1587 is absolutely one of the great books on Chinese history. It is a series of vignettes, each a chapter centered on the life of a single notable individual in a single year during the Ming dynasty’s decline. Actually kind of gives ATLA's "Tales of Ba Sing Se" vibe

This is easily one of the top 10 non-fiction books of the decade. The Epilogue presents the exciting potential of post-secular scholarship in which academia, returning to its roots, takes the miraculous seriously.

I like this map because it is old enough to have France still called فرانچه/Françe, German States نمچه/Nemçe, USA انکلیز جمهوری/İngiliz Cumhûru (English Republic) and Australia نو حلانده/Nev Hollanda (New Holland

Childhood drawing by Lenin newleftreview.org/issues/ii140/a…

‼️ Read an adapted excerpt from EXTRACTION: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism in The New York Review of Books ‼️ Extraction is officially published TOMORROW (9/23) 👀 nybooks.com/online/2025/09…

in 2016, a film student exploring a rural moldovan village found over 4,000 soviet-era photographs in the attic of an abandoned house. they were all taken by zaharia cusnir in the 1950s-60s, an unknown alcoholic who died forgotten. he captured the life of an entire community:

On vit depuis quelques mois une explosion complète des normes encadrant les relations civilo-militaires aux Etats-Unis. Et les hauts gradés américains, nourris au modèle huntingtonien du “best military advice” sont pris comme des lapins dans les phares face à un acteur qui 1/

From the Economist's liberalism primer:

Allen: the Industrial Revolution was the result of Britain’s uniquely high wages and cheap coal, which made labor-saving innovations economically worthwhile. Mokyr:

Once again the Econ Nobel is announced just in time for the week in Devika Dutt & my module where we study the dev of capitalism. And once again it confirms to students that prevailing understandings of growth in Econ are thoroughly Eurocentric (esp Mokyr in most blatant way)!

🚨600 people (!!) are attending our panel at 1 pm ET TODAY on the war economy, the climate impacts of war, and geopolitics of the energy transition. Featuring yours truly & the brilliant Laleh Khalili 🇵🇸 Ilias Alami Stephen Semler Join us to launch the new think tank Transition Security Project

The wildest abstract I've read in awhile

When it comes to the functionalist/intentionalist debate about the origins of the Holocaust, where do you guys land?

Eric Hobsbawm on Tony Judt’s, “Postwar”: “I can assure you from personal experience that large works of historical synthesis based on secondary reading and the observation of contemporary history can only be written in maturity.”

After years in archives, my book The Interpreters: British Internationalism and Empire in Southeastern Europe, 1870–1930 is out with Manchester University Press! It traces how Britain grappled with national questions from the Balkans to Ireland. 🔗 manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526160133/

If you speak Dutch, here is a long interview of me in NRC about European security nrc.nl/nieuws/2025/11…

One of the great things about Ireland is that the countries leading sewage maintenance company has two logos for its subsidiaries and they are top tier

This is no doubt minor, but it is telling that Kallas acknowledges China's contribution to winning WW2 but not the USSR's. EU memory politics apparently correlates quite closely with diplomacy.