Ideas

History Economics Science & Technology Law Philosophy & Religion

Why Biology Is Not Destiny

In The Genetic Lottery, Kathryn Harden disguises her radically subjective view of biological essentialism as an objective fact.

April 21, 2022 issue

David Cole

When Rights Went Right

Is the American conception of constitutional rights too absolute?

April 21, 2022 issue

Erin Maglaque

‘Monstrous’ or ‘Prudente’?

A new feminist history asks us to reconsider early modern queenship.

April 21, 2022 issue

Jackson Lears

The Forgotten Crime of War Itself

In his new book, Samuel Moyn argues that efforts to humanize war with smarter weaponry or sanctify it with moral cant have obscured the task of making peace the first goal of foreign policy.

April 21, 2022 issue

Odd Arne Westad

The Long Shadow of Nuclear War

Putin has issued a stark reminder that the architecture of the atomic arms race was never dismantled. But his cold-war superpower gambit won’t win the war in Ukraine.

March 18, 2022

Ariel Dorfman

The Futility of Censorship

Eric Berkowitz’s Dangerous Ideas focuses on heroes and heroines who refused to allow their freedom of expression to be extinguished.

April 7, 2022 issue

J. Hoberman

Framing Babyn Yar

Sergei Loznitsa’s documentaries, sourced from archival propaganda, have drawn criticism for what they do not show.

March 29, 2022

Nick Laird, interviewed by Matt Seaton

The Hidden Crime

“When murderers are rehabilitated without admissions of guilt, and history’s rewritten, a new and awful reality occurs.”

March 19, 2022

Among the Animals

Michelle Nijhuis

Buzz Buzz Buzz

Humans have spent decades trying to teach other animals our languages, but we’ve made little effort to learn theirs.

August 20, 2020 issue

Elizabeth Kolbert

He Tried to Be a Badger

The more that’s learned about cognition in other species, the tougher it is to make the case that our intelligence is anything special.

June 23, 2016 issue

Liuty, a male tiger whose name, according to John Vaillant in The Tiger, is ‘an efficient word combining vicious, ferocious, cold-blooded, and bold,’ at a Siberian wildlife rehabilitation center run by the tiger catcher Vladimir Kruglov

Tim Flannery

Tigers, Humans, and Snails

Whether birdsong at dawn or just a weed in a sidewalk, nature is all around us. Yet all too frequently we only appreciate it when it’s out of reach.

February 10, 2011 issue

Oliver Sacks

The Mental Life of Plants and Worms

Do jellyfish have minds?

April 24, 2014 issue

The Latest

Bill Spindle

On the Grid in Leisang

With every village in India electrified, the country’s challenge will be to meet growing energy demand with renewable sources. But can it afford to give up fossil fuels?

June 22, 2022

Duncan Hosie

The Remaking of the Second Amendment

The Supreme Court’s expanding interpretation of the Second Amendment threatens longstanding democratic authority to enact gun safety measures.

June 10, 2022

Andrew Delbanco

Endowed by Slavery

The history of university coffers suggests a centuries-long conversion of blood money into benefactions.

June 23, 2022 issue

Marina Warner

Wimple Networks

The scholars in Relations of Power argue that a method borrowed from literary criticism can shift our historical understanding of medieval women’s spheres of influence.

June 23, 2022 issue

Laura Kolbe

Where Does It Hurt?

Three new books attempt to locate the origin of pain and its vocabulary.

June 23, 2022 issue

Peter E. Gordon

In Search of Recognition

The philosopher Axel Honneth argues that the act of recognizing one another forms the scaffolding of our personal and social world.

June 23, 2022 issue

Lynn Hunt

I, the People

Was Robespierre proof that violent revolution in the name of rights and social justice could only result in terror and authoritarianism?

June 23, 2022 issue

Jed S. Rakoff

The Rich Get Richer

The law professor Marc Steinberg lays out a series of reasonable proposals for reforming securities law, but Congress is unlikely to act.

June 23, 2022 issue

Keith Thomas

A ‘Puritan Jihadi’

Oliver Cromwell’s cruelty and fervent, born-again religiosity were extreme, even by the standards of the age.

June 23, 2022 issue

Paisley Currah

What Sex Does

For transgender people in the United States, the sheer number of institutions with discrete authority to define sex ensnares us in Kafkaesque contradictions.

May 27, 2022