'Here Where We Live Is Our Country' chronicles the history of the Jewish Labor Bund

Great art can change your life—but learning about the artist’s sordid past can change how you view their art. So argues memoirist and art critic Claire Dederer in Monsters. Dederer offers an insider’s look at the thorny question: Can we love the art if we loathe the artist? She doesn’t offer easy answers. Instead, she examines how our emotional responses to art are shaped by our knowledge of the artist’s behavior, and what that says about our own morality, identity, and desires.

Our guide to Monsters starts by examining what a monster is; we outline three types of monsters and explore the lives of famous artists in each category. Then, we explain why monstrous artists trouble us. Finally, we explore three ways we can respond to art made by monsters alongside three lessons on humans’ moral complexity. In our commentary, we provide more context on the artists Dederer discusses and other expert perspectives on the nature of art, monstrosity, fandom, and morality.

The Hiding Place is an autobiographical memoir by Corrie ten Boom, a devoutly religious woman who lived in the Holland city of Haarlem during the Nazi occupation. Compelled by her unshakeable Christian morality, she defied tyranny to rescue her Jewish neighbors who faced annihilation during the Holocaust. She was ultimately caught and sent to the notorious Ravensbruck death camp, where she witnessed scenes of unimaginable cruelty. In the camp, it was Corrie’s bedrock faith in the glory of God that sustained her. She discovered that love was a far more powerful force than hate—for God’s love was truly unconquerable.

Conventional accounts of American history tend to focus on the people at the top—presidents, generals, CEOs, and other influential figures and their struggles, ambitions, hopes, and dreams. But what about average people? The ones who had to live with the consequences of elite decisions, and who often struggled in obscurity? In A People’s History of the United States, historian Howard Zinn aims to tell their story, providing a bottom-up view of American history focusing on Indigenous people, Black Americans, women, laborers, and activists.

Our guide outlines Zinn’s interpretation of significant events, themes, and historical trends in American history. Through our commentary, we’ll provide alternative opinions on the motivations behind and consequences of historical events. We’ll also further explain Zinn’s approach to history and provide additional context for his arguments as well as his perspective on events that happened after the book’s publication.

In The Message, acclaimed writer Ta-Nehisi Coates weaves together a series of travelogues to show how narratives about race and power shape our understanding of the world. Drawing from his travels to Senegal, South Carolina, and Palestine, he explores themes such as the power of storytelling as an act of resistance, the pervasive legacy of enslavement and white supremacy on the Black experience, and the battle for control over historical narratives.

In this guide, we’ll unpack what Coates sees as the truth-telling power of the written word and how he applies that perspective as he explores cultural and political flashpoints in each of the places he visits. Throughout, we also incorporate perspectives from other thinkers to contextualize Coates’s observations within wider scholarly and public discourse on race, power, and identity.

Why does it seem as though the Middle East is plagued by conflict? Why does democracy there feel fragile? Historian David Fromkin asked himself those questions and pored through secret documents, bureaucrats’ letters, and politicians’ journals to uncover why: The current state of the Middle East is largely due to decisions Europe made during and after World War I.

Before this war, countries like Israel, Jordan, and Syria didn’t exist—they were all part of the Ottoman Empire. Following World War I, Europe dismantled the Ottoman Empire, created new countries and borders, and chose new leaders, remaking it into a territory useful to Europe’s aims. However, these decisions created dilemmas the Middle East still grapples with.

This guide organizes Fromkin’s findings from his book A Peace to End All Peace (1989) into three stages: before, during, and after World War I. Within each stage, we explore the key decisions that shaped the modern Middle East. We also provide additional historical context and alternative viewpoints on these historical events.

Adolf Eichmann—the Nazi official who arranged the transportation of Jews to their systematic deaths in concentration camps—is often considered a sadistic mastermind. But according to German-American historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt, Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem reveals otherwise. In Eichmann in Jerusalem, Arendt argues that Eichmann was an unremarkable evildoer whose atrocities reveal the banality of evil—evil driven not by sadism, but by mundane motives and aims.

