History Archives - Page 11 of 13

History

Lies Are Back in Power

The history and troublesome present of fascist ideology

April 16, 2020 • by Federico Finchelstein

Today we’re seeing an emergent wave of new right-wing populist leaders throughout the world. And much like fascist leaders of the past, a great deal of their political power is derived from questioning reality; endorsing myth, rage, and paranoia; and promoting lies. In my new book, A Brief History of Fascist ...

History

The Coronavirus Time Warp

Reading medieval literature in the midst of a pandemic

April 10, 2020 • by Eric Weiskott

We are in a fourteenth-century time warp, living through another pandemic originating in Asia and laying waste to Europe. Although this plague is less deadly than the Black Death, it has globalization on its side. The Black Death took ten years to reach Europe; coronavirus took two months. The Black Death ...

Climate & Ecology

Enduring the Chernobyl Disaster

An interview with Kate Brown

April 7, 2020 • by Damian Roos and Kate Brown

Damien Roos [DR]: This is your second book centered on the topic of nuclear energy. Did you set out with a suspicion that the impact of the Chernobyl disaster had been underreported? Kate Brown [KB]: I did, yes. In some ways, this book is a sequel to this first book I ...

History

COVID-19: When History Has No Lessons

Facing a crisis without precedent

April 6, 2020 • by Gaëtan Thomas and Guillaume Lachenal

“With such a timely specialization, why aren’t you on CNN right now?,” asked a well-meaning individual at a gathering over drinks a few weeks ago, as the conversation inevitably turned to the coronavirus, which still seemed like a far away phenomenon. “What does the historian of medicine think of all ...

History

Automation with a Socialist Face

Scientific-Technical Revolution in Radovan Richta’s Civilization at the Crossroads

April 2, 2020 • by Lukáš Likavčan and Benjamin Peters

What can we learn from a forgotten case study of civilizational science from a country that no longer exists? When philosopher Radovan Richta published Civilization at the Crossroads in 1966, it was a popular sensation in Czechoslovakia, and was translated into eleven languages over the next decade. This collective work, ...

History

Our Man: the Life and Times of Diplomat Richard Holbrooke

An interview with biographer George Packer about war and humanity in the foreign service

March 31, 2020 • by George Packer and Charlotte Slivka

Charlotte Slivka [CS]: Thank you, George, for agreeing to do this interview, I really appreciate it and the whole community does especially in the face of the NBCC awards ceremony being postponed due to COVID-19. George Packer [GP]: That was a real downer but I’m happy to do it. Are you ...

Our Man: the Life and Times of Diplomat Richard Holbrooke

History

Female Husbands

A Trans History

March 31, 2020 • by Jen Manion

Female husband as a descriptive category lost its meaning in public discourse just as it proliferated in the U.S. from roughly 1878 to 1906. It had already largely fallen out of use in the U.K. Female husbands -- once defined by manhood and masculinity -- were quietly and subtly subsumed ...

Feminism

Leading the Resistance Into Battle

An Interview With Sonia Purnell

March 24, 2020 • by Sonia Purnell and Taylor Sue Leonhardt

The following interview with Sonia Purnell, a 2020 finalist in biography, is part of a series of NBCC interviews conducted by New School creative writing students. In her biography, A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II, Sonia Purnell captures the ...

History

Yes, COVID-19 Is an Emergency: It’s Also a Paradigm Shift

This new challenge must include a demand for justice

March 24, 2020 • by Ian Zuckerman

I believe the answer is yes, in the immediate sense of what must be done. But it’s too early to tell, in the longer sense of whether our aim must be to return to the status quo ante, or undergo more permanent transformations. Either way, the legitimate, temporary suspension of ...

Yes, COVID-19 Is an Emergency: It’s Also a Paradigm Shift

Gender

Looking for the Original “Welfare Queen”

An Interview With Josh Levin

March 17, 2020 • by Josh Levin and Lauren Browne

The following interview, with Josh Levin the 2020 award winner for biography, is part of a series of NBCC interviews conducted by New School creative writing students. In his critically acclaimed book The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth, Josh Levin, national editor at Slate, introduces us to Linda Taylor, ...

Looking for the Original “Welfare Queen”

History

Plague in the Age of Twitter

March 17, 2020 • by Eileen Sperry

COVID-19 has quickly become the outbreak of the digital era. SARS and H1N1 played out on the evening news, but this -- this is happening in real time, in piecemeal, in limited character counts. While epidemics have come and gone before, it feels unprecedented, at least in my lifetime as a 30-something, to ...

Democracy

Hong Kong on the Brink

March 3, 2020 • by Jeffrey Wasserstrom

The irony of the UK, one of the world's great democracies, belatedly handing over a colonized people from one distant ruler to another, in Beijing, was not lost on the people living nearly 2,000km south of China's capital. It is hard to say how genuine Margaret Thatcher's claimed optimism at the ...