Mourning in America
Timeless stories from our 175-year archive handpicked to add context to the news of the day.
Executive Disorder
[ N O V E M B E R • 2 0 2 0 ]
“A president could ‘seize property and commodities, seize control of transport and communications, organize and control the means of production, assign military forces abroad, and restrict travel’—a state of affairs that the committee reasonably described as ‘dangerous.’”
Read “The Enemies Briefcase” by Andrew Cockburn
[ J A N U A R Y • 2 0 0 7 ]
“The U.S. legislature and judiciary appear to be incapable of restraining the president and therefore restraining imperial ambition.”
Read “Republic or Empire” by Chalmers A. Johnson
[ N O V E M B E R • 1 9 8 5 ]
“The newly elected Reagan Administration promised to ‘hit the ground running’ and it does—like a company of commandos fanning out in a hostile country that just happens to be its own.”
Read “Liberty Under Siege” by Walter Karp
Out of Control
[ S E P T E M B E R • 1 9 5 6 ]
“Millions of Americans were stunned and indignant. Why didn’t the pilots see each other? they asked. Why were the planes allowed to fly so close together? Why didn’t they carry radar? Who was to blame?”
Read “Russian Roulette on Our Airways” by Ernest Conine
[ J U L Y • 1 9 4 6 ]
“The immense amount of flying during the war has produced just about every type of freak accident imaginable, and there have been many aerial collisions, several involving airliners. Most of them have occurred in clear air through plain carelessness.”
Read “Is the Air Full?” by Wolfgang Langewiesche
[ J A N U A R Y • 1 9 6 1 ]
“Despite all the automated controls that we have developed, we must still rely very heavily on the human eye as an essential defense against collisions.”
Read “The Pressures Against Air Safety” by Elwood R. Quesada
The Last Days of Davos
[ F E B R U A R Y • 2 0 2 5 ]
In the current issue, Caitlín Doherty on the World Economic Forum: “On display everywhere was a peculiarly confounding form of circular reasoning that ran from the top of the WEF hierarchy to the bottom-end sites of the Promenade: the best way to change the world is to create a valuable business; to be valuable, a business must change the world.”
Read “At the Summit” by Caitlín Doherty
[ M A Y • 1 9 9 8 ]
“If the wealth of nations came and went at the pleasure of the ‘free market’ (in many ways great and glorious but as mindless as a ball bearing), then what became of the dream of reason, and what happened to the fond belief that it was the corporate magi gathered in solemn assembly at Davos who controlled the engine of the global economy and not the other way around?”
Read “Magic Mountain” by Lewis H. Lapham
[ J U N E • 2 0 0 9 ]
“Everyone could agree that when the price of your daily bread topped your daily salary, all the agricultural methodology in the world would not make a difference. Money, on the other hand, could help. But how much money? And what, precisely, should we do with it?”
Read “Let Them Eat Cash” by Frederick Kaufman
[ J U N E • 2 0 2 4 ]
“The final hours of the conference were a desultory exchange of business cards and exhortation to keep up one’s chin. Lost on the managers and technicians at Munich was that security is not the same thing as peace.”
Read “Masters of War” by Thomas Meaney
DeepSeek and Ye Shall Find?
[ J U L Y • 2 0 2 2 ]
“Are we doomed to witness the return of great power rivalry, in which the United States and China vie for influence? Or will the decline of U.S. power produce novel forms of international collaboration?”
Read “Empire Burlesque” by Daniel Bessner
[ F E B R U A R Y • 2 0 1 9 ]
“There is a growing perception in China and beyond that the real goal of the Trump Administration is not just to eliminate these unfair trade practices but to undermine or thwart China’s long-term plan to become a technological leader in its own right.”
Read “What China Threat?” by Kishore Mahbubani
[ J U L Y • 2 0 2 4 ]
“The artificial-intelligence apocalypse is a new fear that keeps many up at night, a terror born of great advances that seem to suggest that, if we are not very careful, we may—with our own hands—bring forth a future where humanity has no place.”
Read “The Gods of Logic” by Benjamín Labatut
Tell me why you want him to redo Odysseus. Another Odysseus. Why?