What Is Left of History?

Joan Scott’s On the Judgment of History asks us to imagine the past without the idea of progress. But what gets left out in the process?

David A. Bell

Emma Rothschild’s Family Sagas and Microhistories

Can one tell the story of a country through one family?

David A. Bell

Are We Living in an Age of Strongmen?

A new book by Ruth Ben-Ghiat discusses the past and present challenges posed by authoritarianism, but misses the social and economic conditions in which it arises.

David A. Bell

Adam Gopnik and the Cul-de-sac of 21st-Century Liberalism

In his new book, the New Yorker writer sets out to defend liberalism from its critics, but only ends up revealing its current limitations.

David A. Bell

Where Does Truth Fit into Democracy?

In modern democracies, who gets to determine what counts as truth—an elite of experts or the people as a whole?

David A. Bell

For Emmanuel Macron, How Did Things Get So Bad, So Fast?

The fault lies with both the French president himself and the political and cultural elite that formed him.

David A. Bell

The Afterlives of Charles de Gaulle

A new biography claims his vision was a stabilizing synthesis of France’s monarchical and republican political traditions. But was it?

David A. Bell

Waiting for Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment

The genre that Pinker’s latest book most closely resembles is not 18th-century philosophie but a TED Talk.

David A. Bell

What Causes Some Cities to Become Sites of Revolution?

To understand the American and French revolutions, one must look not simply at their origins in the wider world but also at how particular environments could become crucibles of intense and rapid political change.

David A. Bell

What Can Emmanuel Macron Accomplish as France’s President?