Misadventures of a Stalinist Stooge
Benn Steil’s engrossing new biography of Henry A. Wallace is a timely cautionary tale and a masterpiece of 20th-century American history.
Ronald Radosh
· 23 min read
Long Read
A collection of 190 posts
Jean-Luc Godard in Retrospect Part II: Fanaticism and Failure (1966–2022)
After half a decade of critical adulation, Godard’s career slumped into doctrinaire Maoism, bitterness, incomprehensibility, and irrelevance. It never recovered.
Charlotte Allen
· 36 min read
Jean-Luc Godard in Retrospect Part I: Abstraction Hero (1930–65)
A brief five-year period produced nearly all the Godard movies that film aficionados still remember, but even these celebrated works have dated poorly.
Charlotte Allen
· 33 min read
Sex and Smashed Steel
A look back at J.G. Ballard's ‘Crash’—one of the the 20th century’s greatest and most disturbingly prophetic novels.
Benjamin Kerstein
· 25 min read
Mystic Without a Church
Werner Herzog’s new memoir provides a look back on the magisterial and occasionally maddening career of a cinematic visionary.
Jaspreet Singh Boparai
· 17 min read
Toward Ruin or Recovery?
The modern feminist response to rape is failing women, and it is failing victims of rape most of all.
Larissa Phillips
· 35 min read
The Amityville Horror—A 50-Year Old Lie That Won’t Die
Jay Anson’s haunted-house yarn was a highly lucrative hoax, but it struck a popular chord amid the financial precarity of 1970s America.
Kevin Mims
· 26 min read
Motorpsycho Nightmare
Robert Pirsig’s insufferable cult novel about philosophy and bike maintenance turns 50.
Kevin Mims
· 18 min read
On Biology and Politics
Why the Left must take human evolution seriously.
Patrick Whittle
· 22 min read
Chaos at the End of History
Even in rights-based and law-bound democratic societies, people tend to find new things to struggle over.
Matt Johnson
· 28 min read
The Limits of Good Intentions
The payday-loan debate revisited.
Aaron Hanna
· 22 min read
Here Comes the Bite
Peter Benchley’s ‘Jaws’ turns 50.
Kevin Mims
· 24 min read
The Vilnius Fiasco
There is a better way to protect Ukrainian sovereignty and security—and long-term Western interests—than NATO membership.
Adam Garfinkle
· 24 min read
How Effective Altruism Lost Its Way
It is time for the EA movement to rediscover humanism.
Matt Johnson
· 29 min read
A History of Feminist Antisemitism
The story of how activists and academics exchanged the struggle for universal female improvement for a politics of division and hatred.
Kara Jesella
· 21 min read