Grace: A keyword for now and then April 07, 2020 Which are the keywords of our time? Black, Brexit, Climate, Trans? New words, old words that have changed, words that have switched users and come to mean different things from before. Read More
James Baldwin’s reckless idea February 06, 2020 In 1961 James Baldwin found himself in the studios of WBAI radio in New York, looking into the eyes of Malcolm X. Malcolm was, by then, the most recognizable face associated with the Nation of Islam (NOI), a religious sect that was inspiring hope in the hearts of some and fear in the hearts of others. Read More
Getting to know Nat Turner February 03, 2020 Nat Turner is known to history as a thirty-year-old Virginia slave who led a bloody rebellion that resulted in the death of fifty-five whites, mostly women and children. Beyond that, he is famous for being well-nigh unknowable. Read More
By Design | Sunnis and Shi’a: A Political History January 31, 2020 A typographic cover design poses a unique challenge. Unlike book covers that avail themselves of rich imagery, an all-type cover has to articulate a book’s subject with a greater economy of means. Read More
Fei-Hsien Wang on Pirates and Publishers January 22, 2020 In Pirates and Publishers, Fei-Hsien Wang reveals the unknown social and cultural history of copyright in China from the 1890s through the 1950s, a time of profound sociopolitical changes. Read More
Melancholy, remorse, and resignation in a year of Communist anniversaries January 17, 2020 Vanguard of the Revolution is a sweeping history of one of the most significant political institutions of the modern world. The communist party was a revolutionary idea long before its supporters came to power. Read More
How do human rights come about?: A few lesser-known activists and the popular movements they led December 10, 2019 How do human rights actually come about? International resolutions and treaties, like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, are important, but they hardly suffice. Read More
Nicholas Buccola on The Fire is Upon Us November 14, 2019 On February 18, 1965, an overflowing crowd packed the Cambridge Union in Cambridge, England, to witness a historic televised debate between James Baldwin, the leading literary voice of the civil rights movement, and William F. Buckley Jr., a fierce critic of the movement and America's most influential conservative intellectual. Read More
Eric D. Weitz on Human Rights Advances September 23, 2019 History is full of human rights tragedies and abuses, and it can be difficult to feel hopeful about the current state of affairs with those atrocities in mind. But there are success stories as well. Here, Eric Weitz shares a few exceptional human rights advances in recent history. Read More
Eric D. Weitz on A World Divided September 03, 2019 From Greek rebels, American settlers, and Brazilian abolitionists in the nineteenth century to anticolonial Africans and Zionists in the twentieth, nationalists have confronted a crucial question: Who has the “right to have rights?” Read More
Artemis Leontis on Eva Palmer Sikelianos: A Life in Ruins August 05, 2019 This is the first biography to tell the fascinating story of Eva Palmer Sikelianos (1874–1952), an American actor, director, composer, and weaver best known for reviving the Delphic Festivals. Read More
Sketches from Red Meat Republic June 15, 2019 Joshua Specht puts people at the heart of Red Meat Republic—the big cattle ranchers who helped to drive the nation’s westward expansion, the meatpackers who created a radically new kind of industrialized slaughterhouse, and the stockyard workers who were subjected to the shocking and unsanitary conditions described by Upton Sinclair in his novel The Jungle. Read More
Votes for Women: A Portrait of Persistence March 27, 2019 The Nineteenth Amendment, which allowed women to vote in the United States, was ratified 99 years ago. Read More
Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof on Racial Migrations February 28, 2019 Near the end of July in 1885, General Antonio Maceo spoke to an enthusiastic audience at an assembly hall on East 13th Street in Manhattan. The general, one of the most famous leaders of the unsuccessful war for independence in Cuba between 1868 and 1878, was in the city seeking donations to buy arms and munitions for a new war. Read More
What South Korea can learn from Germany February 21, 2018 When athletes from North and South Korea marched onto the field under the same flag in Pyeongchang on February 9, this was not the first time that two fiercely antagonistic states, one socialist and the other capitalist, jointly represent a divided nation at the Olympics. Read More