Ideas

History Economics Science & Technology Law Philosophy & Religion

Promethean Women

Both Mary Wollstonecraft, darling of twentieth-century feminists, and her visionary daughter Mary Shelley continue to influence us today.

February 25, 2021 issue

Eamon Duffy

Why Was There a Reformation?

Though Steven Ozment’s The Age of Reform appeared amid a wave of critical thought about the Reformation, it rejected the new histories in favor of polemic.

February 25, 2021 issue

Kwame Anthony Appiah

The Prophet of Maximum Productivity

Thorstein Veblen’s maverick economic ideas made him the foremost iconoclast of the Age of Iconoclasts.

January 14, 2021 issue

Jenny Uglow

They Made London Their Own

A new book traces the multitudinous contributions of migrants to the capital, as well as their persistent exploitation.

December 3, 2020 issue

Andrea Pitzer

Mission to the Frozen North

William Barents’s last Arctic voyage was destined to be not a triumph of navigation but a struggle to survive. Four centuries later, his dream of a Northeast Passage is a troubling reality.

January 5, 2021

Pankaj Mishra

Grand Illusions of the West

It’s time to abandon the intellectual narcissism of cold war Western liberalism.

November 19, 2020 issue

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola; portrait by Cristofano dell’Altissimo, 1560s

Anthony Grafton

Pico della Mirandola’s Mystical Thinking

A new book cuts through generations of misguided commentary on the most famous speech of the Renaissance.

November 5, 2020 issue

Hari Kunzru

The Wages of Whiteness

Whiteness is a concept that can be made to serve many interests and positions, not all of them compatible.

September 24, 2020 issue

The Dark Web

Tom Scocca

How the Awful Stuff Won

Andrew Marantz’s and Megan Phelps-Roper’s books explore the dark and far-reaching consequences of our dependence on the Internet.

November 5, 2020 issue

A tweet by Donald Trump featuring an image of himself as Pepe the Frog, a symbol used by the far right, October 13, 2015

Hari Kunzru

For the Lulz

4chan, Gamergate, and how thwarted, angry young men have reshaped political discourse

March 26, 2020 issue

Claudia Dreifus, an interview with Ellen Pao

‘Social Media Reward Bad Behavior’

The former head of Reddit on how platforms like Facebook have amplified disinformation—and don’t want to stop—because attention equals profit.

October 26, 2020

The Latest

Jenny Uglow

The Reader of Rocks

William Smith’s innovative use of the fossil record helped him create the first detailed geological map of England, Wales, and Scotland.

March 11, 2021 issue

Jessica Riskin

When Engineers Were Humanists

During the Renaissance, mechanical inventions served as a medium for experimental thinking about all aspects of the cosmos.

March 11, 2021 issue

T.H. Breen

How Did the Colonies Unite?

The drive for American independence coalesced in only a few years of rapidly accelerating political change.

March 11, 2021 issue

Gregory Hays

Tune Out & Lean In

The recent revival of Stoic philosophy has stayed surprisingly true to its ancient roots while gaining popularity among executives and tech-bros.

March 11, 2021 issue

Anne Enright

Spirited Away

What is the spark that makes a shared God not just real, but so present he talks back to you?

March 11, 2021 issue

Ruth Bernard Yeazell

A Vermeer for the IRA

Rose Dugdale, famous for a 1974 art heist, would probably rather be remembered as a heroine of Irish republicanism.

March 11, 2021 issue

Frederic Wehrey

The Lost Rivers of Owens Valley

Water—who owns it, who uses it—has shaped this landscape from the Paiutes’ irrigation canals to the Los Angeles aqueduct. And it is a history in which my own family played a part.

February 16, 2021

Uki Goñi

The Hidden History of Black Argentina

A century of European immigration brought with it a comprehensive effort to erase the country’s multiracial past. Only recently has that been reversed.

February 8, 2021