Spring 2025

There are two oddities to George Bush’s “New World Order”: (1) he didn’t create it and (2) it doesn’t exist. There is a new flux, but not a new order in the world. Its sources, all of which preceded the …

In the late 1950s, Jean-Paul Sartre decided that it was necessary to rethink his entire philosophy. Writing for twenty hours a day, taking amphetamines to spur himself on, Sartre wrote the two enormous volumes of the Critique of Dialectical Reason. …

Pessimism about India is nothing new. Right now, there is no dearth of gloomy news from the subcontinent. Not only was former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi assassinated in a particularly violent election campaign last spring, but two separatist insurgencies continue …

The soot-darkened skies and fouled waters of Eastern Europe have given apologists for laissez-faire capitalism a new rallying cry: the “free market,” far from being nature’s enemy, is the environment’s savior. Some environmentalists have argued that there is no fundamental …

A political reporter by trade (first with the New York Times, now with the Washington Post), E.J. Dionne has written a book that historians ought to envy. It offers a well-integrated, carefully argued interpretation of a large chunk of our …

PAUL RICOEUR: If we are to discuss the kind of society we live in and what kind of society we wish to promote, then we must agree on a common description. That is why it seems necessary to clarify the …

Traditionally, the British Tories have been known as the stupid party. At key moments in twentieth-century British history, such as Munich, Suez, and the destruction of manufacturing after 1980, they have taken decisions as a government that beggar belief. However, …

In 1984, Washington Post reporter Thomas Edsall authored The New Politics of Inequality, a groundbreaking work that is still the single best study of Reagan-age politics and that established Edsall as one of the nation’s foremost political analysts. The New …

As I write (in July) the administration has proclaimed that the recession is over. One should view such a pronouncement with caution. It’s noteworthy, however, that the administration expects no more than a weak recovery, with a growth rate of …

We speak as Americans of the democratic left. We wish to advance our views regarding the current American situation—without, of course, any pretense to completeness or agreement on every point. Our hope is to stimulate the forces that work for …

During three years of reporting on anti–free-speech tendencies in higher education, I’ve been at more than twenty colleges and universities—from Washington and Lee and Columbia to Mesa State in Colorado and Stanford. On this voyage of initially reverse expectations— with …

Prague is lovely in springtime when a cloud-burst clears the air and sun lights up the bright green slopes above the river and the pastel facades of the Old Town. The narrow streets fill with folk; there is music in …

We print below an excerpt from Benevolence and Betrayal, an extremely rich portrayal of the fate of the Italian Jews during the Second World War. By showing the varying fates of several Italian Jewish families, Alexander Stille, a gifted young writer …