“Venality, slavery, and gangsterism”: Soviet Perceptions of Baseball’s Golden Age

Maybe it’s just that the Twins are off to a terrible start, but I was especially tickled to come across this in Alan Ball’s new Liberty’s Tears: Soviet Portraits of the “American Way of Life” During the Cold War: Permeated with the spirit of venality, slavery, and gangsterism, contemporary American baseball maims hundreds of young lives and serves … More “Venality, slavery, and gangsterism”: Soviet Perceptions of Baseball’s Golden Age

The Week Is Dead, Long Live the Week!

Over at Slate writer Ben Schreckinger argues that the seven-day week has outlived its usefulness: The pattern of living on a seven-day cycle—with one or two of those days set aside for rest—is a relative novelty. Only in the past few centuries, with Western colonization of most of the world, have the majority of human societies adopted it. … More The Week Is Dead, Long Live the Week!

Starvation as a Weapon

Today’s must-read article comes from Anne Applebaum, pointing to a perhaps underreported dimension of the crisis in Syria: mass starvation brought about by the policies of Bashar al-Assad. While the international community is haggling over [Assad’s] chemical weapons, the stuff of modern nightmares, he is following the example of his medieval and his 20th-century predecessors and … More Starvation as a Weapon

The Second World War Before Pearl Harbor: Poland, 1939

I started this series — introducing American readers to the Second World War as it was fought years before the United States joined the conflict — with Japan’s 1937 offensive against China. Let’s continue with an invasion that’s probably more familiar to most Americans and Europeans: Having already remilitarized the Rhineland (March 1936), absorbed Austria … More The Second World War Before Pearl Harbor: Poland, 1939