I picked this book up in a charity shop in the UK, and having read a couple of his history books, and knowing of his work with the so-called “grand strategy“ undergraduate program at Yale University, I was interested to see what he would do here. But it was not good.

There’s a lot here to sniff at, legitimately or no. First of all, he relies on something called dictionary.com for his word definitions. This reminds me of...

I’ve yammered on about demographics a lot on this blog, but for reasons I think are important.  It turns out that we don’t think about demographics much, imagining that the future will be a lot like the past.  But that is not necessarily true.  

First, two 

There's nothing on TV you want to watch tonight.  Trust me.  Instead, read some stuff.

A useful collection of data showing, pretty powerfully I think, the way that economic inequality in the US is (a) anomalous across other “developed” nations, and (b) correlated with...

As this Google N-gram seems to suggest, the popularity of the word "neoliberalism" seems to have crested in 2016, and declined a little bit in the past several years--perhaps with the rise of the popularity of words like "fascism" and phrases like "white supremacy" to...

They're "start of the week" links, but they're not the weakest links, for sure.*  Far from it: Some cool ones in here -- the podcast especially, I can't recommend it enough:

So I've praised the podcast Talking Politics a number of times, but I wanted to say they've had a series of great episodes lately.  They had one about being an English football fan, and being the fan of one team over...

Getting busy around here, but I still have time to share all my opinions with you.

The problem of “Neoliberalism” begins in carefully naming it, and then not over-applying it.  This piece helpfully focuses on “private equity”—rich investors—and the damage they do to the economy and our society.  

You've surely burned through my previous links, and are hungry for more!  Well, here they are.

Fun little interview with Daniel Mendelsohn on how he’s holding up in the pandemic.  

Because you deserve a mellow weekend.  Reading what I tell you to read.  Clear eyes, full brains, can't lose:

This is fascinating.  Has the pandemic revealed a problematic economic idolatry on the part of the medical community? For decades, consultants had taught...

Thursdays are always long; here are some links to make this one go more quickly.  Maybe.

Moby-Dick as a warning that we have failed to heed:

Nearly two centuries ago, Melville showed us how easy it is to welcome as our own the touches of others, their equivalent colors, customs and beliefs; their journeys, their...

It's August 12th, again.  Three years ago this evening, I returned to my house, an empty house, my family having left the day before for a long-planned trip to the other side of the continent, and it was evening, and I was very, very tired.  I had stopped at the store, and I made myself some hamburger, mushroom soup, and rice--an old family comfort food--but it tasted strange, bad, almost stale, as if the past itself could offer no consolations.  Maybe it couldn't.  I had been nowhere near any danger that day, not at least consciously, nor had I been at any...