In this guide, we’ll begin by discussing the historical context of Eichmann’s case, highlighting his specific role in the Holocaust. Next, we’ll focus on Eichmann himself, examining his unremarkable upbringing, his alleged “expertise” regarding the Jewish people, and his mundane motivations for committing atrocities throughout the Holocaust. Finally, we’ll assess the trial against Eichmann and explore Arendt’s reasons for thinking that, although Eichmann was clearly guilty, the trial lacked legitimacy. Throughout this guide, we’ll add further historical context for the trial and the Holocaust itself.

Why does it seem as though the Middle East is plagued by conflict? Why does democracy there feel fragile? Historian David Fromkin asked himself those questions and pored through secret documents, bureaucrats’ letters, and politicians’ journals to uncover why: The current state of the Middle East is largely due to decisions Europe made during and after World War I.

Before this war, countries like Israel, Jordan, and Syria didn’t exist—they were all part of the Ottoman Empire. Following World War I, Europe dismantled the Ottoman Empire, created new countries and borders, and chose new leaders, remaking it into a territory useful to Europe’s aims. However, these decisions created dilemmas the Middle East still grapples with.

This guide organizes Fromkin’s findings from his book A Peace to End All Peace (1989) into three stages: before, during, and after World War I. Within each stage, we explore the key decisions that shaped the modern Middle East. We also provide additional historical context and alternative viewpoints on these historical events.

Orientalism is a study of the scholarly, intellectual, political, and ideological phenomenon known as Orientalism: the framework through which Western writers, policymakers, and the general public have interpreted and defined the Islamic societies of the Middle East as “the Orient.” Orientalism does not reflect objective truth about these societies or the people who live in them. Instead, it is an invention of the Western mind that posits a fundamentally different, exotic, dangerous, unchanging, and “other” East—an idea that was a major intellectual cornerstone of European imperialism and that continues to have profound implications on today’s geopolitical landscape.

In Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson explores the phenomenon of nationalism. His core insight is that the concept of “the nation” has no basis in empirical reality, but is instead a purely political innovation that constructs a shared identity binding strangers from different communities together—usually on the basis of a shared language, history, culture, religion, or ethnicity. Thus, although a nation may consist of tens of millions of people—nearly all of whom will never personally know or even meet one another—nationalism allows each individual to think of themselves as a member of a singular community with a shared identity.

In this guide, we’ve added alternative viewpoints on the basis of nationalism, including psychological and anthropological perspectives. We've also added more historical context for Anderson's theories.

In The Message, acclaimed writer Ta-Nehisi Coates weaves together a series of travelogues to show how narratives about race and power shape our understanding of the world. Drawing from his travels to Senegal, South Carolina, and Palestine, he explores themes such as the power of storytelling as an act of resistance, the pervasive legacy of enslavement and white supremacy on the Black experience, and the battle for control over historical narratives.

In this guide, we’ll unpack what Coates sees as the truth-telling power of the written word and how he applies that perspective as he explores cultural and political flashpoints in each of the places he visits. Throughout, we also incorporate perspectives from other thinkers to contextualize Coates’s observations within wider scholarly and public discourse on race, power, and identity.

The Hiding Place is an autobiographical memoir by Corrie ten Boom, a devoutly religious woman who lived in the Holland city of Haarlem during the Nazi occupation. Compelled by her unshakeable Christian morality, she defied tyranny to rescue her Jewish neighbors who faced annihilation during the Holocaust. She was ultimately caught and sent to the notorious Ravensbruck death camp, where she witnessed scenes of unimaginable cruelty. In the camp, it was Corrie’s bedrock faith in the glory of God that sustained her. She discovered that love was a far more powerful force than hate—for God’s love was truly unconquerable.