Robert Zaretsky is a professor in the Honors College at the University of Houston. He is the author of several books, most recently Victories Never Last: Reading and Caregiving in a Time of Plague (University of Chicago Press, 2022).
Robert Zaretsky
Articles
On Being Shocked
The mass media, it seems, will never run short of opportunities to numb us.
The View from Bodrum
Herodotus would have had much to say about both the events that led to the tragic death of Aylan Kurdi, and the way it has been treated in the media.
The Idea of Europe
Costica Bradatan and Robert Zaretsky on George Stiener and "The Idea of Europe" as a place defined more by philosophy than economics.
Insolence, Exile, and the Kingdom
The Los Angeles Review of Books interview with novelist and journalist Kamel Daoud.
It’s the Emotions, Stupid
"How did the ideals of 1789 … morph into the horrors of 1793, steeped in blood, violence, and paranoia?"
Over Here, over Here: Books on World War I Everywhere
2014 saw a bumper crop in World War I commemorations.
19th Century Paris: Terrorism's Training Ground
1894 marked an exceptional harvest of one of the most notable isms to take root in French soil: anarchism.
The 'Inevitable' World War
Was World War I, which started 100 years ago today, after all, inevitable?
On les aura!
Why the slaughter?
Reconsidering the "Good War"
Mary Louise Roberts on sex, violence, culture clash, and American soldiers in France during WWII.
Enlightenment: James MacGregor Burns’s Version
Yet another version of the Enlightenment — with some flaws, like all of them.
Camus at 100
In honor of the French novelist, essayist, and philosopher
What Would Edmund Burke Say?
Edmund Burke would have hated the people who claim him as their political philosopher.
Syria and the Peace of Westphalia
The treaties constituting the Peace of Westphalia were drawn up by pragmatists as way out of sectarian violence — might it have some clues for us?
Hubris and Envy: The Lehrer Affair
A very different take on l‘affaire Lehrer
A Man Apart
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