“Regime Change” fits into a long tradition of magical thinking, from Anton Mesmer to Theodore Roosevelt and beyond.

David Graeber’s final book uncovers the politics of the high seas.

Denis Diderot loved the things that made others uneasy: ambiguity, change, doubt, and the pleasures of the flesh.

A new book traces the history of an idea—and shows what American liberals have lost.

A new collection of far-sighted essays dissects the pathologies of the present moment.

Why does Steven Pinker insist that human life is on the up?

How the discovery of X-rays and infrared made us doubt the senses.

What do we owe the Enlightenment?

Neither does Greece, to judge by its government