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Earth covered in trees and water

"Pale Blue Dot": History of Our Environment

… coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother … nation listened. And what followed, were the most groundbreaking laws ever written in the history of humankind, to … the anti-war protests of the Vietnam War. So if we're thinking about 1968, the Tet Offensive, and then the increase in …
Mushroom cloud over the Bikini Atoll

Nuclear Tensions, Nuclear Weapons, and a Long History of Nuclear War

… the United States, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom, the same five that have vetoes at the UN Security … lot of that comes down to different ways of just kind of looking at how the world operates, right? One view is maybe … deterrable, because Korea, or Iran, just might not be thinking in a way that we think, right. So a lot of this comes …
In order, India’s Indira Gandhi, Pakistan’s Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and Bangladesh’s Mujibur Rahman

After Midnight

Review of Midnight’s Descendants: A History of South Asia Since Partition, by John Keay (New York: Basic Books, 2014)
… ten million strong Hindu minority, who were blamed for stoking rebellion and undermining Muslim solidarity. This … Sheikh Hasina Wajed, prioritized their obsessions with seeking justice for past wrongs over the present needs of their …

Sudan in Crisis

… Nile and South Kordofan states also played a role in sparking the popular uprisings. In particular, Darfuri students … British separated the predominantly Muslim and Arabic-speaking north from the multi-religious, multi-ethnic, and … the region since 1821. In 1898, however, the United Kingdom and Egypt conquered the Sudanese Mahdist state and …
A French Quarter Pontalba Row building.

A Postcard from New Orleans, Louisiana

… that of Marie Laveau, bearing graffiti Xs left by tourist making a wish to her spirit (left); “condos” at St. Louis No. … guard over the St. Louis Cathedral (named for the child King of France), the Spanish Cabildo (the seat of the …
The front of the National Security Administration in Fort Meade, MD

America’s Big Brother

… progressed, and as more came out from what Snowden was leaking is, I did get surprised at how far reaching some of the … framework. But that they'd also just been straight up breaking into the Google and Yahoo kind of cloud interface and … there's a little smiley face, written in by the presenter making it to demonstrate like this is where we're tapping into …

American Populism and the Persistence of the Paranoid Style

… pass by 1916 or so. But the original Populists were also making an argument about their own centrality to American … of beliefs. It is a method of identifying a villain and shaking a fist. This is so even if it also reflects real policy … in Pennsylvania , second in Wisconsin —before his near-assassination was another story. That Wallace pioneered much …

The Illegalization of Marijuana: A Brief History

… believe that to be true. Unlike alcohol, excessive pot smoking has not been unambiguously implicated in violent … used in rope and ships’ riggings. But the practice of smoking marijuana leaf in cigarettes or pipes was largely … “law and order” to a nation jolted by riots, protests, and assassinations, Richard Nixon aggressively recruited …
Paul Bremer in 2003.

Iraq Repeats Long-Ago Mistakes in the Philippines

… Let's stop looking to Vietnam in the 1960s for clues about what to do in … we have set out to construct a political system to our liking. Similarly, we have been caught by surprise to find … Roosevelt, McKinley's successor in office after his assassination, did not have in the Philippines. The …
Cover of Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusionment of America's Founders by Dennis C. Rasmussen

Such a Disappointment

Review of Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusionment of America’s Founders, by Dennis C. Rasmussen (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2021)
… dupes of bold & cunning imposture.” And writing to Rufus King, Hamilton lamented “Truly, My dear Sir, the prospects … surprising since slavery had contorted Jefferson’s thinking for decades. But as Rasmussen charts it, Jefferson …
Paul Bremer in 2003.

Iraq Repeats Long-Ago Mistakes in the Philippines

… Let's stop looking to Vietnam in the 1960s for clues about what to do in … we have set out to construct a political system to our liking. Similarly, we have been caught by surprise to find … Roosevelt, McKinley's successor in office after his assassination, did not have in the Philippines. The …
Sacred Gods at Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau National Historical Park

A Postcard from the Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau National Historical Park, Hawai‘i

… that prohibited certain things, places, and actions. Breaking kapu, such as harvesting resources at the wrong time, … watch cultural practitioners give demonstrations in making poi (pounded taro) and kapa cloth, and take a guided … Charles Bishop—an American businessman who married into the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi’s royal family—purchased the land that …
Flag of the People's Republic of China

With Enemies Like These…

… Looking back over the stories relating to China that have … twelve months is a strange experience. One of the most striking things is the sheer diversity of topics with a Chinese … distribute a film about the Dalai Lama’s life directed by Martin Scorsese. At first, it looked as if this feud in the …

Madame President: A History of the Women Who Ran before Hillary

… have run for president, several others have come within striking distance of the nation’s top post through the line of … States finally elects its first female president? By looking at several of these women and their campaigns for the … who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own …

The Politics of International Adoption

… intervention – medical assistance, constitution-making, adoption and in-country development – is propelled by … or deceased heirs on the other. In his path breaking book, The Kindness of Strangers , John Boswell uncovered a previously hidden history, tracking the lives of children abandoned in Europe from the late …
The so-called "Elgin Marbles," on display in the British Museum

Classics and the Alt-Right Conundrum

… things can be both positive and negative. So I've been working on a page right now saying that classical Greece was …   Certainly scientific racism is arising at the same time, Martin Brunel and Black Athena tried to kind of connect the … Athena was a project as a series of volumes written by Martin Bernal, a specialist actually in China, who decided …
The Course of Empire: Destruction, Painted by Thomas Cole, depicts a highly dramatic, catastrophic image of Rome's end.

Political Economy in the Late Roman Empire

Review of The Tragedy of Empire: From Constantine to The Destruction of Roman Italy, by Michael Kulikowski (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019)
… 13-15 describe the establishment of the post-Roman western kingdoms and the context of the wars of reconquest led by …