The Moral Act is the Free Act
How freedom and morality are intertwined Dana Dragunoiu at the IAI: We think the consequences of our actions are key to whether they are morally right or wrong. However, for
The Mysteries and Quirks of Human Memory
There’s a reason we keep forgetting things, Charan Ranganath -a psychologist and neuroscientist at the University of California, Davis, writes in “Why We Remember,” and we needn’t worry about it.
Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life
Martin Tyrrell at the Dublin Review of Books: Eileen O’Shaughnessy married George Orwell in 1936 and remained married to him until her unexpected and untimely death in 1945. Anna Funder’s Wifedom is
Hegel’s World Revolutions
Terry Eagleton at the London Review of Books: The Oxford philosopher Gilbert Ryle claimed he had once talked a student out of suicide by pointing out to him that the
One Nation Under Guns
How Gun Culture Distorts America’s History and Threatens Its Democracy. Book By Dominic Erdozain This “brilliant and gut-wrenching” (The New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice) takedown of American gun
Is the State Here to Stay?
Jonathan S. Blake in Boston Review: In early 2022, the Economist decried “governments’ widespread new fondness for interventionism.” The state was “becoming bossier” and “more meddlesome,” it complained. In fact, the state’s punitive
Why Truman Capote Spared Katherine Graham
The real reason Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham, Truman Capote’s guest of honor at the Black and White Ball, was the only “swan” he didn’t betray By Joseph Rodota in
Remembering Peasants
Jeremy Harte at Literary Review: …peasants will soon be as extinct as the aurochs and Irish elk. In western Europe, the proportion of the population employed in agriculture now stands
When Democracy Ails, Magic Thrives
West German witchcraft trials after World War II reveal how political rupture can fuel magical thinking Samuel Clowes Huneke in Boston Review: On August 31 (2020) President Trump told Fox News host
Politics in a Burning World: Beyond Mere Survival
Rithika Ramamurthy and Ajay Singh Chaudhary in Non-Profit Quarterly: “Beyond Mere Survival”: A Conversation with Ajay Singh Chaudhary” Rithika Ramamurthy: I want to talk about the central concept of your
Continue readingPolitics in a Burning World: Beyond Mere Survival
“Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect”
Melanie Ho in the Asian Review of Books: It’s the Australian Mystery Writers’ Festival and debut author Ernest Cunningham is one of the participating writers. Cunningham arrives at the festival—hosted
The World’s First Author
Anna Della Subin at the LRB: The earliest known author was married to the moon. In the 1920s, in the shadow of an anti-colonial uprising against British rule in Mesopotamia,