History

Photographing Cruelty

In the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the weapon of choice was not the gun but the spectacle of public shaming.

  • Susie Linfield

Revolutionary Consent

What the public life of American colonists can teach us about politics.

  • Barbara Clark Smith

The Chosen People

Rather than apologizing for the Jewish tradition or putting it on a pedestal, The Jewish Political Tradition stresses its living and agonistic character.

  • Hilary Putnam

Letters from Chomsky and Galbraith on JFK and Vietnam

An exchange.

  • Noam Chomsky
  • James K. Galbraith

Believing in America

An intellectual project and a national ideal.

  • Leo Marx

The Iraqi Shiites

On the history of America’s would-be allies.

  • Juan Cole

Sign up for our newsletter

Exit Strategy

In 1963, JFK ordered a complete withdrawal from Vietnam.

  • James K. Galbraith

Just Marriage

American conservatives pride themselves on moral clarity—and nowhere greater than on the topic of marriage and family.

  • Mary Lyndon Shanley

Iran’s Other Religion

The birthplace of Zarathustianism.

  • Jehangir Pocha

Memory’s Lair

Memory, like everything else in the world, can be clumsily used, or unintelligently used, or used for false purposes or in bad faith.

  • Susie Linfield

The Hard Road to Fascism

Today’s antiliberal revolt looks a lot like 1920s Europe.

  • Abbott Gleason

The Secret History of the Magna Carta

Its most far-reaching provisions aren’t the ones we remember.

  • Peter Linebaugh

Waiting for War in Damascus

Syria has been opening up. A war will shut it down.

  • Helena Cobban

The Best Defense

The problem with Bush’s “preemptive” war doctrine.

  • Neta C. Crawford

The Politics of Rescue

Debating humanitarian intervention.

  • Carroll Bogert

Can Social Movements Save Democracy?

Lessons from grassroots organizing.

  • Archon Fung

Return of the Repressed

The strange case of Masud Khan.

  • Robert S. Boynton

Taking Ideas Seriously

Can we distinguish political choices from philosophical truths?

  • Seyla Benhabib

Making History

In the new historical novel, the past is part of the fiction.

  • Richard A. Kaye

Do We Need a God?

Maybe not.

  • Richard Eldridge

Violence, Terror, and Politics as Usual

America’s “new war” reflects an epochal change in the nature of collective violence.

  • Charles Tilly

Recent Books on Capital Punishment

 The nine volumes under review here add much of value to the already burgeoning literature on the death penalty.

  • Hugo Adam Bedau

Review: Crossing Over

Reporting from the border zones. 

  • Scott Saul

What Comes After Welfare Reform?

How we can ensure economic security for all Americans

  • J. Larry Brown
  • Larry W. Beeferman
trending_flat
Get our newsletter

Vital reading on politics, ideas, and culture to your inbox

A political and literary forum, independent and nonprofit since 1975

Registered 501(c)(3) organization

Help Us Stay Paywall-Free

Donate

Become a Member

Subscribe