1. What Ever Happened to the Russian Revolution?
“Russia is both a great, glorious country and an ongoing disaster.” Smithsonian journalists travel through Vladimir Putin’s Russia to measure the aftershocks of the political explosion that rocked the world a century ago.
2. On the Political Uses of Evil
The trouble with contemporary political uses of evil isn’t the concept itself, but rather the intentional vagueness thrust upon it by an era without any well-defined theory of the good.”
3. Amy Tan on Writing and the Secrets of Her Past
“Whether it is in reaction to or in harmony with the beliefs we grew up with, we are in part a reflection of those beliefs.”
4. Men: Women Spoke Up. How Will We Respond?
“It is often said, ‘No problem can be solved by the same consciousness that caused it.’ This means that men cannot solve this problem we created. This is a problem that will only be resolved when more women are invited to the table to make decisions and lead in our governments, our board rooms, our organizations, our families, and our places of worship.”
5. For Dignity and Development, East Africa Curbs Used Clothes Imports
“In Kenya, they are called the ‘clothes of dead white people.’ In Mozambique, they are the ‘clothing of calamity.’ They are nicknames for the unwanted, used clothing from the West that so often ends up in Africa.”
6. A History of Twitter, From Beginning to End
“That’s Twitter’s original sin. Like Oppenheimer, Twitter was so obsessed with splitting the atom they never stopped to think what we’d do with it.”
7. Rex Tillerson and the Unraveling of the State Department
With an isolated leader, a demoralized diplomatic corps and a president dismantling international relations one tweet at a time, American foreign policy is adrift in the world.
8. The Death of a Crusading Journalist Rocks Malta
“The last words Ms. Caruana Galizia wrote on the blog where she routinely excoriated Malta’s elite for its corruption, negligence, and incompetence were: ‘There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate.’”
9. How American Politics Became So Exhausting
“I think the primary moral fault of the left is a kind of smug contemptuousness toward people who don’t agree. And I think that’s a bad fault. But the primary fault of the right at this moment in America is wrath. I worry about the consequences of wrath more than I worry about the consequences of contemptuous smugness.” Writer and Baylor professor Alan Jacobs talks to The Atlantic about his new book, How to Think.
10. What If the Right-Wing Media Wins?
Conservative critics of the press want more than just a louder voice. They want The New York Times and The Washington Post to go away.
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