Tomiwa Owolade: My New York Intellectuals
Leonard Benardo‘s note at Ideas Letter: The New York Intellectuals were a hallowed group of writers and critics who were convinced of the power and art of disputation. Writer and
What We Can Learn From the Decadent Movement
by Kate Hext at Aeon: At its most extreme, Decadence is a reckless pursuit of intense sensations: one that often teeters on the brink of scandal and sometimes topples over.
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Last Three Wishes of Alexander The Great
Shared by Masroor Ali, NJ: On his death bed, Alexander the Great summoned his generals and told them his three ultimate wishes: The best doctors should carry his coffin; The wealth
Records of Pompeii’s Survivors Have Been Found – and Archaeologists are Starting to Understand How They Rebuilt Their Lives
by Steven L. Tuck at The Conversation: On Aug. 24, in A.D. 79, Mount Vesuvius erupted, shooting over 3 cubic miles of debris up to 20 miles (32.1 kilometers) in
Atlantic Ocean Current Might Not Shut Down So Soon
Yuxin Zhou at The Conversation: While Greenland is losing huge volumes of ice right now – worryingly comparable to a midrange Heinrich event – the ice loss will likely not
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Brazil: A Melting-pot Genetic Present and an Uncharted Deep Past
by Razib Khan at Unsupervised Learning: In 1494, the expansionary Iberian powers negotiated the Treaty of Tordesillas to officially divvy up the planet’s freshly discovered regions beyond Europe. Over 370
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The Incredible Story of the Fake Allied Military Unit that Fooled Hitler Ahead of the D-day Invasion of Normandy
By Taylor Downing at Air Mail: General Hans Cramer was a German officer of the formal, Prussian school. Strict, proud and rigid, he did not take kindly to surrendering. Forced
South Africa’s Enduring Unfreedom
An interview with S’bu Zikode, leader of the shack dwellers’ movement, 30 years after apartheid’s end. S’bu Zikode and Richard Pithouse in the Boston Review: Richard Pithouse: Mandela was released from prison
Thirty Years of Talking About Pablo Escobar
Juan Gabriel Vásquez in El Pais: Pablo Escobar, the most infamous drug trafficker in history, was shot dead on the rooftops of Medellín. He had escaped 16 months earlier from La
How the World Made the West
Steven Poole at The Guardian: “Western civilisation” would not exist without its Islamic, African, Indian and Chinese influences. To understand why, Quinn takes us back in time, beginning at the
From Rags to Riches, or the Multifaceted Progress of Lady
By Anatoly Liberman at OUP Blog: Every English dictionary with even minimal information on word origins, will tell us that lord and lady are so-called disguised compounds. Unlike skyline or
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America Still Has Heroes
Joe Nocera at The Free Press: It was early afternoon, the Thursday before Memorial Day, and Oneida Oliver-Sanders and her husband Shawn Sanders were driving from Atlanta to their home