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Cazy Freewill Baptist Church in West Virginia, USA.

Faith-Based Groups Should Be Careful What Whey Wish For

… good works would enable these groups to divert money currently spent on such activities any way they want. … immorality from public life, but the perils of government money’s influence on religious life pose a greater threat to … from religious life, because government money always comes with strings attached. Understanding that, in the late …

Right-Wing Politics in India

… are Hindus (more than 1 billion people), with Muslims comprising the next most populous group at 15%. First-time … that insists India is a Hindu nation (rather than a secular one, as the Indian Constitution defines it). While the party … treatment of minority groups, especially Muslims. One of its members, Dr. K. B. Hedgewar, established the …
Cover of Trotsky A Biography by Robert Service.

Trotsky: A Biography

Review of Trotsky: A Biography, by Robert Service (Cambridge, MA, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009)
… speculative thinking with his new biography on Trotsky. Coming after his previous biographies on Lenin and Stalin, … the "first full-length biography of Trotsky written by someone outside Russia who is not a Trotskyist" (xxi). 1 What … only partially satisfying. The book's best section is Part One, which covers the years 1879-1913 in rich detail. …
Bruce Lee

The Original Street Fighting Man

Review of Striking Distance: Bruce Lee and the Dawn of Martial Arts in America, by Charles Russo Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press, 2016)
… for Lee. Lee then moved to San Francisco in 1959 after one too many street fights in Hong Kong led to trouble with … He also opposed the horse stance, in which the practitioner emulates being mounted on a horse, legs spread wide in … after Lee challenged anyone who doubted his word to come to his studio in Oakland. Russo makes his case by …
a Galapagos sea turtle swimming in the ocean

What’s “Natural” on the Galapagos Islands?

The youngest, westernmost islands are still volcanically active and are thought to be no more than 700,000 thousand years old.
… devoid of animal or plant life. This initial isolation, combined with its location at the confluence of three … that make them best suited for their environment are the ones most likely to survive and produce offspring, a process … not be nearly so wonderful, if for instance, one island has a mocking-thrush and a second island some …
An image of Kuwait’s oil fields after they were set ablaze by retreating Iraqi soldiers during the First Gulf War

Oil Empires and Petro-Anarchies

Review of Empires and Anarchies: A History of Oil in the Middle East, by Michael Quentin Morton (London: Reaktion Books, 2017)
… history of oil is as much about social issues as economic ones. Empires and Anarchies argues that, “oil creates … in the same way that wealth, power and greed have always done” (14). The book is organized into four parts, the first … had obtained independence. Morton tracks major individuals, companies, and governments taking part in the search for …
 Cover of Chivalry in Medieval England by Nigel Saul

Knighthood As It Was, Not As We Wish It Were

Review of Chivalry in Medieval England, by Nigel Saul (Harvard University Press, 416 pp, 2011, ISBN 978-0-674-06368-6)
… wished that things could just be like they used to be. A common sentiment, it is actually responsible for distorting … England , Nigel Saul aspires to these aims as he discusses one of the most distorted topics in medieval history: the … is a loose chronological narrative of its aforementioned origins through its practice and eventual decline in …
Demolition of Alexander III Monument, Moscow 1918

Russia’s February Revolution and the Precarious Politics of Nostalgia

… paralyzed . . . In the streets, disorderly shooting. One detachment of the troops fires on the other. It is … To delay is impossible.” The tsar did not reply, instead complaining that “Again that fat-belly Rodzianko has written … favor of his brother Mikhail—who, in turn, declined the throne. And with that, the era of Romanov rule and, indeed, …
Map of the Electoral College for the 2024 United States presidential election.

Arguing the Electoral College: Con

… Because of its indeterminacy?  No. Its singular distinction comes from the fact that never before have both the popular … the same as 75 percent can thwart the popular will when one candidate garners the requisite number of electoral … votes in states that are evenly divided while the opponent overwhelming carries his or her states. Election 2000 …
Margaret Gorman, winner of the first Miss America Pageant in 1922.

