Interview Judith Herrin on Ravenna September 29, 2020 At the end of the fourth century, as the power of Rome faded and Constantinople became the seat of empire, a new capital city was rising in the West. Here, in Ravenna on the coast of Italy, Arian Goths and Catholic Romans competed to produce an unrivaled concentration of buildings and astonishing mosaics. Read More
Interview Despina Stratigakos on Hitler鈥檚 Northern Utopia August 31, 2020 Between 1940 and 1945, German occupiers transformed Norway into a vast construction zone. This remarkable building campaign, largely unknown today, was designed to extend the Greater German Reich beyond the Arctic Circle and turn the Scandinavian country into a racial utopia. Read More
Interview By Design | Porcelain: A History from the Heart of Europe August 24, 2020 Porcelain, once dubbed 鈥渨hite gold鈥� after being reproduced by an eighteenth-century Saxon alchemist, may seem to us today like a quaint rarity, a beautiful relic confined to elegant china cabinets. But in Suzanne Marchand鈥檚 absorbing history, this translucent ceramic comes to life as a once-ubiquitous commodity linked to geopolitical upheaval and the global transformations of the last three centuries. Read More
Essay The Fourth of July, but not 1776: Independence and epidemics in Boston July 02, 2020 The Fourth of July that mattered most to Revolutionary Boston, the Cradle of Liberty, was not the one in 1776 when the thirteen united states issued a declaration of independence to a 鈥渃andid world.鈥澛燫ather, it occurred the year before, in 1775, when the stakes were highest for Boston and New England, and in the form of a much quieter and little-known document. Read More
Interview Adam Sutcliffe on What Are Jews For? July 02, 2020 What is the purpose of Jews in the world? The Bible singles out the Jews as God鈥檚 鈥渃hosen people,鈥� but the significance of this special status has been understood in many different ways over the centuries.聽 Read More
Essay Fighting the deportation machine June 24, 2020 Javier Garc铆a Bautista had not been at his station for long on May 17 when someone in the carpentry department of the suburban-Los Angeles shoe factory where he worked yelled out, 鈥淭he migra is here!鈥� Read More
Essay Masada: A heroic last stand against Rome June 17, 2020 Two thousand years ago, 967 Jewish men, women, and children reportedly chose to take their own lives rather than suffer enslavement or death at the hands of the Roman army. Read More
Interview By Design | The Papers of Thomas Jefferson May 17, 2020 In a ceremony at the Library of Congress on May 17, 1950, President Harry S.聽Truman accepted the first volume of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, an ambitious project that would span multiple decades and vastly different modes of production. Read More
Essay Grace: A keyword for now and then April 07, 2020 Which are the keywords of our time? Black, Brexit, Climate, Trans? New words, old words that have changed, words that have switched users and come to mean different things from before. Read More
Essay James Baldwin鈥檚 reckless idea February 06, 2020 In 1961 James Baldwin found himself in the studios of WBAI radio in New York, looking into the eyes of Malcolm X. Malcolm was, by then, the most recognizable face associated with the Nation of Islam (NOI), a religious sect that was inspiring hope in the hearts of some and fear in the hearts of others. Read More
Essay Getting to know Nat Turner February 03, 2020 Nat Turner is known to history as a thirty-year-old Virginia slave who led a bloody rebellion that resulted in the death of fifty-five whites, mostly women and children.聽 Beyond that, he is famous for being well-nigh unknowable.聽 Read More
Interview By Design | Sunnis and Shi鈥檃: A Political History January 31, 2020 A typographic cover design poses a unique challenge. Unlike book covers that avail themselves of rich imagery, an all-type cover has to articulate a book鈥檚 subject with a greater economy of means. Read More
Interview Fei-Hsien Wang on Pirates and Publishers January 22, 2020 In聽Pirates and Publishers, Fei-Hsien Wang reveals the unknown social and cultural history of copyright in China from the 1890s through the 1950s, a time of profound sociopolitical changes. Read More
Essay Melancholy, remorse, and resignation in a year of Communist anniversaries January 17, 2020 Vanguard of the Revolution聽is a sweeping history of one of the most significant political institutions of the modern world. The communist party was a revolutionary idea long before its supporters came to power.聽 Read More
Essay How do human rights come about?: A few lesser-known activists and the popular movements they led December 10, 2019 How do human rights actually come about? International resolutions and treaties, like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, are important, but they hardly suffice. Read More
