Taking the Long View
The historical novel strives to recreate not only the material dimensions of a past age but also its mindset.
Presentation and Power
by
Mark Dunbar
Posted on December 20, 2023
Image: Signs at the site of an Occupy DC protest, 2011, Shutterstock.
The protests and protest candidates failed because they lacked organizational structures and concrete policies.
Self-Censorship and Don Quixote
by
Alan Jacobs
Posted on December 14, 2023
Image: The Lion, illustration for Don Quixote, 1902, by William Strang, National Galleries of Scotland.
The language of self-censorship removes the question from the moral realm in which it properly belongs.
Autocracy Rising
Posted on December 12, 2023
Image: President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at a rally in Izmir in May 2023; Shutterstock..
Turkey presents an inversion of the usual presumptions about the current global struggle between liberalism and conservatism.
Dostoevsky’s Dangerous Gambit
by
Ryan Kemp
Posted on December 8, 2023
Image: “Alyosha and Vanya,” 1971, by Mikhail Rojter (1916–1993); The Gamborg Collection/Bridgeman Images; background: manuscript of The Brothers Karamazov.
Dostoevsky is too Christian for a secular age and too secular for Christendom.
Democracy and Dr. Kissinger
Posted on December 4, 2023
Image: Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger on Air Force One in 1974; Everett Collection HIstorical/Alamy.
Kissinger the scholar studied power. Kissinger the statesman acquired power, guarded it, and wielded it.