Thinking Out Aloud

The May 2008 issue of Quadrant included a review essay by me on Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism: the Secret History of the American L...

For years, people have been recommending that I read The Origins of English Individualism by Alan Macfarlane. Well, I finally did and yes,...

[Note: as useful new links turn up, I will update this post.] Even before computers, there were problems with models. A physicist's test...

(I wrote this first part shortly after watching Serenity at the cinema.) Finally got around to seeing Serenity . As seems the general cons...

Richard F. Hamilton’s Who Voted for Hitler is a great example of how historical sociology should be done—open mindedly, based on careful ex...

Adam Tooze’s book The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy is a superb example of how revealing and clarifying...

Over at Scott Sumner's excellent blog , there is a lively debate on monetary policy going on. Monetary economics is not a field I am at...

I often to link to Wikipedia™ in my posts. It is not because I believe in the complete accuracy of Wikipedia, but because I find it a usef...

Michael Burleigh’s The Third Reich: A New History is a wonderful single volume history of Nazi Germany. Burleigh has a profound sense of th...

I finally got around to reading Roland Barthes’ essay Death of the Author . Why do I do this to myself? (The essay is short and I should b...