Revisit a fascinating story from Smithsonian Magazine on what the discovery of a 3,500-year-old soldier’s tomb in southwestern Greece tells us about the Mycenaeans, the Minoans, and the roots of Western civilization.
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Posted inEditor's Pick
The Forgotten History of Japanese-American Designers’ World War II Internment
Revisiting the link between detention and design history, 75 years after FDR’s executive order.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
A Moleskine In Every Satchel, and a Board Game On Every Table
In the New York Review of Books, Bill McKibben uses his review of David Sax’s new book, The Revenge of Analog to meditate on the enduring joys of playing board games or writing things with paper and pen, and how they keep us grounded in our humanity.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Finding the Limit of a Nation of Laws: Integrity, or the Lack Thereof
This David Frum piece in The Atlantic is a roadmap to Trump’s likeliest path to authoritarianism and self-enrichment — and therefore also a guide to what Americans of conscience need to do to protect democracy.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Our 9,000-Year Love Affair With Booze
Alcohol isn’t just a mind-altering drink: It has been a prime mover of human culture from the beginning, fueling the development of arts, language, and religion.
Posted inEditor's Pick
How to Build an Autocracy
The preconditions are present in the U.S. today. Here’s the playbook Donald Trump could use to set the country down a path toward illiberalism.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Pause! We Can Go Back!
Bill McKibben’s review of the new David Sax book, The Revenge of Analog, is itself a great read on the virtues and affectations newly-hip analog items — Moleskins, Scrabble boards, vinyl records.
Posted inEditor's Pick
America’s Great Divergence
A growing earnings gap between those with a college education and those without is creating economic and cultural rifts throughout the country.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Quotes
Publishing’s New Four-Letter Word
Publishing asks women — but not men — to be nice, as well as talented. Should we ask men to be more nice, or give women the leeway to be less so?
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Life in a Post-Soviet Melting Pot
Journalist and illustrator Lomasko was first noticed in the West for her graphic reportage from the Pussy Riot trial. In Tbilisi, Georgia, she spoke with historians, artists, journalists, activists, squatters, and local clergy about the political and cultural climate in this former Soviet republic.