A handsome couple strolled arm in arm down Central Park West. The man, tall and athletic with a thick, well-brushed m…
Great WWI-era Austrian Writers: Musil, Zweig, Roth
During this ongoing centenary of the First World War, I became more interested in the details of the Italian front in…
No, Nazis were Not Leftists: Or, How to Debunk Right-Wing Propaganda
It is generally considered good practice not to “feed the trolls”— that is, not to engage in commentary with stranger…
New Essay: How does Politics affect Writing, and Vice Versa?
I recently attended the 15th International Conference on the Short Story in Lisbon, where I met many interesting writ…
Homage to Veneto
There is no status quo in politics. Things really do fall apart, to quote the overly quoted Yeats. For those of us bo…
Exit West and Dark at the Crossing: Two Novels of Syrian Refugees
It has been a long six and a half years since the Arab Spring, the popular movement of early 2011 that toppled dictat…
Stalin’s Biography: For Serious Readers Only
Diving into an 850-page biography of one of the most monstrous and powerful men who ever lived is not something one d…
John Berger, Max Sebald, Teju Cole: International Men of Culture
I think it was Ousmane Sembene, the Senegalese author and filmmaker, who talked of the writer being the voice of the …
The Dictator Novel in the Age of Trump
“Storytellers are a threat. They threaten all champions of control, they frighten usurpers of the right-to-fr…
J.M. Coetzee: The Master of Cape Town
South African-born writer John Coetzee is one of the most decorated and celebrated living writers. He has won the Nob…
The Sellout by Paul Beatty: A Review
Shortly after Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Booker Prize was awarded to fellow American Paul Beatt…
Why Does the Universe Exist and Other Things We Cannot Know
Philosophy used to be the king of science. Hard to imagine now, but it’s true. Over the last few centuries, how…
The Italian Front in WWI: Bad Tactics, Worse Leadership, and Pointless Sacrifice
During this ongoing centenary of the First World War, interest in “The War to End All Wars” has returned, especially …
Crazy Horse and the Legacy of the American Indian Genocide
Recent news articles about coal pollution in the Powder River Basin in Montana and Wyoming, and protests against new …
On Plato, Donald Trump, and the Ship of State
Plato’s most famous work and the foundational text of political philosophy is the Republic. Written in the form…
E.O. Wilson on Biology as Politics, Culture, and Human Nature
One of the most illustrious living scientists, E.O. Wilson, is still active and writing great books well into his ninth …
The Dangerous Rise and Impending Collapse of Homo Sapiens
“If all the insects were to disappear from the earth, within 50 years all life on earth would end. If all human…
Republican Senator’s Ill-Conceived Plan to Block Vegetarian Options in the Military
Across the United States and most of the developed world, there is a growing awareness of the problems caused by over…
How to Mock a Dictator (and Get Away With It)
The German government, a coalition of Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats and the center-left Soci…
Not Quite Ready to Die in the Anthropocene
(Originally published at The Hooded Utilitarian) The recent Paris Climate Conference has been called the last best ch…
The Enduring Legacy of Alexander Hamilton
It has come to my attention that there exists an award-winning Broadway musical based on the life of Alexander Hamilt…
Proposal for Primary Reform: Demote Iowa and New Hampshire
Many Americans have been noticing, with more frequency, the inconvenient truth that our democratic system, by design,…
A Response to A Defense of Moderate, American Socialism
This essay is a short response to the great recent analysis on Socialism in America by my colleague on this…
It’s Still Not Enough: Comments on the Paris Climate Accord
The long-awaited Paris Climate Accord has been finished and is widely reported to be the most successful and ambitiou…
Republican Reactionaries and the Road to Fascism
The Utilitarian philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote the following lines in his great work On Liberty: “A party of orde…
Are We Still Charlie Hebdo?: The Growing Dissonance between Extremism and Free Speech
I started preparing this essay a month or two ago to collect my thoughts about the after effects of the Charlie Hebdo…
Why Black Literature Matters
“The Thankful Poor”, Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1894 Last month in The Atlantic, Egyptian writer and activist …
Reinhold Messner as Nietzschean Übermensch
One month ago, on July 24, 2015, the sixth and final Messner Mountain Museum opened to the public on the top of a mou…
Dispatch from Greece: Myth, Tragedy, Resistance, and Hope
Herodotus begins his great work by tracing the historical origins of the Persian War to myths involving conflict betw…
Some Thoughts on the Assassination of Osama bin Laden
During my first tour in Afghanistan in 2005, I was one of those who still thought that the war was justified a…
The Death Penalty and State-Sanctioned Violence
A confluence of recent events has led to the practice of capital punishment in America becoming a matter of greater p…
The Land of the Balaklava
“Theirs not to make reply, theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die: Into the valley of Death rode the six …
On Gun Violence and the Second Amendment
America has a problem with violence, and specifically gun violence. This is a fact, not an opinion, and is confirmed …
Goodbye to Christmas Truces
We have recently passed the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, which has occasioned a fair amount of p…
American Sniper and the Hero Myth
American Sniper, a new film based on the book of the same name, is being released on Christmas Day. Directed by Clint…
Yes, We Tortured Some Folks
By now everyone in the world has heard about the recently released U.S. Senate Torture Report, which details the shoc…
The Espionage Act and the Cult of Secrecy
The most important compromise that allowed for the passage of the U.S. Constitution was that there be included a seri…
Dr. King’s Final Dream
We recently witnessed the 50th anniversary celebration of the famous 1963 “March on Washington”, which wa…
On Racism and Other Bigotries
Racism, anti-Semitism, sexism, homophobia, tribalism, nationalism, parochialism, xenophobia, jingoism, bigotry, intol…
A Veteran Relooks at War
We have collectively learned much in the last couple years about a secret and frightful new war machine — Unman…