Nexus

Apparently, these are existential times. During the weeks leading up to last year’s presidential election, The New York Times columnist Charles Blow announced that then-candidate Donald Trump was “America’s existential threat.” A Time magazine opiner, doubling down, declared that Trump was an “existential threat” not just to America, but the rest of the world, too.
More modestly, other voices worried that Trump was an “existential …

Since the publication of my William the Conqueror in the Yale University Press English Monarchs series in October 2016, I have often been asked how long it took me to write the book. In response, I usually say that it has taken 50 years and three years.
Both numbers are inaccurate, but they contain two essential truths. It was around 50 years ago, as a …

To better understand the historical and contemporary context of last week’s drama in New Orleans over de-Confederatizing the city’s public landscape, it might be helpful to shift our gaze from the banks of the Mississippi to the banks of the Tigris.
It may seem strange to compare Confederate statuary erected in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century South to the self-aggrandizing monuments built by former Iraqi …

Is autism cool?
It is in literature, as novels featuring characters on the autism spectrum have become so frequent that they’ve spawned a new genre: “autism lit,” or “aut lit.”
Many of the works put a positive spin on autism. These autistic characters have abilities as well as disabilities; they exist not only as mirrors or catalysts to help others solve their problems, but as active agents …

What can we learn from the Vikings?
I usually write in this space about the economies of the Pacific Rim, and the lessons they hold for policymakers in the United States. But this year, Iceland, with its stunning beauty, is the place to go on vacation, and so I headed to the other side of the planet.
Settled by Vikings in the ninth century, Iceland was …

It’s dark outside and you’re bleary-eyed. You search for your phone and it reads 3:17 a.m. Your mind starts to wander: Why does my boss want to meet with me tomorrow? Did I forget to change the diaper on my baby and will I soon be awoken by crying and a wet bed? Will that fun, flirty date turn into something real?
You then use …

American capitalism has always provided openings for hucksters and outright swindlers.
For centuries, this society has been especially receptive to economic innovation and the strategies of wealth-seeking that so often accompany it. Openness to new technologies and new ways of doing business exacerbates information gaps between sellers and buyers. Those gaps, along with the enthusiasm that comes with new products and investment vehicles, create …

Pundits nearly always attribute Donald Trump’s success to right-wing “populism.” This conclusion is dangerously misleading. Trump’s rise is rooted firmly in his ability to make an old-fashioned word—“rigged”—work in surprisingly fresh ways. Trump correctly diagnosed a feeling among working people that the system was rigged against them, and then leveraged that against his seemingly more sophisticated and better-funded opponents in both parties. That he went into …

The most dramatic development of France’s recent Presidential election was last Friday’s announcement by the Emmanuel Macron campaign that their email and account records had been the target of a massive hacking operation by foreign intelligence operatives. According to reports released in the week leading up to the election, responsibility for the attack lies with the same group that has been implicated in the hacking …

When Los Angeles Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley opened Dodger Stadium on April 10, 1962, his ticket price structure was simple, straightforward, and inexpensive: $3.50 for box seats, $2.50 for reserved seats, and $1.50 for general admission and the outfield pavilions. That was for every home game, regardless of opponent—whether it was the hated San Francisco Giants, with whom the Dodgers were engaged in an epic …