history
The Limits of Literature
As new mass graves are exhumed in Sri Lanka, a journalist who spent years embedded with the Tamil Tigers surveys the works dealing with the country’s civil war and asks whether, between myth and memory, fiction and nonfiction, a narrative can ever be complete.
Taming the Tiger
In India, while tigers symbolized courage for Rajput kingdoms, Mughal emperors like Akbar and Jahangir saw a slain tiger as proof of dominance over nature. The British emulated Mughal tiger hunts to assert imperial control — a symbolism now reversed by the country’s conservationists.
The Quarterly Review: How Did We Get Here?
A long-form documentary tracing the first 25 years of the 21st century, examining the political, technological and cultural forces that shaped the world we now inhabit. “The Quarterly Review” observes world events to answer the question: How did we get here?
What Is Peronism?
Since its emergence in 1945, Peronism has profoundly shaped Argentina’s political landscape. Its power lies in its capacity to turn popular, everyday experience into a political vision. This distinctive trait has allowed it to take very different forms — from progressive to right-leaning — and to influence political movements across Latin America.
A Royal Veto Keeps Abortion Illegal in Monaco
Women from Monaco may cross into neighboring France to obtain an abortion, as they have for decades, but within the borders of their own city-state, the procedure will remain out of reach — prohibited not by medicine, lawmakers or public opinion, but by the monarchy’s religious architecture.
How a House in Mount Lebanon’s Zabbougha Survived Wars, Famine and Loss
A British-Lebanese author recalls his family's experiences of war, famine, coups and migration — and the enduring mountain home that witnessed it all.
The Unruly History That Weighs on the New Syria
The challenges facing Syria today are connected to three previous beginnings: the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I, independence in 1946 after World War II and the fall of European colonial empires, and the birth of Hafez al-Assad’s regime in 1970.