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A pixellated landscape of buildings, spaceships, and the moon form the background of the coverpage for this article, titled "How Sci-Fi Worlds Have Changed WIth Us"

Who Killed the World?

Explore science fiction worlds from the last few decades – and what these fictional settings tell us about ourselves.
by Alvin Chang via The Pudding on July 12, 2024
Turbulent drawing evoking mass strikes, urban decay, gas shortages, police in riot gear, chainsaw massacre, and disco.

We’re Haunted by the Economy of the 1970s

Politicians across the political spectrum warn of a return to the decade of stagflation, urban decay, and labor mutiny; but their solution misses the mark.
by Aaron Timms via The New Republic on October 31, 2022
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
Map of world happiness.

Are Things Getting Better or Worse?

Why assessing the state of the world is harder than it sounds.
by Joshua Rothman via The New Yorker on July 23, 2018
Black and White photograph of George F. Kennan sitting at a microphone.

U.S. Foreign Policy in the Cold War was Designed by a Bigot

George Kennan's diaries reveal just how much he hated America.
by David Greenberg via The New Republic on April 20, 2014
Robert Moses sitting in front of a catelog of blueprints.

The Inadequacy of the Abundance Agenda

Three new books propose market solutions to problems that require government intervention. We’ve been here before. It didn’t end well.
by Timothy Noah via The New Republic on March 27, 2025
A cartoon depicting Charles Guiteau.

Echoes of Rage

Our new age of violence looks a lot like the Gilded Age.
by George Dillard via Looking Through The Past on December 18, 2024
Twin towers missing; twin towers visible with surroundings missing.

How the War on Terror Warped the American Left

A new book on how 9/11 altered the national psyche also demonstrates how it stunted progressive politics.
by Gal Beckerman via The Atlantic on September 10, 2024
Headlights on the road and a forest fire on the horizon.

Meaning in Decline

The surprising influence of premillennial eschatology on American culture.
by Daniel G. Hummel via Comment on September 5, 2024
Roll of raffle tickets labeled "National Security Priority"

How Everything Became National Security

And national security became everything.
by Daniel W. Drezner via Foreign Affairs on August 12, 2024
Tom Wolfe in profile against the New York City skyline.

The Electric Kool-Aid Conservative

Tom Wolfe was no radical.
by Osita Nwanevu via The New Republic on January 5, 2024
The cover of "The Deadline" by Jill Lepore.

The Hold of the Dead Over the Living

A conversation with Jill Lepore about the past decade — “a time that felt like a time, felt like history.”
by Jill Lepore, Julien Crockett via Los Angeles Review of Books on January 2, 2024

A People’s Obituary of Henry Kissinger

For decades, Kissinger kept the great wheel of American militarism spinning ever forward.
by Greg Grandin via The Nation on November 30, 2023
The low water level at Woodhead reservoir.

The “Tragedy of the Commons” Is a Dubious, Right-Wing Concept

The environmental crisis isn’t the result of the “tragedy of the commons.” It’s the result of the commons’ theft and privatization for profit.
by Arinn Amer via Jacobin on October 20, 2023
Collage of Samuel Huntington, his essay "The Clash of Civilizations," and 21st-century political figure.

Samuel Huntington’s Great Idea Was Totally Wrong

His “Clash of Civilizations” essay in Foreign Affairs turned 30 this year. It was provocative, influential, manna for the modern right—and completely and utterly not true.
by Jordan Michael Smith via The New Republic on October 19, 2023
Lionel Trilling

Liberalism in Mourning

Lionel Trilling crystallizes the cynical Cold War liberalism that sacrificed idealism for self-restraint.
by Samuel Moyn via Boston Review on August 30, 2023
Cover of "Liberalism Against Itself"

Memo to Liberals: The Cold War is Over

In “Liberalism Against Itself,” Samuel Moyn stresses the need to resuscitate an earlier and more rousing wave of thinkers.
by Becca Rothfeld via Washington Post on August 11, 2023
George Kennan sitting at his desk.

George Kennan, Loser

The American foreign policy sage was driven as much by pessimism about the US as antipathy to the Soviet Union.
by Ivan Krastev, Leonard Benardo via New Statesman on August 10, 2023
Photo of Joseph Weizenbaum against a collage of antiwar protests and code.

‘A Certain Danger Lurks There’: How the Inventor of the First Chatbot Turned Against AI

Computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum was there at the dawn of artificial intelligence– but he was also adamant that we must never confuse computers with humans.
by Ben Tarnoff via The Guardian on July 25, 2023
Henry David Thoreau with a propeller cap.

Henry David Thoreau Was Funnier Than You Think, Particularly on the Subject of Work

On the necessary “deep sincerity” of dark humor.
by John Kaag, Jonathan van Belle via Literary Hub on June 26, 2023
Cormac McCarthy.

Cormac McCarthy’s Unforgiving Parables of American Empire

He demonstrated how the frontier wasn’t an incubator of democratic equality but a place of unrelenting pain, cruelty, and suffering.
by Greg Grandin via The Nation on June 21, 2023

The Liberal Discontents of Francis Fukuyama

“The End of History?” was an announcement of victory. But a quarter-century later, its author remains unsure if liberalism truly won.
by Daniel Bessner via The Nation on April 17, 2023
Collage of various Republican faces and symbols.

The Long Unraveling of the Republican Party

Three books explore a history of fractious extremism that predates Donald Trump.
by Kim Phillips-Fein via The Atlantic on September 6, 2022
Mount Rushmore with painted crowd behind it

A Usable Past for a Post-American Nation

We are living through a time when we cannot take our shared identity—and therefore our shared stories—for granted.
by Johann N. Neem via The Hedgehog Review on July 8, 2022

America’s Crisis-Industrial Complex

Are alarmist narratives about a “new civil war” obscuring the real battle in US politics: the fight for democracy?
by Nikhil Pal Singh via New Statesman on June 30, 2022
Photograph from the Nuremberg trials. At center, a man in a suit is sitting down wearing a headset. Behind him are two guards for the trials.

What is Left of History?

Joan Scott’s "On the Judgment of History" asks us to imagine the past without the idea of progress. But what gets left out in the process?
by David A. Bell via The Nation on May 2, 2022
INTERIM ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES A map of slavery laws in the United States, from 1775 to 1865.

A Reckoning With How Slavery Ended

A new book examines the ways white slaveholders were compensated, while formerly enslaved people were not.
by Eric Herschthal via The New Republic on April 15, 2022
Comic of a boy inside an atom structure while a man looks on.

The Surprising History of the Comic Book

Since their initial popularity during World War II, comic books have always been a medium for American counterculture and for nativism and empire. 
by J. Hoberman via The Nation on January 25, 2022
Meir Kahane

Is Kahane More Mainstream than American Jews will Admit?

A new biography explores the American roots of Meir Kahane's far-right ideology — and how the U.S. Jewish establishment embraced his beliefs.
by Hadas Binyamini via +972 Magazine on December 30, 2021
Sketch of the ‘Rising Sun’ design carved in the armchair used by George Washington during the 1787 Constitutional Convention.

A Rising or Setting Sun

A review of how Dennis Rasmussen understands America's Founding Fathers and their disillusions with the American experiment.
by Kenly Stewart via Los Angeles Review of Books on December 9, 2021
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