Notebooks

Notebooks are snapshots from our writers, reflecting on current affairs and underappreciated aspects of culture and history.

Ride hailing drivers shout slogans as they hold flowers during a peace rally in Jakarta, Indonesia.

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Indonesia’s new economics

Indonesia’s departure from its traditional adherence to fiscal orthodoxy is fuelling economic and political anxiety.

Imran Shamsunahar September 29, 2025

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa speaks with former United States Army General David Howell Petraeus during the Concordia Annual Summit, in New York, Monday, Sept. 22, 2025.

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Syrians fear a tyranny of the majority

With Syria’s elections postponed until October, has the country's democratic transition been blown off course?

James Snell September 25, 2025

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Sarajevo’s fragile peace

Corruption and instability in the Balkans are chipping away at Bosnia's fragile political settlement.

Saffron Swire September 24, 2025

Image: Allegory of the 1st Partition of Poland, 1772. Credit: Prisma Archive

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The price of appeasement

From the 18th-century partition of Poland to the appeasement of Hitler, Europe's troubled history warns us that indecision and inaction only serve to embolden expansionist powers a..

Adam Zamoyski September 23, 2025

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Calvino and the machines

Italo Calvino's 'literature machine' is a prescient vision of the perils and promise of artificial intelligence.

Alexander Lee September 19, 2025

A newspaper French election results in the late 19th century.

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How to classify the French Right

The French Right has been shaped by prolonged struggle for the balance of power between three consistent, if evolving, tendencies: the Legitimists, the Orléanists, and the Bonapart..

Henry Hill September 19, 2025