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Recent History
An All Too Brief History of the Modern Las Vegas
I’ve been to New York and I’ve been to Hollywood. The former might have the world’s most distinctive skyline and the latter might have all the glitz and glamour of the movie industry, even if you have to be an actual movie star to…
Obama’s Nominee and the Oklahoma City Bombing
The first thing President Barack Obama mentioned in his nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court was his role in the Oklahoma City bombing. It was, Garland said, "the most important thing I have ever done in my life."
According…
Documentary Review | Atlantic – A Crossing Where the Ordinary Worker Gets Swamped
The triumph of capitalism takes many forms, and as Risteard O Domhnaill's new documentary demonstrates, the ruination of traditional coastal communities is one of them. His story is told by examining three villages bordering the north…
Space | The Final Frontier for Historians
What’s a completely modern, contemporary, theme in history?
Try to think of a suitable answer: Politics? No. The Greeks. Technology? Well, some say that papyrus was a technology. Gender? Joan of Arc and Elizabeth 1 set those contemporary…
When Elvis Met Nixon
The movie Elvis & Nixon will be released next month. Directed by Liza Johnson, it tells the story behind the most requested photo from the US National Archives, of the meeting between Elvis Presley and President Richard Nixon on…
How Premiership football fulfils Karl Marx’s prophecies
In The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx argued that capitalism’s greatest achievement was the systematic destruction of tradition. Money or “the icy waters of egotistical calculation” will ultimately triumph over any traditional institution…
Bread, Dignity and Freedom: the Tahrir Square rising, five years on
January 25 marks the fifth anniversary of the mass uprisings in Egypt, most famously in Tahrir Square in central Cairo, which led to a regime change.
The event, following on the heels of the “Jasmine Revolution” in Tunisia, signalled the…