What If China Fails?

The Case for Selective Failure

– Ross Terrill

No one wishes for a total Chinese collapse, but certain setbacks should be welcomed.

Last Chance on Death Row

– William Baude

A little-known legal doctrine confounds the most basic understanding of justice—whether it matters if a convicted person is actually innocent.

Gandhi's Invisible Hands

– Ian Desai

A dust-caked library left behind by his inner circle shows how Mahatma Gandhi's saintly, putatively solitary crusade for peace was made possible by a well-honed enterprise of resourceful supporters.

The Global Budget Race

– Douglas J. Besharow and Douglas M. Call

The Great Recession drove home a reality Americans have long avoided. An aging nation with mounting health and retirement bills must make hard choices or be outrun by its competitors—some of whom have been quicker to face facts.

The Web's Random Logic

– Jeff Porter

The Internet’s oceans of information seem to defy comprehension, but that doesn’t prevent us from trying—often successfully—to make sense of it all.

Maximizing the Multiplier

– The Wilson Quarterly

Economists should “constantly test [their] assumptions and policies against real-world results."

Theory-Free Foreign Aid

– The Wilson Quarterly

Could it be time to look at foreign aid and just test which strategy works best?

Why are some areas of the world so poor and others so wealthy?

– The Wilson Quarterly

Contemporary problems merit historical answers.

Throw Away the Political Resumés

– The Wilson Quarterly

For the most part, political experience seems to have no bearing on a person’s ability to be a good, or even great, president.

Liberalism's Two Camps

– The Wilson Quarterly

Many of the great questions at the heart of liberalism depend upon our view of the relationship between the present and the past.

Why is the presidential nomination process such a mess?

– The Wilson Quarterly

Fixing the presidential primaries.

Decentering Kabul

– The Wilson Quarterly

For Afghanistan to succeed, is the answer decentralized government?

The Limits of Intelligence

– The Wilson Quarterly

Presidents don't usually want to hear an intelligence analyst's doubts, preferring confidence (even when unwarranted) in one policy option.

Imported Doctors

– The Wilson Quarterly

If you’re rushed to the emergency room, are you in good hands?

Welfare's New Tune

– The Wilson Quarterly

EITC beneficiaries' babies have lower birth weights. Why is that?

Triumph of the Toughs

– The Wilson Quarterly

In the decades since, the picture has illustrated countless articles about rich and poor.

The Real Justice Taney

– The Wilson Quarterly

Supreme Court justice Roger B. Taney infamously described blacks as "beings of an inferior order," but he once called slavery "a blot on our national character."

How Religious Toleration Came to America

– The Wilson Quarterly

New Amsterdam was no beacon of religious toleration.

Two Presidents and Their God

– The Wilson Quarterly

Washington’s theology was “predictably meager,” but Lincoln’s exploration of the nature of providence put to shame even the leading religious thinkers of his day.

Is Science Finished?

– The Wilson Quarterly

Has the era of major scientific breakthroughs run its course?

The Frozen Past

– The Wilson Quarterly

The century-long study of ice, a historian says, reveals “the cumulative, insidious, all-pervading power of people on Earth.”

Cloning the Neanderthals

– The Wilson Quarterly

One scientist says that the clones would be no more than “neo-Neanderthals.”

In With the New

– The Wilson Quarterly

The rise of the "novel ecosystem."

Barnes Storm

– The Wilson Quarterly

On the much-discussed move of the Barnes art collection.

Potemkin Translators

– The Wilson Quarterly

A humanities professor believes the famous Russian translators known as P&V give short shrift to essential literary elements.

Forgotten Bauhaus

– The Wilson Center

So many people misunderstand Bauhaus.

Welty's Southern Discomfort

– The Wilson Center

Eudora Welty was not only a jewel but an emblem of the South.

Separate and Unequal in Eastern Europe

– The Wilson Center

African Americans and the Roma of Eastern Europe may live thousands of miles apart, but their histories have taken remarkably similar paths.

Asia's Dying Death Penalty

– The Wilson Quarterly

Asia, home to 60 percent of the world’s population, accounts for more than 90 percent of the executions of recent years.

South Africa's Staying Power

– The Wilson Quarterly

Is the young South African democracy at risk of falling apart?

Armed for a Fight

– Andrew Exum

The brief, wondrous history of the AK-47.

No-Brainer?

– Edward Tenner

Two recent books on the future of media go against the grain of their authors’ professions.

World Leader

– Georgia Levenson Keohane

In August, the World Bank redirected nearly a billion dollars in aid to Pakistan from development projects to emergency flood relief.

American Conspiracy

– Thomas Rid

Over the past five years, Andrew Bacevich has emerged as one of the most prolific and eloquent critics of American foreign policy.

Poor Man's Bank

– Jeremy Lott

The poor we may always have with us, but must they always get a raw deal?

Immoderate America

– Ethan Porter

Americans “are more interested in politics, better informed about public affairs, and more politically active than at any time during the past half-century.”

A Law Unto Itself

– Michelle Sieff

Samuel Moyn's latest is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand the origins of our modern foreign-policy vocabulary.

Paper Trails: Rise of the Passport

– Sarah Igo

When passports were introduced, "respectable" travelers took offense at the idea that their word could not substantiate their identity.

Tortured Artist

– Steven Biel

The art, like the artist, was solid, straightforward, and robustly American.

NewTube

– James Morris

“Television was nothing when the fifties started, everything when they ended,” writes Eric Burns.

Story Material

– Andrew Starner

The oscillation of fashion between reality and fiction, static display and animate object, makes "The Concise Dictionary of Dress" intriguing.

Food Police

– Rebecca Rosen

Observant American Jews, once consigned to a limited pantry and sparse restaurant options, are enjoying the output of a massive kosher industry.

The Long Goodbye

– Eric Hand

What really propelled the two Voyagers to the edge of the solar system? A rare alignment of political will and technological know-how.