When most Americans think of the Smoot-Hawley Tariffs, they think of economic disaster. But if you ask why, most Americans may need a short refresher course. Below, you will find just that. Appearing on Derek Thompson’s Plain History podcast, Douglas Irwin (an economist and historian at Dartmouth) revisits the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which raised […]

‘Scholars and Their Kin’ review JamesHoare Mon, 04/14/2025 - 09:00

Most of us now accept the idea that all of Earth’s continents were once part of a single, enormous land mass. That wasn’t the case in the early nineteen-tens, when the geologist Alfred Wegener (1880–1930) first publicized his theory of not just the supercontinent Pangea, but also of the phenomenon of continental drift that caused […]

The Great Awokening and the end of the cultural revolution

The Ancient Ideals of Heroism: Odysseus and Aeneas