A Political and Literary Forum
A new book suggests that modern readers can still follow the path of reason that Spinoza traced to true well-being, but they might not want to.
Carlos Fraenkel
On Ashura, Shi’a Muslims grieve the Prophet’s grandson. But with Iran crippled by COVID-19 and U.S. sanctions, it was also an occasion this year to mourn the country’s deaths from disease and despair.
Nargol Aran
Pestilence and plague have often prompted waves of apocalyptic thinking, calling into question the steady march of progress in human history.
John Merrick
Anger’s history—along with the very fact that it has one—can shed light on the hypertrophied emotional climate of today.
David Konstan
Unlike most places in the world where people get buried where they lived, for over two millennia people have traveled from far and wide to die in Jerusalem. But now the city is running out of graves, and against the backdrop of the Israel–Palestine conflict, burial is often a political matter.
Etan Nechin
Nicky Nodjoumi is one of Iran’s greatest artists, but his politics have kept him in exile since 1980.
Nicky Nodjoumi, Daniel Penny
The Trump administration’s sanctions against Iran and cuts to SNAP benefits are two sides of the same war that the rich are waging against the global poor.
Liz Theoharis
Two recent books about Mormon women highlight the success of the church in redefining itself as a modern liberal religion. But to become that, the Latter-day Saints dramatically reworked both their theology and history.
Peter Coviello
Capitalism hasn’t disenchanted the world, a new book argues. Like a bad lover, it beguiles us into spiritual desolation—and only the most utopian politics will break its spell.
James G. Chappel
The political philosophy embraced by Germany’s leading party helped reunite Europe after World War II. Can it guide us safely away from today’s populism—or did it cause it?
Udi Greenberg
Oil’s grip on U.S. society is as much religious as economic, a new history shows.
Kim Phillips-Fein
Ingrid Rimland was a pioneering voice of the neo-Nazi Internet. She was also raised Mennonite, a peaceful religion with a long history of celebrating white “ethnic” identity.
Ben Goossen
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