Social history
Progress is destroying the planet: the rants of a self-hating American
Poverty is increasing and freedom contracting, says Samuel Miller McDonald – and exploitative white Americans, from Abraham Lincoln onwards, are largely to blame
The insoluble link between government and crime
Taxes and prohibition invariably lead to evasion, racketeering and corruption in an endless capitalist cycle, says Mark Galeotti
What was millennial girl power really about?
In the 1990s and early 2000s, ‘empowerment’ was a girl’s watchword. But she was empowered primarily to be pleasing to men and, above all, never grow up
The rose-tinted view of female friendship shatters
Are women’s relationships with each other today more brittle and less supportive than in the past?
Is nothing private anymore?
We all need a place away from public view – but we should also remind ourselves why our privacy has been so invaded
The fragility of the modern city reflects humanity’s vulnerability
The more complex the infrastructure, the more liable it is to break down – as was recently apparent in the blackout that brought Madrid and Lisbon to a standstill in April
Why shamanism shouldn’t be dismissed as superstitious savagery
Our need for belief in the supernatural gave rise to a demand for ‘mystical intermediaries’, or shamans, forging man’s earliest religion from which all others developed, argues Manvir Singh
The magic of early radio days
Beaty Rubens takes us inside the British home 100 years ago as the glamorous new device becomes central to family life
Nostalgia for the bustling high street is misplaced
Annie Gray is refreshingly unsentimental about the days when cooking for the family involved time-consuming visits to the butcher, the greengrocer and baker
Playing Monopoly is not such a trivial pursuit
Games are politics you can touch, says Tim Clare, and a well-designed boardgame can provide a critical experience of society’s systems
The demonising of homosexuals in post-war Britain
The tabloids in particular stirred up fear and distrust with lurid stories of orgies, prostitution, drug-taking, political corruption, sinister concealment and susceptibility to blackmail
Potato crisps and the British character
Pickled fish. Lemon tea. Cucumber. Doner kebab. Stewed beef noodles. Salted egg. Soft shell crab. Coney island mustard. Smoked gouda.…
Falsifying history can only increase racial tension
Frank Furedi argues that historic memory is the key to the identity of any coherent community, and that attacking it undermines a population’s solidarity
How cartomania captivated even Queen Victoria
The craze for photographic cartes de visite that swept Victorian Britain was further boosted by the Queen’s own enthusiasm for the format
The important business of idle loafing
Alain Corbin describes how rest, once seen as a prelude to eternal life, began to assume a therapeutic quality in the 19th century, as a guard against burnout and a cure for TB
Are we all becoming hermits now?
A new anthropological type is emerging, says Pascal Bruckner – the shrivelled, hyperconnected being who no longer needs others or the outside world
Scrawled outpourings of love and defiance
Examples of 18th-century graffiti range from romantic rhymes scratched on windowpanes to the haunting marks of political prisoners incised on dungeon walls
Why today’s youth is so anxious and judgmental
In a well-evidenced diatribe, Jonathan Haidt accuses the creators of smartphone culture of rewiring childhood and changing human development on an unimaginable scale
How much would your family stump up for your ransom?
Researching The Price of Life, Jenny Kleeman interviews Stephen Collet, who describes haggling for a year with the Somali pirates who kidnapped his sister in October 2009
The tyranny of 1970s self-help gurus
Clients pursuing ’true self’ were expected to wear identical clothes, shave their heads, self-flagellate and be ‘given hell’, while paying through the nose for it
All work and no play is dulling our senses
Ancient Greek philosophers reckoned that life was all about free time, but 16th-century puritanism dealt a blow to the old festive culture from which we’ve never fully recovered
Why are the Japanese so obsessed with the cute?
Some see it as a way of appearing harmless after the second world war – but an infantile delight in frolicking animals dates back to at least the 12th century
Always carry a little book with you, and preserve it with great care, said Leonardo da Vinci
Despite the digitisation of everything, many of us still choose to jot down thoughts and sketches on paper, and would be bereft without a notebook to hand
‘The truth will make us free’: students on the march in post-war Europe
The radical Rudi Dutschke in 1960s Berlin and the angry Johnny Rotten in 1970s London are just two of the charismatic figures in this history of youth activism
The lives of others
Ingrid Swenson spent ten years retrieving discarded shopping lists at a London Waitrose, and the result is a rare glimpse into entire, private worlds
