Will Quinn

The past, an enduring guide to the future | @wc_quinn engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-pas…

How should we best manage the uncertainties of our own time? Our Deputy Director @wc_quinn reflects on how historical sources and reading other people's diaries and mail can help us navigate uncertainty today and in the future. @EngelsbergIdeas | engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-pas…

@ga_thomps @EngelsbergIdeas Thanks for reading, Graeme.

Equal parts insightful and touching piece in @EngelsbergIdeas by @wc_quinn on the value — analytic and emotional — of history.

@EmmaMAshford Thanks for reading, Emma.

@Ali_Wyne Thanks, Ali!

A beautifully written piece by @wc_quinn “[I]t helps to remember that living at the threshold of a new era is neither unprecedented nor necessarily apocalyptic—that some of our ancestors felt profound dislocation but nonetheless persevered.” engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-pas…

@EngelsbergIdeas @alastair_benn I also have to thank the wonderful staff at the collections where the archival "discoveries" I cite in the piece are housed, namely @librarycongress, @HooverPresLib, @HoughtonLib, and @MHS1791 -- all places that researchers and citizens should visit if they can.

My new piece at @EngelsbergIdeas offers some reflections on my visits to the archives over the past few years, the pleasures of reading other people's mail, and how living in the past can help you prepare for an uncertain future. Many thanks to my peerless editor, @alastair_benn.

It was a pleasure to read @andrewehrhardt's excellent drafts, but even more so to see it published!

Civilization as a concept in foreign policy academic.oup.com/ia/article-abs… Thanks to editors at @IAJournal_CH for publishing this! And thanks to friends who read earlier drafts @wc_quinn @ollyys1

I have to respectfully but profoundly disagree with this one for several reasons. To wit:

THREAD: My book on India and the world draws from the work of hundreds of others: historians, political scientists, diplomats, military analysts, etc. many of whom are on Twitter, and whom I'd like to credit. amazon.in/Vishwa-Shastra…

5. Accessible versions of English literature already exist in condensed and edited formats, from Children's Classics editions to comic books to Cliffs Notes to film adaptations. To the degree that these are helpful, great -- but students should read the classics in the original.

4. The intuition (making the classics more accessible) is sound, but what's the limiting principle? Who is to say that we shouldn't just reduce all written language to homogenous, simplified NewSpeak for fear that someone might not be able to read it?

@lionel_trolling amazon.com/Ascent-Power-T…

Happy to offer my recommendations in this @EngelsbergIdeas “books of the year” round-up. My picks were Marilynne Robinson’s ON GENESIS, David Roll’s ASCENT TO POWER, and @lionel_trolling’s WHEN THE CLOCK BROKE, each about beginnings of sorts.