Author Archive
July 18, 2023Some facts are so shocking that you don’t want to believe them. And if you do believe them, there’s a tendency to forget, downgrade their importance, and often have to be...
June 16, 2023In recent years, cultural critics have been getting depressed while looking at which movies are performing best at the box office. Instead of telling new stories, studios are...
June 5, 2023Recently, I was scrolling Twitter and saw someone post something like “I’m attracted to [some hot button culture war issue] because you can lose your livelihood for...
May 12, 2023Ideally, one would like to think that if someone has written a 300-page book, it means that they have 300 pages worth of things to say. My experience is that is rarely the case....
April 24, 2023Sometimes people ask which political writers and thinkers I like to read, and they usually end up surprised when I name a lot of centrists and leftists. Apparently, most people...
April 12, 2023Over a lifetime, one can at best hope to achieve a very selective understanding of history. No matter how smart and well-read you are, even if you devote your life to the field,...- April 6, 2023There are a lot of academics and journalists who do good work as parts of institutions. Those people can let their writing speak for itself. A Harvard professor or a New York...
