Intellectual Affairs

In Dirty Secrets: How Tax Havens Destroy the Economy, Richard Murphy describes how the available means of concealing assets are so highly developed that they amount to an alternative global economy, writes Scott McLemee.

By Scott McLemee

A scholarly framework and documentary format coincide in The Activists, writes Scott McLemee, which depicts the antiwar movement in this century’s first decade as an assemblage of collaborating but distinct groups.

By Scott McLemee

The eminent New Yorker writer Joseph Mitchell profiled the greatest anthropologist in the world -- and his fans somehow forgot about it for decades. Scott McLemee reports from the scene of the excavation.

By Scott McLemee

The condition of a refugee scholar is a 21st-century reality, writes Scott McLemee, so one of the oldest academic presses in the world has added a new periodical to its catalog.

By Scott McLemee

Scott McLemee reviews I Love My Selfie, by Ilan Stavans, which examines what the book's author calls the "business card for an emotionally attuned world."

By Scott McLemee

Hitler's American Model: the United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law, by James Q. Whitman, brings into full view the U.S. Immigration Act of 1924's place in the context of Nazi theory and practice, writes Scott McLemee.

By Scott McLemee

Tom Nichols devotes most of The Death of Expertise to identifying how 21st-century American life blurs the line between fact and opinion, writes Scott McLemee.

By Scott McLemee

Abraham Flexner's The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge highlights how the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake has shown itself to be a powerful force in the world, writes Scott McLemee.

By Scott McLemee