Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
Lincoln said that elections in America were like “ ‘big boils’—they caused a great deal of pain before they came to a head, but after the trouble was over the body was in better health than before.”
Erik Larson • The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War
A key argument in Lincoln’s case against slavery was that it supported an aristocracy determined to undermine America’s promise that “the humblest man [has] an equal chance to get rich with everyone else.”
Charles R. Morris • The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy

Look anywhere where there is a preponderance of Black achievement, and graduates of Morehouse and Spelman are disproportionately represented in that number. Unsurprisingly, those campuses that produce the Black leadership class in this country are also sites of the growing pains of Black America, places where sexuality, gender, and class are played
... See moreImani Perry • South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation
valedictory
Neal Stephenson • Seveneves: A Novel
There’s a historical event that haunts and shames the region. And shows the machine of power. The story is about a boy named George. George was owned by Lilburn Lewis, the nephew of Thomas Jefferson, in the Kentucky mountains. In 1812, a cherished water pitcher slipped from the fifteen-year-old George’s hands, and it shattered. In a drunken rage, L
... See moreImani Perry • South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation
Any election can be the last, or at least the last in the lifetime of the person casting the vote.
Timothy Snyder • On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
As someone who had spent several years on American campuses, all of these ideas rang familiar to me. They echoed the sixties’ revulsion to military strength, the romance with developing societies, and the questioning of American primacy. Regarding the Middle East, in particular, one could discern the reverberations of Edward Said’s Orientalism, whi
... See moreMichael B. Oren • Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide
This is so because the case against Israel currently being made on university campuses, in the media, and throughout the world relies on willful distortions of the historical record, beginning with the first arrival of Europeans in Palestine near the end of the nineteenth century and continuing throughout the U.N. partition, the establishment of th
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