Robots at War

The Right Bite

– William A. Galston

There are five maxims the federal government can follow to regain the public confidence it has lost over the past four decades.

The Expeditionary Imperative

– John A. Nagl

America’s national security structure is designed to confront the challenges of the last century rather than our own.

Teaching a Hippo to Dance

– Amy Wilkinson

The most brilliant policies will fail if government does not attract talented people and free them to do their best work.

Happy Together?

– Donald R. Wolfensberger

Americans love to complain about gridlock in Washington and partisan warfare between presidents and Congress. Yet the record suggests that unified party government is no panacea.

Lincoln's Memo to Obama

On the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, a distinguished biographer muses on the counsel the Great Emancipator might offer the new president who so often invokes him.

McCulture

– Aviya Kushner

Americans have developed an admirable fondness for books, food, and music that preprocess other cultures. But for all our enthusiasm, have we lost our taste for the truly foreign?

Congenitally Digital?

– The Wilson Quarterly

The notion that all young people are technological whiz kids is flawed, says a UVA media studies professor. "Every class has a handful of people with amazing skills and a large number who can't deal with computers at all."

Forgive Me Not

– The Wilson Quarterly

Apologizing for wrongdoing has become so commonplace, writes historian Wilfred M. McClay, that forgiveness is in danger of "being debased into a kind of cheap grace."

Headscarf Politics

– The Wilson Quarterly

Why would France waste resources on such an economically and politically marginal issue as banning headscarves in schools?

Just Another Prescription

– The Wilson Quarterly

In November 2008, voters in the state of Washington joined neighboring Oregon in passing a "death with dignity" law. The original law, a decade old, has transformed the treatment of the terminally ill.

Mission Being Accomplished!

– The Wilson Quarterly

In the 38-year war on cancer, improved screening was the single most important change and one of the biggest bargains.

Pressroom of Babel

– The Wilson Quarterly

A veteran White House press secretary thinks it is time to blow up the 35-year-old model of having one overexposed spokesperson be ground zero for every question.

Spice and Status

– The Wilson Quarterly

New research reveals that spice was not used in medieval times to mask the taste of rancid meat, but rather to infuse good meat with the sweet-sour flavor that was the epitome of the fashionable cooking of the era.

A Second Surge?

– The Wilson Quarterly

The wisdom of employing an Iraq-like surge in Afghanistan.

The Research Boomerang

– The Wilson Quarterly

Doubling the budget of the National Institutes of Health during the Clinton and Bush administrations has had the curious effect of leading to less biomedical research.

The Sickening State

– The Wilson Quarterly

The most optimistic national estimates show Russia’s population falling to 136 million in 2020, down from 141 million today. Life expectancy in Russia is among the lowest in the developed world.

Training Mere Mortal Teachers

– The Wilson Quarterly

Fixing schools may mean sticking to the "no excuses" model: the philosophy that every child can succeed and neither family dysfunction nor poor preparation is sufficient reason for failure.

What's the Buzz?

– The Wilson Quarterly

In Dnepropetrovsk, the secret rocket-making city in eastern Ukraine that, during the Soviet era, was closed to outsiders, the rock musical Jesus Christ Superstar is credited with an underground evangelicalism that took hold among the youth during the 1970s.

Contagious Crime

– The Wilson Quarterly

Researchers investigating the "broken windows theory" of crime control found that people are twice as likely to steal from a graffiti-covered mailbox as from one that's pristine.

Home Field Advantage

– The Wilson Quarterly

Just as you always suspected, referees really do favor the home team.

Spoon-Fed Ideology

– The Wilson Quarterly

Some critics decry political propaganizing by college professors but a study confirms that students are not being swayed.

The Clueless Voter

– The Wilson Quarterly

Some political scientists have called for compulsory voting to force citizens to participate in the electoral process. It won't work.

The Local Government Colossus

– The Wilson Quarterly

State governments think it makes sense to consolidate local governing bodies, but at the local level the benefits seem abstract and largely unproven.

The Price of Salvation

– The Wilson Quarterly

Mortgage delinquency rates are bad, but not nearly as bad (yet) as they were during the Great Depression.

Undersea Terrorism

– The Wilson Quarterly

Self-propelled semi-submersibles--primitive subs that ride low in the water--are a favorite choice for drug movers along the Colombian coast. They may pose a serious threat to American national security.

Animal Power

– Dick Courteau

Broomsticks and Politics

– A. J. Loftin

A. J. Loftin reviews a history of witch-hunting, concluding that "If witches existed, John Demos would have found them."

Canon Fodder

– Eric Liebetrau

Eric Liebetrau assesses Jay Parini's quest to find thirteen books that changed America.

Captain America

– Max Byrd

Max Byrd says that biographer Jon Meacham sums up Andrew Jackson's antithetical personality: "commanding, shrewd, intuitive yet not especially articulate, alternately bad-tempered and well-mannered."

Deadly Networks

– Allison Herling Ruark and Daniel Halperin

Allison Herling Ruark and Daniel Halperin on AIDS in Africa.

First Man of Letters

– Brooke Allen

Brooke Allen reviews two biographies of a man we thought we knew, Samuel Johnson.

Image Conscious

– Grant Alden

Grant Alden ultimately applauds a book that helps us understand something about the carefully crafted visuals that have become so much a part of our shared culture.

Showdown at Dry Gulch

– Geoff Manaugh

Geoff Manaugh examines a "historically important, well-timed, and memorable addition to the growing library of books about water and the West."

Something for the Pain

– Ruth Levy Guyer

Ruth Levy Guyer on the history of anesthesia.

Marching Orders

– Ayesha Siddiqa

In the global war on terror, no country looms larger than Pakistan, and in Pakistan, no institution looms larger than the army.

True North

– David Garrow

David Garrow on the forgotten struggle for civil rights in the North.

Why the Sun Finally Set

– William Anthony Hay

William Anthony Hay on the decline and fall of the British Empire.