Recommended Reading
Sunday, July 5, 2026
A postcard from the 1904 World’s Fair.
This Week’s Selections
What Darwin Saw in the Galapagos (link)
Bob Dylan’s Second Act (link)
How a Nation of Immigrants Traces Its Roots (link)
Picturing Pyrotechnics (link)
A Theory of American Democracy –– and a warning (link)
Will Changes in War Change the Social Contract? (link)
A.I. and the Crisis of Classical Liberalism (link)
Illegible benefits –– The costs of transformative innovations are immediately clear: it’s the longterm gains that are hardest to understand (link)
The World Cup, Consumed in Highlights (link)
FLASHBACKS:
Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, 3 July 1776 (link)
Equality and Liberty –– A review of Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality, by Danielle Allen. (link)
What to a Slave Is the Fourth of July? (link)
Calvin Coolidge on America’s 150 anniversary (link)
Other Items of Note
America, 1926: What a Forgotten 100-Year-Old Report Says About Who We Are (link)
Tyler Austin Harper: The Surefire Way to Elicit Squeals of Delight From a Grown Man (link)
Noah Millman: Pointe du Hoc Four Score and Two Years On (link)
Flowers of Fire: Illustrations from Japanese Fireworks Catalogues circa1880 (link)
The philosopher of the firework (link)
Men who eat too many hot dogs (link)
The best rendition of The Star Spangled Banner (link)
Nick Gillespie: “As the United States celebrates its semiquincentennial, all age groups are less likely to love America than in the past.” (link)
How Amsterdam invented the fire department


