Thousands of years ago, the ancient Greeks anticipated robots and artificial intelligence—and they didn’t trust them.

DRAMATIC PROJECTS WON’T SAVE THE WORLD. SLOW, QUIET, INCREMENTAL CHANGES ARE THE PLANET’S BEST HOPE.

Netflix’s hit show documents the changes rocking Indian society—and not all of them are good.

IN OCTOBER 2012, THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL SYSTEM got its first taste of the effects of climate change when Hurricane Sandy roared through lower Manhattan, shutting down Wall Street. Amid the blackout, the power remained on in the tower containing the hea

After the Caliphate: The Islamic State and the Future of the Terrorist Diaspora COLIN P. CLARKE, POLITY PRESS, 240 PP., $64.95, JUNE 2019 THIS YEAR, U.S. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP DECLARED that the Islamic State was 100 percent defeated after U.S. and

PLANTS SUCK UP LOTS OF HARMFUL CARBON DIOXIDE. ONE SCIENTIST THINKS SHE CAN SUPERCHARGE THEM TO DO MUCH MORE.

The United States caused many of the world’s problems and can still unmake them—but only if its leaders face up to the challenge.

MINORS CARE MORE ABOUT FIXING THE WORLD—BUT THAT WON’T HELP UNLESS WE CHANGE THE WAY OUR DEMOCRACIES WORK.

THE FIRST GLIMPSE HUMANITY GOT OF THE WORLD FROM ABOVE was transformative. In 1968, the U.S. astronaut William Anders returned from circling the moon in Apollo 8 with a photograph. It was a simple snapshot of the Earth, the whole Earth, rising above

China and the United States have drastically different visions for autonomous transportation.

The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator TIMOTHY C. WINEGARD, DUTTON, 496 PP., $28, AUGUST 2019 THE MOSQUITO, far and away mankind’s deadliest enemy, has killed half of all the people who ever lived. In his fascinating book The Mosqu

IN 2017, YOUNG PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD FIRED BACK at an Australian millionaire who chided them for “spending $40 a day on smashed avocado and coffees” and still expecting to be able to buy a home. But in South Korea, a generation of frustrated young

The leaders of Israel and Serbia share one thing: They’ve perfected the politics of persecution. Here’s why that strategy won’t keep working.

A new novel portrays the European Union’s search for meaning as a historical reckoning—and a comedy of manners.

Greg Autry is the director of the Southern California Commercial Spaceflight Initiative at the University of Southern California, vice president at the National Space Society, and chair of the International Space Development Conference. He served on

Beijing is famous for putting engineers and scientists in charge. But that doesn’t make for better leaders.

ECONOMISTS AND GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS GENERALLY THINK of poverty as a chronic, binary phenomenon: People are either poor or they are not. But reality is not so simple. Worldwide, 300 million people live nominally above the poverty line but regularly go

INDUSTRIAL ESPIONAGE is as ancient as industry itself—and a frequent accomplice to the rise of empires. From classical Greek cities to modern U.S. corporations, the theft of trade secrets has marked a transfer of power almost as routinely as bloodshe

Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster ADAM HIGGINBOTHAM, SIMON & SCHUSTER, 560 PP., $29.95, FEBRUARY 2019 IN THE LATE 1970S, at the height of the Cold War, a new city sprung up near the border of Ukraine a

LONG BEFORE THE #METOO MOVEMENT began to spread across the world, women had started playing increasingly prominent roles in armies around the globe, from the United States to Iraqi Kurdistan. It’s no surprise, then, that the literature of war is fina

EUROPE IS CURRENTLY STRUGGLING TO REDEFINE ITS TIES to Britain and chafing over its rapport with U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration. But the continent’s most complicated relationship may be with Israel. Many Israelis still view Europe as a

WILL THE DEVELOPING WORLD FALL UNDER CHINA’S SWAY? Many policymakers in Washington certainly fear so, which is one of the reasons they have created the new International Development Finance Corp. (IDFC), which is slated to begin operating at the end

IN THE EARLY DAYS OF THE COLD WAR, the Soviet Union needed a foolproof way to encrypt the messages it sent to its allies. This was a daunting task: The previous pinnacle in cryptography, the German Enigma machine, had been cracked. And not only would

How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States DANIEL IMMERWAHR, FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX, 528 PP., $30, FEBRUARY 2019 WHEN MOST PEOPLE PICTURE A MAP OF THE UNITED STATES, they usually envision what is known as the lower 48—the cont

Michael Anton served from February 2017 to April 2018 as U.S. President Donald Trump’s deputy national security advisor for strategic communications. He worked previously in the George W. Bush administration and for former New York City Mayor Rudy Gi

Jugaad once symbolized India’s potential, but the endless shortcuts are now holding the country back.

From John le Carré’s novels to the insatiable popular interest in James Bond, Britain has long enjoyed, and cultivated, an image of producing superior spies. This reputation is based on more than myth. For decades during and following World War II, t

Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century GEORGE PACKER, KNOPF, 608 PP., $30, MAY 2019 THE LATE RICHARD HOLBROOKE, the American diplomat perhaps best known for brokering the Dayton Accords that brought a truce to the Balkan war

WHILE IT’S NOT QUITE TRUE that espionage has always been dominated by the professionals—the dozen spies Moses sent into Canaan (as told in Numbers 13) were definitely amateurs, as were Nathan Hale and Mata Hari—it’s certainly been the case since Worl

ALONG AN 18-MILE STRIP OF LAND between the Canadian province of Alberta and its neighbor Saskatchewan, the rat patrol keeps guard. An eight-person team, armed with poison and shotguns, hunts daily for any sign of the rodent invaders. The Alberta rat