China's debate over whether to preserve or restore the ruined site of the great imperial palace complex of Yuanming Yuan shows how the Chinese are grappling with their past--and how they imagine their future.
At 100, Leni Riefenstahl--"Hitler's filmmaker"--is indeed her own monument, the diva who won't go away.
Essays
With the debate about globalization focused on economics and politics, Amy Chua raised an alarm in our Autumn 2002 issue about the dangerous escalation of ethnic tensions in many countries caused by the triumph of free-market democracy. Chua later wrote Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (2011).
A century ago, the German thinker Georg Simmel (1858–1918) wrote a brilliant and nuanced book on the tradeoffs of life in a market society. If he had called it Capitalism and Its Discontents, Simmel might be famous today. As it is, The Philosophy of Money sharply illuminates many of the perplexities of capitalist life at the dawn of the 21st century.
Belva Lockwood's campaign for the presidency in 1884 may have been quixotic, but it was historic, too, and as spirited and principled as the candidate herself.
[Introduction to "cluster" of articles on globalization]
The united Germany has lived up neither to its own hopes nor to the fears and expectations of its neighbors.
On one thing the whole world seems to agree: Globalization is homogenizing cultures. At least a lot of countries are acting as if that’s the case.