I’ve written a review of Charles King’s Gods of the Upper Air for The New Republic, examining the ways that the idea of “cultural relativism” has been used and abused in public culture […]
A review of Sabers and Utopias, an essay collection by Mario Vargas Llosa, in The Nation. I must say I’m proud of this lede (and the conclusion to the piece […]
I have reviewed Daniel Immerwahr’s How to Hide an Empire for The New Republic. Good book, surprising controversy, even-more-surprising quantity of guano islands. In February 2003, Al Jazeera broadcast an interview with Donald […]
I have a review of Aldo Marchesi’s Latin America’s Radical Left up at h-net; it’s open access, like all h-net content, so just click over.
An edited version of this will be in the Journal of Latin American Studies later, but I’m allowed to post pre-print text here. Richard Cándida Smith, Improvised Continent: Pan-Americanism and […]
In The New Republic, I have a review of Odd Arne Westad’s “The Cold War: A World History.” (Wonderful illustration by Guy Billout.) This is an important book, and it’s a […]
On one possible 100th anniversary of the October Revolution, I wrote a review of two books about Communism for the Los Angeles Review of Books and tried to use the […]
