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W.E.B. DuBois

How W. E. B. Du Bois Helped Pioneer African American Humanist Thought

On the complex relationship between Black Americans and the Black church.
by Christopher Cameron via Literary Hub on July 27, 2023

The Failure of American Secularism

How the secular movement underestimated the endurance of religion.
by Chris Lehmann via The New Republic on November 3, 2021
Thomas Paine

Reframing the Story of Harvard’s Humanist Chaplaincy

The time when Harvard made an atheist their head chaplain.
by Leigh Eric Schmidt via Arc: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera on November 2, 2021
Scene of prehistoric game hunters.

Prehistory’s Original Sin

We need more than genealogies to know who we are, and who we ought to become.
by Connor Grubaugh via The Hedgehog Review on May 6, 2025
The “Visscher Map of the New World” including North and South America, 1658.

The Impossibly Intertwined History of the Americas

A conversation with Greg Grandin about his groundbreaking new book "America, América: A New History of the New World."
by Greg Grandin, Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins via The Nation on April 21, 2025
A torn border fence is bent into the shape of the Americas.

What America Can Learn From the Americas

Greg Grandin’s sweeping history of the new world shows how immutably intertwined the United States is with Latin America.
by Patrick Iber via The New Republic on April 7, 2025
The Battle for the Mind (Tim LaHaye, 1980); from Creationism to Christian Nationalism

The Battle for the Mind (Tim LaHaye, 1980); from Creationism to Christian Nationalism

Tim LaHaye bridged Reagan-era anti-Communism to today’s Christian Nationalism, opposing humanism, evolution, and secularism, emphasizing biblical morality.
by Paul Braterman via 3 Quarks Daily on December 29, 2024
A painting of Napoleon Bonaparte standing in the center of the National Assembly.

Liberalism and Equality

Liberalism’s relationship to equality has, his­torically, been far from a warm embrace.
by Gregory Conti via American Affairs on August 20, 2024
A painting of a lively sermon in a Black church.

Respectability Be Damned: How the Harlem Renaissance Paved the Way for Art by Black Nonbelievers

How James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, and others embraced a new Black humanism.
by Anthony B. Pinn via Literary Hub on May 24, 2024
Larry David.

The End of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” Marks the End of an Era

Larry David is the last of his kind—and in several ways.
by Daniel Bessner via The Nation on April 8, 2024
Illustration of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and William James, and a cemetery.

‘Live All You Can’

The reflections of Emerson, Thoreau, and William James one finds a characteristically nineteenth-century American sense of resilience and regeneration.
by John Banville via New York Review of Books on February 15, 2024
Illustration of Chalude Shannon, William Weaver, and Italo Calvino, placed on a background of binary code

Language Machinery: Who Will Attend to the Machine's Writing?

The ultimate semantic receivers, selectors, and transmitters are still us.
by Richard Hughes Gibson via The Hedgehog Review on November 7, 2023
Greek philosopher sitting at a desk and looking at a laptop.

History, Fast and Slow

Two new books model radically different ways of studying the past.
by Jacob Mikanowski via The Chronicle of Higher Education on September 13, 2023
JFK and Jackie Kennedy with wedding party

You’ll Miss Us When We’re Gone

The rise and fall of the WASP.
by Lewis H. Lapham, Michael Knox Beran via Lapham’s Quarterly on May 3, 2022
"What difference would another world make?", Sam Pulitzer, 2021.

New Left Review

Who did neoliberalism?
by Erik Baker via n+1 on March 8, 2022
Portrait of Frederick Law Olmsted (detail), 1895, by John Singer Sargent (1856–1925); The Artchives/Alamy Stock Photo.

The Man Who Built Forward Better

Frederick Law Olmsted’s landscape creations, especially his urban parks, remain a vital part of our present.
by Witold Rybczynski via The Hedgehog Review on March 1, 2022
Leonard Bernstein in the 1960s, at his desk piled with music scores, reading one, pen in hand.

Conservatives Say Liberals Want West Side Story to Be “Woke Side Story”

The beloved musical’s creator struggled to find a place between left and center.
by Daniel Wortel-London via Slate on December 13, 2021
Volunteer putting out political signs for the Virginia governor's race.
partner

Virginia’s Governor’s Race May Hinge on Debates About Public Schools

Channeling conservative, white anger about public schools is a long-running political strategy.
by Elizabeth Gillespie McRae, Lisa Levenstein via Made By History on November 2, 2021

The Real Origins of the Religious Right

They’ll tell you it was abortion. Sorry, the historical record’s clear: It was segregation.
by Randall Balmer via Politico Magazine on May 27, 2014
An eagle grabbing the earth, focused on Latin America, in its talons.

What America Means to Latin Americans

In a new book, the Pulitzer Prize winner Greg Grandin tells the history of the hemisphere from south of the border.
by Geraldo Cadava via The New Yorker on April 23, 2025
Cover of "America, América" by Greg Grandin.

The Dialectic Lurking Behind the Brutality

Greg Grandin’s new book tells the story of US expansionism and its complex relationship with the rest of the New World.
by Ieva Jusionyte via Los Angeles Review of Books on April 23, 2025
An eagle in its nest of the American flag, which holds eggs representing the states.

From Woke to Solidarity

On two new books that critique identity politics and seek a new vision of political culture.
by Michael S. Roth via Los Angeles Review of Books on December 24, 2024
Collage of a flag, a philosopher, hands in prayer, and a Gothic building.

Learning Civics from History

Civic thought and leadership institutes will thrive if they promote strong scholarship and courses in traditional fields the mainstream academy slights.
by James Hankins via Law & Liberty on September 11, 2024
A drawing of a hedgehog in Buffon's Natural History.

Waking From the Dream of Total Knowledge

Considering how relationships of cooperation and perhaps even solidarity might be forged between human beings and animals.
by Daniel Kraft via The Hedgehog Review on April 15, 2024
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Glad to the Brink of Fear

A new biography reveals how Ralph Waldo Emerson gave Americans a vocabulary to understand themselves in an era even more tempestuous than our own.
by Nicole Penn via American Purpose on March 13, 2024
Illustration by Cristina Spano, picturing rulers and colorful shapes and designs coming out of the neck of a collared shirt

The Origins of Creativity

The concept was devised in postwar America, in response to the cultural and commercial demands of the era. Now we’re stuck with it.
by Louis Menand via The New Yorker on April 17, 2023
The image displays two duplicate portraits of Adam Smith. One is upside down.

The Mysteries of Adam Smith

How to understand Adam Smith’s politics.
by Glory M. Liu via The Nation on September 3, 2022
Woody Guthrie playing his guitar

This Anthem Was Made For You and Me?

A breakdown of how Woody Guthrie's hit song "This Land" has evolved over time.
by Abigail Shelton via Clio and the Contemporary on July 2, 2021

How Americans Came to Distrust Science

For a century, critics of all political stripes have challenged the role of science in society. Repairing distrust requires confronting those arguments head on.
by Andrew Jewett via Boston Review on November 2, 2020
Watson Heston cartoon of two people at a crossroads--one direction is the "Free Thought Road" which leads to truth, and the other direction is "Orthodox Road" and the "Vale of Tears."

Atheists in the Pantheon

Leigh Eric Schmidt profiles the nineteenth century's notable "village atheists."
by Joseph Blankholm via Public Books on August 14, 2017
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