Burning Archive | Jeff Rich | Substack

📖Slow Reads 2025

Slow Read: Books of Jacob, chapters 25-27

"The new king will be the last king of Poland. Three seas will flood the nation."

Jun 16

Slow Read Catch-Up Week and the 100 Books to Read Before You Die Dialogue

Liza Libes of Pens and Poison on why literature is better for you than politics

Jun 8

53:32

Slow Read: Books of Jacob, chapters 22-24

"by telling the story of the world, we are changing the world"

Jun 1

Slow Read: Books of Jacob, chapters 19-21

The Book of the Comet: "what would happen if hate could transform into a plague?"

May 25

Slow Read: Books of Jacob, chapters 16-18

“Poland is a country where freedom of religion and religious hatreds meet on equal terms.”

May 18

🌏World Power History Tour

Empire End Game & China in the World

Your Invitation to Live Discussions

Jun 18

The Death of Stalin. Interview with Sheila Fitzpatrick

Top historian of USSR and Russia on her new book

Jun 14

China, One-Child Policy & Population Ageing

Why you learn more about China from social history than economics

Jun 14

Contemporary China and the riddle of the modern

Final deep dive into Making China Modern: from the Great Qing to Xi Jinping

Jun 11

How China beat America

Reform from the top, or revolution from below?

Jun 7

🗺️Post-1945 world order guide

14:00

Will the USA really challenge China militarily?

International security expert Sam Roggeveen gives his surprising verdict

Apr 3

Post-1945 World | The Real History Guide

The post-1945 world did not begin in a well-ordered rulebook.

Jan 30

Unlimited Empire and America’s Unipolar Illusion

Final part of my reading guide to the history of the post-1945 world order

Dec 11, 2024

Undeclared Empires (USA & USSR) in the Cold War

The Cold War and the postwar world order emerged in a struggle between two undeclared empires - the USA and the USSR - in an unstable, decolonising…

Dec 4, 2024

How decolonization shaped the postwar world order

Conventional geopolitics accounts of the postwar world order leave out one essential feature: decolonization.

Nov 27, 2024

Recent posts

The Death of Stalin. Interview with Sheila Fitzpatrick

Top historian of USSR and Russia on her new book

Jun 14

China, One-Child Policy & Population Ageing

Why you learn more about China from social history than economics

Jun 14

Contemporary China and the riddle of the modern

Final deep dive into Making China Modern: from the Great Qing to Xi Jinping

Jun 11

53:32

Slow Read Catch-Up Week and the 100 Books to Read Before You Die Dialogue

Liza Libes of Pens and Poison on why literature is better for you than politics

Jun 8

How China beat America

Reform from the top, or revolution from below?

Jun 7

China's Great Transformation 1976 to 2012

Week Seven of the Deep Dive into China as a Modern Civilization-State

Jun 4

Slow Read: Books of Jacob, chapters 22-24

"by telling the story of the world, we are changing the world"

Jun 1

Linda Jaivin on China's Cultural Revolution

And some programs to learn from history coming soon

May 31

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution

What happened when Mao "put politics in command"?

May 28

Slow Read: Books of Jacob, chapters 19-21

The Book of the Comet: "what would happen if hate could transform into a plague?"

May 25

24 books that shaped me

A biographical list for the curious reader

May 24

The West has lost the will for peace

but yearns for endless wars

May 21

🔑Keys to History

The Death of Stalin. Interview with Sheila Fitzpatrick

Top historian of USSR and Russia on her new book

Jun 14

Linda Jaivin on China's Cultural Revolution

And some programs to learn from history coming soon

May 31

Can Trump deliver peace with Russia for the West?

Russia Expert Richard Sakwa assesses the prospects | Early Access Bonus

Mar 13

12:46

Post-1945 World | The Real History Guide

The post-1945 world did not begin in a well-ordered rulebook.

Jan 30

How to learn from history and fiction...

...through a slow read of Olga Tokarczuk, The Books of Jacob.

Jan 15

💼Guide to geopolitics

The West has lost the will for peace

but yearns for endless wars

May 21

The Books of Jacob Revised Schedule

And sneak peek of my interview with former Australian Foreign Minister, Gareth Evans!

May 12

Korea removes a coup plotting President

While Trump's tariffs implode in the USA

Apr 6

14:00

Will the USA really challenge China militarily?

International security expert Sam Roggeveen gives his surprising verdict

Apr 3

12:46

Can Trump deliver peace with Russia for the West?

Russia Expert Richard Sakwa assesses the prospects | Early Access Bonus

Mar 13

1:02:47

Complete guide to Emmanuel Todd's untranslated The Defeat of the West

Main ideas & complete chapter-by-chapter summary in English

Mar 12

Peace after the Ukraine War | Interview Special

Expert predicts the prospects after the unipolar world

Feb 26

Imagine you are a Foreign Minister: Globalisation

Guide to geopolitics and history (part seven)

Aug 15, 2024

🥇Nobel Archive (121 Literature Prizes)

100 Books to Read Before it is Too Late

My open global list with a hat tip to Liza Libes of Pens and Poison

May 10

The Great Gatsby and the Modernist American Century

F. Scott Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby in 1925, at the start of the American century. What does this loved novel of the ‘Roaring Twenties…

Mar 21

Han Kang wins the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature

and what is coming up on the Burning Archive

Oct 11, 2024

Olga Tokarczuk's tender narrator of Nobel histories

The 2018 Nobel Prize for Literature went to Olga Tokarczuk whose writing crosses borders, plays with genres, and tenderly shows us how to live well now…

Oct 5, 2024

The 2024 Abuse Scandal that Rewrote Alice Munro's Nobel Legacy

The 2013 Nobel Prize for Literature went to Alice Munro whose famous short stories did not disclose the scandal that in 2024 burned her reputation.

Sep 28, 2024

🎧Audibook minis

40:23

Walter Benjamin on the Angel of History

and his surprising connection to the Burning Archive

Jan 5

43:01

Before the World Changed: Reading Tagore's Prescient 1941 Essay

Rabindranath Tagore, Crisis in Civilization, audio reading

Nov 25, 2024

38:43

John Darwin After Tamerlane and the Post-1945 World

Nov 11, 2024

1:00:20

Olga Tokarczuk, The Tender Narrator

An audio-mini reading of the 2018 Nobel Lecture

Oct 14, 2024

36:15

How the history of emotions can heal childhood sexual abuse

In 2013 Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize, but kept secret the sexual abuse of her daughter.

Sep 30, 2024

1:06:58

Marina Tsvetaeva, The Poet in Time

Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva is one of the most renowned poets of 20th-century Russia.

Sep 23, 2024

1:21:52

Inga Clendinnen, Representing the Holocaust

commentary and audiobook mini from the Burning Archive

Sep 16, 2024

23:17

Reading the Holocaust

Inga Clendinnen on how to challenge the Gorgon effect

Sep 9, 2024

Please browse the burning archive where the past is not dead, the past is not even past.

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