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History
The Trump White House and the New Opium Wars
The unraveling of U.S.–China economic ties echoes a darker chapter of history, when a trade dispute between the East and the West escalated into the…
Eli Lake
Things Worth Remembering: The Haunting Truth of Dostoyevsky’s Demons
Every movement that burns hot enough will attract opportunists, zealots, and destroyers. Even the most righteous cause can be hollowed out from within.
Benjamin Carlson
America and the Exodus
The story of Passover is not just a Jewish one. Our Founding Fathers were profoundly inspired by it. So was Cecil B. DeMille.
Meir Soloveichik
Tyler Cowen: Welcome to Our Weird and Wild Century. It’s a Lot Like the 17th.
England in the 1600s was full of radical progress—and also extreme disorder. Those qualities typify our own strange, unpredictable era.
Tyler Cowen
What 23andMe Told America About Itself
The disintegration of the DNA-testing company is not just the collapse of a business. It’s the collapse of a culture obsessed with identity.
Kat Rosenfield
Things Worth Remembering: America Is an Invention
For centuries, poets, musicians, and painters have crossed the Atlantic with dreams of a New World. George Berkeley was one of them. And so was I.
Dominic Green
Luigi Mangione and the History of Bourgeois Terrorism
The alleged CEO assassin is not the first elite to break rad. The notorious Ulrike Meinhof also took the plunge from protest to resistance.
Eli Lake
He Helped Michael Jordan Win—and He Can Help You, Too
To be truly great, writes George Raveling, don’t focus on the glory. Focus on the drudgery.
George Raveling
What I Discovered Deep in the Canyons
If I’d come here to hear romantic platitudes about the past, I’d come to the wrong place.
A.M. Hickman
Peter Beinart, Pundit (Declined)
What makes the author’s campaign of self-promotion conspicuous—week after week, year after year—is his utter lack of inhibition.
Andrew Ferguson
Our Grandmothers, and the Scrolls They Gave Us
Our ancestors endured pogroms, famine, and exile—all while preserving two old Hebrew heirlooms. Tonight, to celebrate Purim, we’ll read from them.
Polina Fradkin and Amit Shemesh
Is Trump’s Mineral Deal Unprecedented? Not Exactly.
For lessons on the president’s offer to Ukraine, look back at FDR.
Ed Conway
Truth Mattered in the Cold War. And It Matters Now in Ukraine.
Honorable men went to the gulag for refusing to repeat the Kremlin’s lies. Now an American president is echoing them for free.
Eli Lake
Things Worth Remembering: On Being Safe, Free, and Miserable
In ‘A Real Pain,’ which deserves an Oscar today, Jesse Eisenberg asks: How dare we be so overwhelmed by our own freedom when our ancestors were denied…
Hadley Freeman
The Life and Death of the Oldest Hostage in Gaza
Shlomo Mantzur fled Iraq as a child. He tried to never look back. Then came October 7, 2023.
Matti Friedman
Niall Ferguson: J.D. Vance’s Fighting Words—Against Me and Ukraine
It is not ‘moralistic garbage’ but a hard and realistic lesson of history that wars are easy to start and hard to end.
Niall Ferguson
Why We’re Obsessed with JFK Conspiracies
Donald Trump says he’ll declassify all the files about the assassination. We’d never have got to this point if it weren’t for a weird ’90s film.
Eli Lake
Martin Gurri: What Does It Mean to Be a Man?
In a world of eunuchs, buffoons, and beasts, we need new heroes.
Martin Gurri
All Men Want to Be Heroes
And America needs to give them the chance.
Chris Arnade
EXCLUSIVE: Trump Is Starving the National Endowment for Democracy
DOGE has frozen funds to the organization that was instrumental in helping win the Cold War. ‘It’s been a bloodbath.’
Eli Lake
Andrew Roberts: The Historical Case for Trump’s Gaza Plan
Again and again in the past, peoples who unleash unprovoked aggressive wars against their neighbors and are then defeated lose either their government…
Andrew Roberts
Radicals Have Burned California Before
In the Golden State, good intentions have often paved the way to disaster.
Eli Lake
WATCH: Simon Sebag Montefiore says History Is Not Over
‘We’re coming out of what I would call the 75-year peace,’ argues the historian. ‘There’s never been a period like this in world history.’
Bari Weiss
1HR 14M
What Socrates Teaches Us About Love, Politics, and Death
Some struggles persist over millennia. The philosopher Agnes Callard explores the life and lessons of one of the greatest thinkers of all time.
Agnes Callard
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