A century ago in Italy, fascism began taking hold in much of Europe. Within a decade, illiberal and authoritarian political parties had moved into the mainstream, most prominently in Germany and Spain as well as Italy, Hungary, Greece, and Austria. Soon, the governments they led propelled the Continent, and eventually…

The editors of the New York Times are apt to regard it as the most influential newspaper in the world, and they’re probably right. Despite all the tumult in the business of disseminating the news since the advent of the World Wide Web, the Times now boasts 9.7 million subscribers…

Chances are, you’re aware that the potato originated in Peru and smallpox in Africa, and that both species crossed the Atlantic shortly after Columbus. You probably know, too, that the potato later became a staple in many European countries and that smallpox decimated the native population of the Americas. However…

History exerts a powerful force on the present. Why else would battles rage over the historical record around the world? In the United States, for example, some insist slavery was the central driver in our history, while others fight back fiercely. And in Russia, where the Putin regime seeks to…

As Scott Shapiro points out in the opening pages of his history of hackers and hacking, “there are at least 15 billion computers for only 8 billion people.” And most of us eight billion seem to live in constant fear that some malicious 15-year-old kid in Belarus is going to…

Michael Lewis has been getting a beating lately by just about everyone who mentions his name in the news. His latest book, Going Infinite, presents a balanced picture of the failed cryptocurrency trader Sam Bankman-Fried. Some imply the book is essentially a whitewash. But just about everyone else except his…

When Christopher Columbus arrived in the New World, an estimated 50 million people lived in the Hemisphere. Somewhere between seven and 18 million of them inhabited North America. By 1890, the population of indigenous people in the United States had been reduced to 248,000. Countless millions had died, as the…

China has suffered through a series of titanic convulsions over the past two centuries. The Opium Wars, when the West seized control of the country. The Taiping Rebellion, which killed thirty million, and the Boxer Rebellion, when the West occupied Beijing. Fall of the Qing Dynasty. Japanese occupation (1937–45). And…

Something strange was afoot. A mere geographer, Jared Diamond, had had the temerity to publish a history book, upending centuries of historians’ speculations about the reasons why civilization first developed in the Middle East. It was 2005, and the book was Guns, Germs, and Steel. History by non-historians? Unthinkable. Five…