Ideas

History Economics Science & Technology Law Philosophy & Religion

Nature’s Evolving Tastes

In a new collection of essays on Darwin’s Descent of Man, a number of scientists claim that human and animal cultures emerge from the “purposeless process” of natural selection. Darwin himself said the opposite.

October 21, 2021 issue

Gregory Hays

A Mind in Pain

For Robert Burton, describing melancholy was a way of describing the world. Two recent books on depression suggest that today, virtually all we know about the subject is still open to debate.

October 21, 2021 issue

Sue Halpern

The Human Costs of AI

Artificial intelligence does not come to us as a deus ex machina but, rather, through a number of dehumanizing extractive practices, of which most of us are unaware.

October 21, 2021 issue

Annette Gordon-Reed

The Color Line

W.E.B. Du Bois’s exhibit at the 1900 Paris Exposition offered him a chance to present a “graphical narrative” of the dramatic gains made by Black Americans since the end of slavery.

August 19, 2021 issue

Anne Enright

The Burden of ‘Yes’

Katherine Angel is part of a new generation of female writers who are revisiting ideas of female submission.

August 19, 2021 issue

Edward Chancellor

Waiting to Deflate

Two recent books try to explain the seemingly irrational behavior behind speculative bubbles, from the tulip craze of the 1600s to Bitcoin today.

August 19, 2021 issue

Priyamvada Natarajan

All Things Great and Small

The origins and fates of atoms and galaxies are closely intertwined.

July 1, 2021 issue

Jenny Uglow

Contagious Constitutions

Linda Colley shows in her new book that written constitutions developed both as a means of shoring up entrenched rulers and of turning successful rebellions into legitimate governments.

June 10, 2021 issue

The Latest

Natalie Angier

Claw & Order

What do we owe nature, and how might we do a better job of coexisting with species that do not exist for our pleasure and sustenance?

November 4, 2021 issue

David Cole

Let the Decision Stand

Every argument against Roe was squarely rejected in the Supreme Court’s 1992 Casey decision, and nothing has changed since then except the composition of the Court.

November 4, 2021 issue

Tim Flannery

Out of Savannastan

A new book provides convincing evidence that our earliest direct ancestors evolved in Europe, and that they were walking upright as early as six million years ago. But it is overly confident in its challenge to the idea that the genus Homo arose in Africa.

November 4, 2021 issue

Ian Johnson

Chinese Medicine in the Covid Wards

One doctor’s mission to show that traditional healing arts could help in a national crisis.

November 4, 2021 issue

John J. Lennon

A Canon for the American Prisoner

“There’s something critically important that books do for us that we can’t get anywhere else—because so much of prison is trying to master the art of becoming.”

October 5, 2021

Jenny Uglow

Napoleon’s Greatest Trophy

How a Venetian masterpiece ended up in the Louvre.

October 21, 2021 issue

Jerome Groopman

What Does the Microbiome Do?

In Gut Feelings, Alessio Fasano and Susie Flaherty remind us that despite exaggerated claims from marketers, few applications of microbiome manipulation have been proven effective by clinical studies.

October 21, 2021 issue

Robert L. Tsai

The New Abortion Vigilantism

The abortion bounty law is novel and thus far unique to Texas, but similar civil enforcement regimes have a much darker history.

September 23, 2021

Zoë Schlanger

Our Silent Partners

Merlin Sheldrake explores how fungi challenge our understanding of nonhuman intelligence and complicate the boundaries between one organism and another.

October 7, 2021 issue