Panoramic survey of US foreign policy as Washington attempts to maintain its global hegemony in conditions of faltering growth. Containing China, confronting Russia, driving decarbonization: each of Biden’s stated aims has been beset by insoluble contradictions from the outset, Richard Beck argues, now compounded by Israel’s punitive war on Gaza.

A decade ago, Christopher Clark upended conventional accounts of the origins of the First World War; he has now rewritten the history of the European revolutions of 1848–1849, and proposed a new way of considering their outcomes. Analytically, what differentiates and what connects these two outstanding achievements?

Above the fray of mediatized controversy, a classicist situates the heritage of the ‘West’ in the long view. A culture forged by the interplay of ecclesiastical, capitalist and emancipatory forces; the catastrophes of European world conquest and their weight on the present. Does Benjamin offer a way through the impasse?