Some questions have to be asked again and again, because being unable to get a straight answer reminds us what’s really going on: What do...

In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scanda l (an extraordinarily ugly story for the age of Trump), I have deleted my Facebook account....

It often strikes me that we almost all agree about the fundamental problem in political economy. Almost all. A few crazies on the...

Choice is a great burden. The call to invent one’s life, and to do it continuously, can sound unendurable. Totalitarian regimes aim to...

To read books seriously is to be staggered by the knowledge of how many more books will remain beyond your ken. It’s like looking up at...

I am a citizen of two countries, the UK and the US. Last year, in 2016, both acted in lock step, as they have so often done before: first...

Be pleased to reform the abuses of all professions: and if there be any one that makes many poor to make a few rich, that suits not a...

The revelations about Harvey Weinstein, and the sexual predations and or boorishness of other powerful men, are shocking and disgusting....

Helping out with a high school class on dystopian lit, I came across one of the best examples of the craft I’ve seen in a long time – the...

Sumiteru Taniguchi, Nagasaki victim and lifelong anti-nuclear activist, died just over a month ago. It’s a shame he didn’t live to hear...

Historian Eric Hobsbawn (quoted from memory): “It is the job of the historian to remember what others have found it convenient to...

Once again I find my morning coffee interrupted by the desire to rewrite some odd English in the The Gray Lady of Record (Shifting...

One of today’s New York Times headlines raises an interesting point for the word nerds among us. Comey …. accuses the White House of...

This great ship, the USS America, is in deep trouble. Captain Barry Hope — “Audacity” to his friends — is about to be helicoptered off...

The most frightening book I’ve read in the past ten years is not a novel by Stephen King, but a childhood memoir by the German historian...

A great talent. RIP. In 1996, I had the opportunity to interview him at his home in Manhattan. Along with my introduction, this is what...

I was talking American politics recently with my old friend, the Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. Marco is a good person to talk...

Thirty six years ago, as a student, I wrote to the then Minister of Defense, Francis Pym, to argue that both the enormously expensive...

Following the Orlando massacre, here are a couple of numbers, and two new acronyms, that may help to make sense of these important...

The Senate Intelligence Committee has now released its report on the American people’s torture of Dick Cheney, and has reached three...