Keen On America

The Israeli art restorer and spy Gabriel Allon is as real as George Smiley or Hercule Poirot. He even has his own Wikipedia page. The CNN special correspondent Jamie Gangel describes herself on X as a friend of Gabriel Allon before she gets around to mentioning her husband, the best-selling thriller writer Daniel Silva who, of course, is the creator of Allon. As with all successful literary inventions, of course, Silva is as much Allon as Allon is Silva. Silva-Allon. Amongst the most lucrative p

The leftist cultural critic David Masciotra isn’t happy with the state of America in the first half of 2026. His dislike of the MAGA crowd goes without saying. But his anger at the state of progressive politics is more noteworthy. So far, he says, 2026 has been — to borrow from Antonio Gramsci — a time for monsters both on the left and right. With its “Epstein class” vocabulary, knee-jerk Luddism and AIPAC litmus tests, the left, Masciotra argues, is mimicking MAGA in its paranoid bigotry.The

Will 2026 be one of those grand historical years that change the world — like 1917, 1789 or 1968? Not according to Keith Teare, publisher of That Was The Week newsletter and co-host of our weekly tech roundup. For Keith, the best historical analogy is 1905, the year of the first abortive Russian revolution. The year that didn’t change the world.Keith’s latest tech newsletter asks “What Time Is It?” His answer is that we have “multiple clocks” — micro and macro, short, medium, and long term to

“Someone said, oh, you look like Steve Bannon, and I love you for that… No, I just shaved my hair and lost some pounds.” — Kaya Genç on Trumpism’s global fanbaseThe NATO circus rumbled into the Turkish capital of Ankara this week resembling more of a gun show than an alliance summit. Ringmaster Donald J. Trump promised Recep Tayyip Erdoğan the F-35s and lifted the very sanctions that Trump himself had imposed. Erdogan handed out pistols to the assembled leaders — with poor old Keir Starmer (no

“A place that doesn’t have great philosophers will not have great technologists either.” — Mehran Gul on Europe’s inexplicable underperformanceThe digital revolution, we were promised, would mean the end of geography. From Beijing to Birmingham to Berlin to Barcelona, anyone could invent anything anywhere, and so the geography of innovation would no longer matter. But that’s not the way it has worked out. At least according to the Geneva-based innovation geographer Mehran Gul.Gul’s acclaimed

“I crack the tab open, and I feel the cold metal… I hear the tink and give of the aluminum. And maybe when I’m done, I crush it into a small patty.” — Ian Bogost on the everyday enchantment of a Diet Coke canDon’t sweat the small stuff is one of the most persistent (and annoying) mantras of the self-help industry. But the counter-intuitive Atlantic columnist Ian Bogost advises the opposite. In his new book, The Small Stuff, Bogost suggests that gratification lies in our appreciation of small s