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Ideas

History Economics Science & Technology Law Philosophy & Religion

Fara Dabhoiwala

Apotheosis Now

What does it mean when men are worshiped, willingly or not, as gods?

January 13, 2022 issue

Anahid Nersessian

Love for Sale

Eva Illouz’s The End of Love presents a world starkly divided between male and female, straight and gay, sex and love, dignity and humiliation.

January 13, 2022 issue

Sean Wilentz

The Paradox of the American Revolution

Recent books by Woody Holton and Alan Taylor offer fresh perspectives on early US history but overemphasize the importance of white supremacy as its driving force.

January 13, 2022 issue

Dan Rockmore

Prove It!

A recent book surveys different styles that can be used to prove a single theorem—a mathematical version of musical variations on a theme, inspired by the Oulipo writer Raymond Queneau.

January 13, 2022 issue

Ian Frazier

‘Part of Why We Survived’

A new history of the long tradition of Native comedy, inside and outside mainstream entertainment

January 13, 2022 issue

Alma Guillermoprieto

Nicaragua’s Dreadful Duumvirate

Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo’s corrupt and paranoid dictatorship has destroyed the Sandinista movement’s proudest achievements.

December 16, 2021 issue

Irina Dumitrescu

Industrious Habits

In Matrix, Lauren Groff continues to ask the question that has haunted her work for years: What kind of utopias can we imagine when the apocalypse is already in sight?

December 16, 2021 issue

Nathaniel Rich

Exhilarating Antihumanism

Joy Williams’s Harrow, a screwball fantasia of environmental collapse, is mercilessly contemptuous of the pieties of our age.

December 16, 2021 issue

The Latest

Mark Honigsbaum

The Deep Roots of Vaccine Hesitancy

Understanding the battle over immunization—from the pre-Victorian era onward—between public health and the people may help in treating anti-vax sentiment.

December 14, 2021

David S. Reynolds

He Was No Moses

While he opposed slavery and southern secession early in his career, as president Andrew Johnson turned out to be an unsightly bigot.

December 16, 2021 issue

Kwame Anthony Appiah

Digging for Utopia

In The Dawn of Everything David Graeber and David Wengrow search for historical examples of nonhierarchical societies to justify their anarchist vision of human freedom. But must we find our future in the past?

December 16, 2021 issue

Tim Flannery

Flies Like Us

Jonathan Balcombe’s Super Fly explores the immense world of flies.

December 16, 2021 issue

Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Inventing the Science of Race

In 1741, Bordeaux’s Royal Academy of Sciences held an essay contest searching for the origin of “blackness.” The results help us see how Enlightenment thinkers justified chattel slavery.

December 16, 2021 issue

Willa Glickman

Fruits of Empire

The plant explorers of the USDA succeeded in bringing the world’s fruits to American supermarkets. But at what human, ecological, and gustatory cost?

November 12, 2021

Neal Ascherson

Grand Illusion

Armed with only a Ouija board, two British officers attempted an eccentric and devious escape from a Turkish prisoner of war camp.

December 2, 2021 issue

John Gray

The Mind’s Body Problem

The belief that we’re different from other organisms may be an incurable human illusion.

December 2, 2021 issue

J.H. Elliott

Mastering the Glyphs

New histories of the conquest of Mexico look to Nahuatl-language sources for a fresh perspective on Aztec society.

December 2, 2021 issue

Sarah A. Seo

Reimagining the Public Defender

For the poor, who are disproportionately people of color, the criminal justice system in the United States is essentially a plea-and-probation system.

December 2, 2021 issue