Searching for Home in Hmong American Writing
Two significant poetry anthologies deterritorialize home, showing that for Hmong Americans, home can be a process of moving and running despite living in a place.
Reporting Atrocity—Or Not—In Postwar Britain
Or, what metropolitan Britons could know about the colonies.
Nice Guy Spinoza Finishes…First?
The Dutch Jewish philosopher Spinoza died in 1677, which is when the battle to define his life—and work—began.
Birth of the Corporate Person
The defining of corporations as legal “persons” entitled to Fourteenth Amendment rights got a leg up from the fight over a California anti-Chinese immigrant law.
Svalbard: Seeds of Hope
The Arctic archipelago is a bellwether for global climate change, but it also offers a safety net in a planetary disaster scenario.
Dragon Swallows the Sun: Predicting Eclipses in China
China had a long history of astronomy before the arrival of Europeans, but the politics of absolute rule led to the eventual embrace of Western methods.
Mbarak Mombée: An African Explorer Robbed of His Name
Kidnapped and sold into slavery, Mbarak Mombée was critical to the success of the most celebrated nineteenth-century European expeditions in Africa.
The Most Dangerous Woman in the World
“Chicago May” was a classic swindler who conned her way around the world in the early twentieth century. She was also a sign of hard times.
A Cold War Baby: Happy Birthday, Alvin!
The submersible Alvin is sixty years old this year. Numerous overhauls and upgrades have kept the craft going down (and coming back up!).
The Annotated Oppenheimer
Celebrated and damned as the “father of the atomic bomb,” theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer lived a complicated scientific and political life.