Essays

essays

The past, an enduring guide to the future

To navigate the uncertainty of 2025, historians should sift through the archives. By returning to the sources, we can make sense of our own tumultuous time.

Will Quinn January 10, 2025

essays

Ghosts of the old Middle East

The true cosmopolitanism of the old Middle East is in terminal decline. The travails of Syria’s Armenian community are its latest manifestation.

Hannah Lucinda Smith January 7, 2025

essays

The era of Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift cultivates community through storytelling, a quality in which she far exceeds her contemporaries.

Duncan Wheeler January 3, 2025

essays

Daniel Defoe’s journeys of the mind

Three centuries on from the publication of Daniel Defoe’s A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain, the English writer's travelogue remains unsurpassed.

Malcolm Forbes December 30, 2024

essays

How bro-world conquered America

The rise of bro-culture, all the way to the US presidency, is an unprecedented shift in America’s vision of itself and its projection upon the world stage.

Jenny McCartney December 27, 2024

essays

The West’s year of living anxiously

While this year has not been one of triumph for the liberal democracies of the West, it has been even worse for its self-declared adversaries.

Bill Emmott December 23, 2024

essays

The crisis of progressivism

Impatient attempts to impose change on society have created fear and resentment. The West has become the victim of its idealistic illusions.

Antony Beevor December 19, 2024

essays

The new struggle for space

Recent developments represent a return to the intensifying great power competition in the cosmos towards the end of the Cold War.

Aaron Bateman December 17, 2024

essays

The French Revolution and the making of the Counter-Enlightenment

Three exiled French thinkers shaped the Counter-Enlightenment by turning personal upheaval and revolutionary disillusionment into a powerful intellectual response that redefined co..

Gerald Warner December 12, 2024