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If you want to insult somebody in Silicon Valley, call them a “utopian”. It suggests a fantastical mind unable or unwilling to come to terms with reality. Utopians, it is assumed by self styled “realists”, are children. They’ve failed to grow up. But according to That Was The Week (https://www.thatwastheweek.com/podcast)…

Heroism might be out of fashion, but that hasn’t deterred Jeremy S. Adams from offering what he calls Lessons in Liberty (https://www.harpercollins.com/products/lessons-in-liberty-jeremy-s-adams?variant=41102020345890) from the lives of ten extraordinary Americans. His list (yes to RBG, but no to JFK, FDR or MLK) will inevitably be controversial, but most of us don’t…

We live in a erotically dissonant and carnally confused age. One the one hand, young people are having a lot less sex (https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-08-03/young-adults-less-sex-gen-z-millennials-generations-parents-grandparents) these days; on the other, they are listening intently to the music of erotically dissonant artists like Billy Eilish and Taylor Swift. I first came across the…

Is history, particularly the last thousand year history of North America, written by the victors? Perhaps. After all, as Kathleen DuVal, the author of NATIVE NATIONS (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/575441/native-nations-by-kathleen-duval/) reminds us, a thousand years ago, back in 1024, North America was inhabited by a rich mosaic of indigenous civilizations that in many…

There will be a British general election on July 4. “The most consequential of our generation” no doubt many politicians will remind the voters. But almost exactly 45 years ago, there really was a profoundly consequential British election. Back in May 1979, Mrs Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative party won power in…

May might be almost finished, but you’ve still got time this Memorial weekend to begin reading one of Bethanne Patrick’s recommended new books. And this month, Patrick’s list is really scintillating - extending from fresh fiction by Claire Messud, Kaliane Bradley and Colm Toibin to new non-fictional books by George…

Few people are better equipped to unravel the riddle of the Indian economy than the former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, Raghuram Rajan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raghuram_Rajan) . As the co-author (with Rohit Lamba) of the just published Breaking the Mold: India’s Untraveled Path to Prosperity (https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691263632/breaking-the-mold) , Rajan lays out…

Along with Ukraine and Gaza, Taiwan represents the third leg of our increasingly wobbly international political system. This week, for example, the Chinese navy put on military drills off the Taiwanese coast designed, supposedly, to test its ability to “seize power (https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/23/asia/china-military-drills-taiwan-second-day-intl-hnk/index.html) ”. So is the world on the brink…