Long Reads

Kurt Johnson reviews Cécile Desprairies’s semi-autobiographical novel The Propagandist and Lea Ypi’s Indignity: A Life Reimagined, arguing that while literature can bridge history and memory, it carries an inherent risk: histories vulnerable to erasure are also vulnerable to fabrication.

Ferenc Laczó delves into Mark Mazower’s forthcoming book, Antisemitism: A Word in History (Allen Lane, 2025), writing that its proposal is to combat anti-Jewish prejudice not in isolation but as part of a broad anti-racist strategy, while safeguarding political debate and free speech – a kind of progressive centrism that, as Laczó notes, is difficult to disagree with.

Lucy Jeffery’s in-depth review of Benjamin Nathans’ Pulitzer Prize-winning book, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement (Princeton University Press, 2024), praises not only the treasure trove of information the book contains, but also notes that the parallels with Russia today will not be lost on contemporary readers.

Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur explores Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska’s Ziemie. Historie odzyskiwania i utraty (Radio Naukowe, 2024), a study of Poland’s post-1945 border shifts, German expulsions, and Polish displacement.

In this in-depth review of Zack Beauchamp’s The Reactionary Spirit: How America’s Most Insidious Political Tradition Swept the World (PublicAffairs, 2024), Nick Warmuth explores how a distinctly American reactionary tradition now threatens democracies worldwide.

In this incisive Long Read, Ferenc Laczó critically engages with Globalizing Europe, edited by David Motadel (CUP, 2025). Laczó highlights the volume’s intellectual ambition and scholarly range, while probing its limitations— particularly a lack of a sustained effort to engage with the rich and growing global historical scholarship that meaningfully incorporates areas outside of the northwestern “core.”

Nikolaos Paraschis provides an in-depth review of World Literature in the Soviet Union edited by Galin Tihanov, Anne Lounsbery and Rossen Djagalov (Academic Studies Press, 2023). Paraschis writes that this indispensable volume provides an excellent opportunity for an entirely new framework for historically and theoretically discussing “World Literature.”

Cristian Cercel provides an in-depth reflection on Marius Turda’s new book În căutarea românului perfect. Specific național, degenerare rasială și selecție socială în România modernă, published by Polirom in 2024. Cercel writes that the book seeks to stir a debate on the relevance of eugenics and racism for implicit and explicit understandings of “true Romanianness”.

Veronika Pfeilschifter provides an in-depth reflection on Ilya Budraitskis’ Dissidents Among Dissidents (Verso Books, 2022), elaborating on how Budraitskis’ study can be positioned in larger debates regarding dissidents and the philosophical underpinnings of political violence.

Eun-joo Lee reports on the Global Easts conference, organized by the Critical Global Studies Institute (CGSI) and the Global Easts Consortium, which took place at Sogang University in Seoul, South Korea from 17 to 19 January.