The Future of the Book

The Seventies Shift

– Michael Barone

When Michael Barone began his career as a political observer, Los Angeles was like Des Moines by the sea and America was transfixed by the Vietnam war and the counterculture. Nobody saw the deeper forces that were beginning to transform the nation.

Exit Lessons

– David M. Edelstein

The search is on for graceful strategies for exiting Iraq and Afghanistan. Apart from victory, history suggests, there are none.

Before the Fall

– Andrew Curry

The fall of the Berlin Wall was a dramatic moment in time. In the minds of many East Germans, it was years in the making.

Bullet Trains for America?

– Mark Reutter

The Obama administration has revived the dream of building high-speed rail lines to rival those of Japan and Europe, but the tracks are littered with political and financial obstacles.

The Battle of the Books

– Alex Wright

In the long history of the book, the mass-produced volumes of our time constitute only a single chapter. More remain to be written.

Three Tweets for the Web

– Tyler Cowen

Welcome the new world with open arms — and open browsers.

The Cult of Experts

– The Wilson Quarterly

It is a dangerous illusion to think that "experts" are free from politics, groupthink, and other flaws.

Three Flags

– The Wilson Quarterly

Where is the line between patriotism and idolatry when it comes to flag bearing?

Blind-sided

– The Wilson Quarterly

Why did so many economists fail to anticipate the economic crisis of 2008?

The Cost of 9/11

– The Wilson Quarterly

How much did the 9/11 terrorist attacks impact the U.S. economy?

War and Warming

– The Wilson Quarterly

Climate change has greater implications for national security, and the intelligence community is taking notice.

L. Paul Bremer, Scapegoat

– The Wilson Quarterly

It's time to reassess the actions of Paul Bremer in Iraq.

How Cities Go Global

– The Wilson Quarterly

Around the world, about 70 cities provide crucial expertise in insurance, accounting, law, consulting, and programming for firms and exchanges operating across national borders. However, they each retain unique cultural characteristics that are the ultimate source of their strength.

Immigrating to Obesity

– The Wilson Quarterly

Why do immigrants to the United States tend to remain slimmer than their native-born counterparts?

Damned Either Way

– The Wilson Quarterly

When forced to choose between two evils, decision makers are viewed negatively regardless of what they pick.

Finding Happiness After Harvard

– The Wilson Quarterly

Unearthing a long-lost study that tracked the Harvard graduating classes of 1942, 1943, and 1944.

Dissembling Defoe

– The Wilson Quarterly

Daniel Defoe: prolific author, first journalist, and greatest liar that ever lived?

Oil for Containment

– The Wilson Quarterly

The policies put in place as part of the Marshall plan to rebuild Europe after World War II fostered an unprecedented dependence on oil from Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries.

Hamiltonian Exuberance

– The Wilson Quarterly

How Alexander Hamilton saved the fledgling United States from financial ruin as America's first central banker.

Russia's Casual Christians

– The Wilson Quarterly

The Orthodox Church may be experiencing a resurgence in Russia, but the country remains highly secular.

No One Died in Malerkotla

– The Wilson Quarterly

Shared devotion to the saint Haider Shaikh by Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs, played an important role in protecting the city of Malerkotla from the religious violence that killed an estimated 500,000 people when India was partitioned in 1947.

Why Sex?

– The Wilson Quarterly

Why do humans have such a complicated reproduction process?

What Cannot Be

– The Wilson Quarterly

Is there a finite limit to cultural variation?

Stop Scribbling!

– The Wilson Quarterly

About 30 years ago, literary criticism changed from a field of humble, erudite explication of great works of art, to one of creative and adventuresome interpretation.

The Art Recession

– The Wilson Quarterly

Confronted by fiscal crisis, New York's best known arts institutions are receiving less funding than ever before.

Cheek Swabs for Hamlet

– The Wilson Quarterly

A small but militant group of literary Darwinists are making the case that Homer, Shakespeare and Cervantes are as much products of natural selection as Darwin's Galapagos finches.

Europe's Envelope Economy

– The Wilson Quarterly

In Eastern and Central Europe during the Soviet period, underground activity was the economy.

The Graduate Fixer

– The Wilson Quarterly

Behind the image of a new India populated by a rising middle-class of tech-savvy, well-educated entrepreneurs lies a grim reality common throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America: legions of educated, unemployed young people.

Saving Africa

– The Wilson Quarterly

The crusade to "save Africa" has a long and disappointing history.

From Foraging to Farming

– The Wilson Quarterly

Humans living 11,000 years ago grew and stored wild grains for more than a millennium before they began growing domesticated plants.

Norway's Black Sheep

– Michael McDonald

Though he may lack name recognition in the English-speaking world, Norwegian Nobel Prize winner Knut Hamsun was perhaps the first truly modernist author.

The Winning Formula

– Thomas Rid

Examining counterinsurgency and the new focus on local populations rather than territory as the magic formula for victory in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ready for Her Close-Up

– Nick Gillespie

Ayn Rand's work has been critically dismissed as juvenile and subliterate when it has been considered at all, but this has obscured the fact that she helped create an ideological framework that continues to energize debate in contemporary America.

Three Weddings and a War

– Martha Saxton

The Civil War lives of Angelina Grimke Weld, Julia Dent Grant, and Varina Howell Davis.

Remember the Titan

– Benjamin Wittes

The life of Louis D. Brandeis, a figure in American legal history whose influence is so profound and pervasive that he cannot be politically classified.

Ghosts of the Heartland

– Sarah L. Courteau

The United States is currently experiencing uneven development at a level not seen since the Civil War, as young, educated professionals flock to cities and stay there.

The Good and the Bad in the Ugly

– Troy Jollimore

The United States has failed to learn the crucial lessons that have come with environmental and political catastrophes across the 20th century.

The Middle-Class Ghetto

– A. J. Loftin

If history repeats itself, the serious, intelligent books reviewed weekly by The New York Times will not be read by students of literature fifty years from now.

How Sofas Changed the World

– Winifred Gallagher

An outpouring of design creativity between 1670 and 1765 made Paris the world's most influential location, beginning a Western cultural shift in ideals from magnificence and public display to ease and private delight.

Stalking the Umwelt

– Rob Dunn

The central battle in classifying the world around us is between objective truth and the framework through which we see the world, our umwelt.

Arts and Sciences

– Britt Peterson

The Romantic generation was the first to discover and marvel at the beauty, wonder, and terror of science.

Girth of a Nation

– Lynne Lamberg

The prevalence of obesity among Americans has more than doubled in the past 30 years.

Jews in America

– Amy E. Schwartz

Tracing the history of Judaism in its many forms in America.