Michael A. Blaakman is Assistant Professor of History at Princeton University. This interview is based on his new book, Speculation Nation: Land Mania in the Revolutionary American Republic (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023). JF: What led you to write Speculation...
Check out Matt McManus‘s review of Sohrab Ahmari’s Tryanny , Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty–and What to Do About It at Jacobin. As I noted in an earlier post, socialists really like this book despite Ahmari’s social conservatism....
Some of you may know the name Sohrab Ahmari from his 2019 argument with David French over the meaning of conservatism. Since that debate, Amari has co-founded Compact, a journal critical of liberalism of both the left and the right...
This week Current ran two great pieces on the Barbie movie. Check out Christina Bieber Lake’s “Barbie. . . and Ken” and Beatruce Scudeler’s “Material Girls.” Over at Current Affairs, Nathan Robinson interprets the movie through the lens of consumer...
Check out David Leonardt’s interesting piece at The New York Times: The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board has spent the last few months trying to boost Gov. Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign. It has called his legislative record “as impressive as...
What happens when Gucci uses a book by philosopher Judith Butler to sell high-priced wallets? Here is Umut Özkırımlı at The Critic: Books as objects of attraction? Is that what brought Butler and Gucci together? I don’t mean the commodification...
Eugene McCarraher, the author of The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity, does not think so. He discusses his 2019 book with Peter Mommsen at the Plough podcast: Listen here. A taste of the transcript: Capitalism,...
As the populist candidates for president attack woke corporations, Pence is trying to shore-up his lane as the Ronald Reagan candidate. Today he turned to the libertarian Reason magazine to defend free markets. Here is a taste of his piece...
Benjamin Jenkins is Associate Professor of History and University Archivist at the University of La Verne. This interview is based on his new book, Octopus’s Garden: How Railroads and Citrus Transformed Southern California (University Press of Kansas, 2023). JF: What...
Bart Elmore is Professor of Environmental History at The Ohio State University. This interview is based on his new book, Country Capitalism: How Corporations from the American South Remade Our Economy and the Planet (University of North Carolina Press, 2023)....
Here is the editorial board of The Washington Post: When the Saudi-backed LIV Golf was trying, early last year, to attract the PGA Tour’s top players, the legacy organization implied it would never align itself with a kingdom trying to...
Here is Claire Giangravé at Religion News Service: Pope Francis condemned “consumerist greed” and “selfish hearts” as responsible for the climate crisis in his yearly message for World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, which occurs on Sept....
Here is The George Washington University historian Trevor Jackson at The Baffler: EVERYONE RECALLS THE SHORTAGESÂ of toilet paper and pasta, but the early period of the pandemic was also a time of gluts. With restaurants and school cafeterias shuttered, farmers...
Sharon Ann Murphy is Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History and Classics at Providence College. This interview is based on her new book, Banking on Slavery: Financing Southern Expansion in the Antebellum United States (University of Chicago...
Joseph Giacomelli is Assistant Professor of Environmental History at Duke Kunshan University. This interview is based on his new book, Uncertain Climes: Debating Climate Change in Gilded Age America (University of Chicago Press, 2023). JF: What led you to write...
Over at Current Affairs, Nathan Robinson interviews Johann Hari, author of Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention. Robinson writes: Johann Hari has written multiple bestselling nonfiction books including Chasing the Scream, Lost Connections, and most recently Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention. All...
I finally finished the Harper’s forum, “Is Liberalism Worth Saving?” The forum featured Patrick Deneen, Francis Fukuyama, Deirdre McCloskey, and Cornel West. Here are a few things I highlighted: Deneen on populism: The other form of populism that liberalism fears...
In July, 2022, the editors of the Bruce Springsteen fan magazine Backstreets responded to outrageously high ticket prices for Springsteen’s current tour. If you aren’t familiar with this story, get up to speed here and here. For the first time...
Thomas A. Castillo is Associate Professor of History at Coastal Carolina University. This interview is based on his book, Working in the Magic City: Moral Economy in Early Twentieth-Century Miami (University of Illinois Press, 2022). JF: What led you to...
Cultural critic George Scialabba wonders what we might ask our nineteenth-century ancestors. Perhaps we might ask them why they believed it was legitimate for one person to own another? Or we might ask, “Why did women seem to you incapable...
