France’s long history of revolt
The French have often taken to the streets to force the state’s hand – but the difference today is that the state itself increasingly resembles a void at the heart of society.
Long-form writing from leading scholars and commentators on history, statecraft, warfare, philosophy and culture.
The French have often taken to the streets to force the state’s hand – but the difference today is that the state itself increasingly resembles a void at the heart of society.
Paweł Pawlikowski’s new film shows Thomas Mann adrift in postwar Germany. But the novelist had long been drawn eastwards – above all to Poland.
Sufi thinkers such as ʿAbd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi championed toleration and independence of thought long before Europeans brought their Enlightenment to the Muslim world.
Thought experiments such as Nick Bostrom's 'paperclip maximiser' tell us less about artificial intelligence than about our own intuitions and fears.
Drug trafficking, money laundering and a compliant regime have sustained Hezbollah's presence in Venezuela for two decades. Since Maduro's fall, that haven is no longer secure.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Daron Acemoglu’s call for a ‘working-class liberalism’ fails to address the underlying cause of liberal democracy’s woes: a lack of productivity.
Small modular reactors (SMRs) were first conceived for military use and deployed on polar bases. Seventy years on, their record remains dismal.
Transcendentalism, the visionary philosophy championed by figures such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, is the yin of the American Revolution.
The conventional narrative assumes economies can grow while using less energy. The opposite is happening. It is time for climate realism.