In Can Xue's world the superficial is peeled away to reveal layers of depth and meaning. Her stories observe no conventions of plot or characterization and limn a chaotic, poetic state ordered by the extreme logic of philosophy. Combining elements...

When Jan van Eyck (c. 1390-1441) completed the revolutionary Ghent Altarpiece in 1432, it was unprecedented in European visual culture. His novel visual strategies, including lifelike detail, not only helped make painting the defining medium of Weste...

One of the basic structures of everyday life, money is at its core a communication media. Payment systems – cash, card, app, or Bitcoin – are informational and symbolic tools that integrate us into, or exclude us from, the society that surrounds us....

From 1934 until 1944 Mussolini met Hitler numerous times, and the two developed a relationship that deeply affected both countries. While Germany is generally regarded as the senior power, Christian Goeschel demonstrates just how much history has und...

Social order requires a sovereign: an actor with unlimited, undivided, and unaccountable authority. Or so the classic theory says. But without noticing, we've gutted the theory. Constitutionalism limits state authority. Federalism divides it. The rul...

Few artists have had as much of an impact on American popular culture as Stan Lee. The characters he created – Spider-Man and Iron Man, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four – occupy Hollywood's imagination and production schedules, generate billions at t...

<p>John Sexton argues that over six decades, a "secular dogmatism", impenetrable by dialogue or reason, has come to dominate political discourse in America. Political positions, elevated to the status of doctrinal truths, now simply are &qu...

Tea remains the world's most popular commercial drink today, and at the turn of the twentieth century, it represented the largest export industry of both China and colonial India. In analyzing the global competition between Chinese and Indian tea, An...

In the spring of 1792, President George Washington chose "Mad" Anthony Wayne to defend America from a potentially devastating threat. Native forces had decimated the standing army and Washington needed a champion to open the country stretching from t...

As the slave trade brought Europeans, Africans, and Americans into contact, diseases were traded along with human lives. Manuel Barcia examines the battle waged against disease, where traders fought against loss of profits while enslaved Africans fou...