Historically Thinking

Hello: Autumn, 1949. Fortune editor Bill Furth, flinty-eyed gatekeeper, scans a manuscript from 30-year-old whiz kid Daniel Bell. Spots the word “charisma.” Snorts. Blue pencil meets page. Word dies swiftly, without much appeal. Fast forward ten years: charisma is everywhere. Eggheads bandy it, pundits quote it, preach

Shipwrecks as events are probably humanity’s most common form of disaster”, writes my guest James Delgado  “As such, shipwrecks–aside from epidemics, warfare on land, or great natural disasters—have been the cause of the greatest number of human deaths throughout history. Thanks to ships and other watercraft, humanity

There is a U-boat in the middle of Chicago. It’s attached to the Museum of Science and Industry in Hyde Park. Generations of Chicagolanders, and their cousins from far away, have walked through U-505, but they don’t always ask how in the world it got to Chicago. A crucial moment in the journey of U-505 to its permanent

The liturgy of the Christian church is often dismissed today as archaic, arcane—or dead. But as Cosima Clara Gillhammer shows in her new book Light on Darkness: The Untold Story of the Liturgy, these ritual forms were once the very heartbeat of Western culture and continue to shape not only our cultural memory but even

His friend the great scholar Desiderius Erasmus referred to Thomas More as “a Man for all seasons.” But which season? Or which Thomas More? Is he an advocate of conscience? A heroic defender of the Catholic faith? A saintly martyr? A fanatical zealot unwilling to listen to cool reason? An amateur inquisitor who lit the

In 1945, Kim Il-Sung was a minor figure with no political power in Korea. Within months, he was elevated by Soviet authorities to lead North Korea. Historian Fyodor Tertitskiy joins us to discuss The Accidental Tyrant, his new biography of Kim, and explains how this obscure guerrilla commander became one of the most du