

Generations of readers have chosen to emphasize Thoreau's spiritual communion with Nature, but Walden begins with trenchant critique of “progress.”
by R. H. Lossin via New York Review of Books on September 4, 2020

Will We Still Be American After Democracy Dies?

Is being "political" the central force in our identities?
by Johann N. Neem via Public Seminar on July 7, 2020

Rendering Judgment on America

A new book systematically defends the American Founding against those who believe it was destined to end in nihilism.
by Samuel Gregg via Public Discourse on July 1, 2020

A Motley Crew for our Times?

A conversation with historian Marcus Rediker about multiracial mobs, history from below and the memory of struggle.
by Marcus Rediker, Martina Tazzioli via Radical Philosophy on May 1, 2020
Wanto Co. grocery store with a sign that reads "I Am An American"

Discovering Judith Shklar’s Skeptical Liberalism of Fear

Judith Shklar fled Nazis and Stalinism before discovering in African-American history the dilemma of modern liberalism.
by Samantha Ashenden, Andreas Hess via Aeon on March 16, 2020
Samuel Francis

The Outsider

Who was behind the "Trumpist manifesto" released twenty years before Trump became president?
by Matthew Rose via First Things on September 16, 2019
Photos of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller

The Conflicted Love Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller

How an intense unclassifiable relationship shaped the history of modern thought.
by Maria Popova via The Marginalian on June 5, 2019
Drawing of a woman being blown away holding a kite made of books

Margaret Fuller on the Social Value of Intellectual Labor and Why Artists Ought to Be Paid

“The circulating medium… is abused like all good things, but without it you would not have had your Horace and Virgil.”
by Maria Popova via The Marginalian on May 23, 2019
Thomas Jefferson's library at the Library of Congress.

Mr. Jefferson’s Books & Mr. Madison’s War

The burning of Washington presented an opportunity for Jefferson’s books to educate the nation by becoming a national library.
by Rebecca Brenner Graham via U.S. Intellectual History Blog on May 15, 2018
Painting of the signing of the Constitution.

The Original Theory of Constitutionalism

The debate between "originalism" and the "living constitution" rages on. What does history say?
by David Singh Grewal, Jedediah Britton-Purdy via The Yale Law Journal on January 24, 2018
An old sepia photo of a man in a "Nashville" baseball jersey and cap.

The Man With The Killer Pitch

In 1918, Tom "Shotgun" Rogers earned himself a piece of baseball immortality—by killing a former teammate with a fastball.
by W. M. Akers via Narratively on October 1, 2013
Puritans drinking in a colonial pub.

Perry Miller and the Puritans: An Introduction

Historians often treat Miller as a foil, but the Father of American Intellectual history retains untapped potential to inspire new modes of inquiry.
by Rivka Maizlish via U.S. Intellectual History Blog on May 8, 2013
Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln's Great Depression

Abraham Lincoln fought clinical depression all his life. But what would today be treated as a "character issue" gave Lincoln the tools to save the nation.
by Joshua Wolf Shenk via The Atlantic on October 1, 2005
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