Beauty Pageants and American Politics

… America Pageant. As early as the 1880s, business owners and community leaders began organizing beauty pageants in … Girls on View in Pageant: 150,000 See Picked Beauties in One-Piece Suits in Atlantic City’s Fall Event.” This “fall … . Of the 200 bathing beauties on display that September, one easily bested the others to be crowned the first Miss …

The Road to Same-Sex Marriage: Lesbian Mothers, Gay Fathers, and the American Family

… of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere—organizations that had come out of gay-father activism of the 1980s—wrote a brief … hid their sexuality in a postwar era of shame and secrecy—one in which the assumption that a true and good family had … their children in the era of lesbian and gay liberation—one in which they openly challenged the definition of family …
The United States Army Drill Team.

Should the Military Take Charge in Emergencies?

… convictions of our founders. “No standing armies” was one of the rallying cries of the American Revolution. This … of the military later found expression in the Posse Comitatus law of 1878, still in force. Archaic as the title … Each exemption from the Posse Comitatus Act — like the ones proposed now — potentially makes martial law easier to …

Climate, Human Population and Human Survival: What the Deep Past Tells Us about the Future

… and a staggering landmark in human population growth combined to give new urgency to the existential question of … 250,000 years ago, as evidenced by significant shifts in stone tool technology and the "modernization" of fossil … per year. Since then the rate has slowed to 1.3% per year. Nonetheless, we hit an estimated 7 billion in October 2011: a …
Floor proceedings of the U.S. Senate, in session during the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton

Uneasy Lies the Head that Sleeps in the White House

… deal with criminal, or incapable, heads of state in times gone by? What did they do with monarchs who outraged the … Before 1600 (the period most of the English precedents come from), of course, one has to be careful when using concepts like “the people”. …
Seal of New York State.

George W. Bush and Indian Land Claims

… Bush claimed that “state law reigns supreme when it comes to Indians, whether it be gambling or any other … is confronted with land claim suits filed by the Cayugas, Oneidas and Senecas precisely because it purchased land … area and, recently, in the death threats issued against the Oneida Indians by a group calling itself the “United States …
In 2014, the debate about the underlying causes of "long, hot summers" remerged with the high-profile police killings of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, and others.

Long Hot Summers and Separate Societies

Review of Separate and Unequal: The Kerner Commission and the Unraveling of American Liberalism, by Steven M. Gillon (New York: Basic Books, 2018)
… Do the police reify inequality by targeting low-income communities of color or are they the “thin blue line” … report “the last gasp of 1960s liberalism." Chapters One through Six of Separate and Unequal plum the origins of … telling: Mayor of New York City John Lindsay anchored one pole and businessman Charles “Tex” Thornton the other. …
Nazis at Marienplatz in Munich during the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch.

Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch and Weimar’s Resolve

… promise to Germany’s working class that stood out as one of the few tangible victories of Weimar democracy, was … of steering a beleaguered nation through these crises. Just one month later, as “vigilante” assassinations and political … nation, Bavaria appointed Gustav Ritter von Kahr as State Commissioner General ( Generalstaatskommissar ), granting …
Mexican flag in a square

A Postcard from Mexico City

… for religious practices, including human sacrifices. If anyone is up for the challenge, you are welcome to climb up the steps. However, you should consider the … the Aztecs to leave their home and look for a new one. They would know the location of their new lands when …
J.P. Morgan

Time (Yet Again) for Preventative Regulation

… landscape and lexicon. This trend has left ever more complex financial markets and multinationals to operate in … regulated risky gray areas. The latest near collapse of one of Wall Street’s biggest firms recalls the market … of specific mergers and acquisitions. The next shift was one of both degree and kind: the New Deal. With the country …
Depiction of the Battle of Bosworth Field by the eighteenth-century painter, Philip James de Loutherbourg.

The Battle of Bosworth Field

… crowned King Henry VII (r. 1485-1509).   This battle was one of the last major battles of the Wars of the Roses, a … and the House of Lancaster over claims to the English throne.  A century later, this battle was memorialized by the … , Richard was the villain—a man who had usurped the throne and killed several noblemen to get it. The Battle of …
French troops under Charles VIII entering Florence, 1494.

The Blood Behind the Beauty

Review of The Beauty and the Terror: The Italian Renaissance and the Rise of the West, by Catherine Fletcher (New York City: Oxford University Press, 2020)
… Brutal violence is not typically the first thing that comes to mind when observing the artwork of the … this period had emerged, alongside the Low Countries, as one of the wealthiest regions in Europe. Increasing … to subjugate the Romagna. Portrait of Cesare Borgia, the one-time terror of the Romagna and employer of Leonardo da …