Head to Head

From a cult’s rogue personalities to its foundational ideologies, how have fringe beliefs guided the direction of the American dream?

Political reputations are forged by actions, but the long view of history can be hard to predict.

Modernity is a ubiquitous phenomenon which defines the age in which we are living, heralding progress and enlightenment – does it even exist?

The spiritual marketplace is crowded – is there something Darwinian about it?

Where fraught national histories are concerned, do policies of remembrance and education work, or is it better to wipe the slate clean?

Surrealism – as formulated in André Breton’s manifesto a century ago in October 1924 – is regarded as one of the First World War’s artistic legacies. What are the others?

How do dissent and disagreement tip over into civil war? And is peace, when it comes, ever absolute?

East was East and West was West – until 1989. The Wall is gone, but are its Cold War demarcations still there?

Does a state need a book of rules by which to operate? And who are those rules for, anyway?

History is built with words. How have historians filled the silence that came before?