Review: Wolfram Eilenberger, Shaun Whiteside (translator), The Visionaries: Arendt, Beauvoir, Rand, Weil and the Power of Philosophy in Dark Times (Penguin Press) The years from 1933 to 1943 constitute among […]
MoreSusan Neiman, Left is Not Woke (Polity Press, 2023) Image Credit: Polity Press In Left is Not Woke, Susan Neiman wades into the ongoing debate over the concept of […]
MoreReview: Erwin Chemerinsky, Worse Than Nothing: The Dangerous Fallacy of Originalism (Yale University Press) In 2010, the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case involving the constitutionality of […]
MoreReview: Adam Hochschild, American Midnight: The Great War, A Violent Peace and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis (Mariner Books) “The world must be made safe for democracy.” That was American president […]
MoreReview: Daniel Chandler, Free and Equal:What Would a Fair Society Look Like? In 1971, John Rawls published A Theory of Justice, a book frequently described as the 20th century’s greatest […]
MoreReview: Louisa Lim, Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong, (Riverhead Books, 2022) When the United Kingdom turned control of Hong Kong over to the Peoples’ Republic of China […]
MoreReview: Sarah Bakewell, Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry, and Hope (Chatto & Windus, 2023) The British writer Sarah Bakewell is a proven master at presenting […]
MoreReview: Michael Walzer, The Struggle for a Decent Politics: On “Liberal” as an Adjective (Yale University Press) Michael Walzer is among America’s most distinguished political philosophers. Throughout his long career, […]
MoreReview: Philippe Sands, The Last Colony: A Tale of Exile, Justice and Britain’s Colonial Legacy (Weidenfeld & Nichols, 2022) Testing Britain’s Commitment to Decolonization and the Rule of Law […]
MoreReview: Rebecca Solnit, Orwell’s Roses (Penguin Random House) “In the spring of 1936, a writer planted roses.” Thus begins Rebecca Solnit’s Orwell’s Roses. Six other chapters in this quirky work […]
MoreReview: Martha Jones, Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All (Basic Books) In their relentless quest for full equality in the United […]
MoreReview: Kei Hiruta, Hannah Arendt & Isaiah Berlin: Freedom, Politics, and Humanity (Princeton University Press) Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) and Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997), two of the 20th century’s most […]
MoreReview: Moisé Naím, The Revenge of Power: How Autocrats Are Reinventing Politics for the 21st Century (St. Martin’s Press) Less than a week before the recent mid-term elections in […]
MoreReview: Dan Hicks, The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution (Pluto Press), and Bénédicte Savoy, Africa’s Struggle for Its Art: History of a Postcolonial Defeat, translated […]
MoreA book review of Helen Rappaport’s After the Romanovs: Russian Exiles in Paris From the Belle Epoque Through Revolution and War (St. Martin’s Press, 2022). Paris is “full of Russians […]
MoreThis is a book review of Kati Marton’s The Chancellor: The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel (Simon & Schuster, 2021). Many can plausibly claim to have had a hand in […]
MoreA review of George Makari’s Of Fear and Strangers: A History of Xenophobia (W.W. Norton and Company, 2021). The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines “xenophobia” as a “fear and hatred of […]
MoreA book review of Adom Getachew’s Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination (Princeton University Press, 2019.) As World War II ended, European colonial empires of the 19th […]
MoreA book review of Paul Sabin’s Public Citizens: The Attack on Big Government and the Remaking of American Liberalism (W.W. Norton & Co., 2021) 1965 marked the highpoint for […]
MoreA book review of Michael J. Sandel’s The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? (Penguin, Allen Lane, 2021). “Those who work hard and play by the rules […]
MoreA book review of James McAuley’s The House of Fragile Things: Jewish Art Collectors and the Fall of France (Yale University Press, 2021). In The House of Fragile Things, Washington […]
MoreA book review of Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present (Norton, 2020) In late November of this year, the Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) […]
MoreA book review of James Wyllie’s Nazi Wives: The Women at the Top of Hitler’s Germany (St Martin’s Press, 2019). Within the proliferation of literature on seemingly every aspect of […]
MoreA book review of Noah Feldman’s The Arab Winter: A Tragedy (Princeton University Press, 2020). 2011 was the year of the upheaval known as the ‘Arab Spring,’ a time when […]
MoreA book review of Ann Heberlein’s On Love and Tyranny: The Life and Politics of Hannah Arendt. Translated from Swedish by Alice Menzies (Pushkin Press, 2021). Before she became a celebrated New […]
MoreJames Shapiro, Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Our Future (Penguin Press, 2020) In June 2017, New York City’s Public Theater […]
MoreKathryn Sikkink, The Hidden Face of Rights: Toward a Politics of Responsibilities (Yale University Press, 2020) Kathryn Sikkink, Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, is one of the […]
MoreRobert Zaretsky, The Subversive Simone Weil: A Life in Five Ideas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021) Simone Weil is considered today among the foremost twentieth-century French intellectuals, on par […]
MoreReview of J.H. Elliot, Scots and Catalans: Union and Disunion (Yale University Press). Are the United Kingdom and Scotland barreling toward a crisis over Scottish independence of […]
MoreMartin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X met only once, a chance encounter at the US Capitol on March 26, 1964. The two men were at the Capitol to […]
MoreDid American democracy survive the presidency of Donald Trump? The question seems sure to occupy historians, commentators and the public during the administration of Joe Biden and beyond. If nothing […]
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