Essays
The worst of times
I was always a fan of 20th-century guidebooks, the vast Baedeker series among my favorites. This love began in my [...]
A marked man
After decades of political chess, Russia’ s autocratic Vladimir Putin has turned to quick-fix checkers, and it will likely end up costing him dearly, writes contributor David Deropolous.
The Afghan stain
Every so often, it’s the devil’s advocate’s chore to step into the front and center. Today that role falls to [...]
Call him Cassandra
I recently participated in a panel discussion held in Stockholm that purported to address two only vaguely related subjects, historical [...]
Fire in the hold
Imagine a forest fire of unknown origin in which winds and climate abet the flames and the earth is scorched [...]
REM Twitter
My increasingly scary 10-year-old Rebecca has officially entered her "Elon Musk" phase. It was probably there all along, just waiting [...]
Mirror shots
When I finally reached a deal with my daughter to get an iPhone, or some derivation of it (she gave [...]
Enough with the corpses!
I sometimes take a break to watch old episodes of the crime show "CSI", which started out focusing on a [...]
Unprecedented! Historic! Rebecca!
As some of you may know by now, my 10-year-old daughter takes precocious to another level. She especially loves watching [...]
Oh, Wiki, spare us
My 10-year-old daughter Rebecca has become a devotee of Wikipedia. She's renamed her tablet Wiki and spends hours scrolling through [...]
War on Death, trending
Like many people on our delightfully benighted planet I've had no choice but to have COVID on my mind. Waiting [...]
My daughter the antibody
As a single father to a 10-year-old girl I've learned it’s a really smart thing to find a secret place [...]