My Word of the Year: Hostages
By Anatoly Liberman at OUP: The Hebrew word “hostages” can be translated into English as “children of surety,” and in many languages the word for “hostage” means both “security, pledge”
Wednesday Poem: Images of Africa at Century’s End
By Ama Ata Aidoo @ Poetry Foundation: Who was it saidthe reason whyyou never seeBlack Folks properlye-v-e-r on film or TVis ’cause White Folks“find them threatening”? Whopei! Abae-o-o-o! We always
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Why Did Our Ancestors Make Startling Art in Dark, Firelit Caves?
‘Why do you think they drew these stags here?’ Eduardo Palacio-Pérez, the conservator of the cave, asks me. ‘I really don’t think we’ll ever know for sure,’ I reply. Izzy
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Amir Timur and the Battle of Stalingrad
Habib Khan from Quetta: Amir Timur (aka Tamerlane) allegedly learned perseverance from an ant. According to legends, and the school curriculum, Timur observed an ant repeatedly trying to climb a
Women in the Ancient World
Literary Review May 2024 Issue: Women are everywhere in classical literature and mythology, but the lives of actual women in the ancient world are much more obscure. In the May
The Genetic Origin of the Indo-Europeans
Razib Khan at Unsupervised Learning: On this episode, Razib talks about the April 2024 preprint The Genetic Origin of the Indo-Europeans. The blockbuster publication introduces nearly 300 new ancient DNA
Yuval Noah Harari: From Gaza to Iran, the Netanyahu Govt Is Endangering Israel’s Survival
Yuval Noah Harari in Haaretz: In the coming days Israel will have to make historic policy decisions, ones that could shape its fate and the fate of the entire region
The Butterfly’s Wings: FDR, Truman, and Henry Wallace
If you don’t like people, you hadn’t ought to be in politics at all, and Henry talked about the common people but I don’t think he liked them… —Harry S.
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Lord Byron Was Hard to Pin Down. That’s What Made Him Great.
Benjamin Markovits at the New York Times: This week is the 200th anniversary of Lord Byron’s death. The most famous poet of his age (an odd phrase now) died fighting
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The Enduring Pain of Postcolonial Trauma
Farah Abdessamad at Aeon: In 1952, the 27-year-old Frantz Fanon had just published his first book, Black Skin, White Masks, his controversial and rejected doctoral thesis on the effects of
Byzantine Regained
Jerry Saltz at Vulture: In the year 286, Emperor Diocletian began to formalize a division of the Roman Empire into two parts. The Western Roman Empire would go on to
“A Passage to India” on Its 100th Birthday
THIS YEAR marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India. I’ve never loved the novel, nor have I been able to let go of