History
The Weimar Warning Has Limits
Historians and commentators keep reaching for 1930s Germany to explain the present. The analogy is partly useful and partly a way of avoiding the specific analysis the present requires.
Cara Novak11 min read
Ideas
What the Attention Economy Is Doing to Democratic Thought
Outrage is algorithmically optimized. Nuance is penalized. The platforms that organize public discourse have created an information environment that democracy was not designed to survive.
Devon Mitchell12 min read
Ideas
What Silicon Valley Believes
The ideology of American technology has always been a religion. What's changed is that its priests now hold political power — and they're starting to act like it.
Daniel Osei-Kwame12 min read
Books
History Books in a Political Season
When historians write about the past, they are always partly writing about the present. The current wave of popular history reveals what we are most anxious about — and what we are most determined to avoid seeing.
Aiko Tanaka11 min read