Jackson Lears

Afew days​ after Ronald Reagan died in 2004, I was hurrying through Newark airport when I spied his smiling countenance on the cover of the Economist, accompanied by a caption in big block letters: THE MAN WHO BEAT COMMUNISM. This preposterous tribute succinctly summarised the conventional wisdom regarding the end of the Cold War. The Good Guys had won, led by the genial but implacable Cold...

The st​ory of smoking in the United States is usually presented as a struggle between heroic scientists and activists on the one hand, fighting to get the truth out to the public, and mendacious tobacco industry executives on the other, manipulating members of Congress. Eventually truth and health prevail. In The Cigarette: A Political History, Sarah Milov provides a more interesting and...

FDR’s capacious style of leadership has vanished from the scene. In the shadow of the Pentagon, no one dares to reassert a sceptical perspective. This is a major loss. Despite his attraction to missionary diplomacy, FDR remained committed to a traditional notion of international law, which allowed nations to respond militarily only if their own or others’ territorial boundaries had been violated. Not even his most expansive formulations included ‘regime change’. How he would have responded to the militarist posturing that passes for foreign policy debate in Washington today, who can say?

The world​ needs Seymour Hersh. Without his indefatigable reporting, we would know even less than we do about the crimes committed by the US national security state over the last fifty years. While most of his peers in the press have been faithfully transcribing what are effectively official lies, Hersh has repeatedly challenged them, revealing scandalous government conduct that would...