A map of North America

The Making and Meaning of Greenland: A Reading List

A selection of research reports and peer-reviewed articles offers insight into the history and potential future of the autonomous territory of Greenland.
Tantalus

Tantalus, Pac-Man, and Unsated Hungers

What does a violent, ancient Greek myth reveal about our modern addiction to technology and the enduring power of stories?
George Polk, c. 1943

The Murder Behind the George Polk Awards for Journalism

The murder of American journalist George Polk in Greece remains unsolved more than seventy-five years later.
Instructor Lt. Richard C. Reynolds (right) programmes a malfunction into the launch control trainer used in the Titan missile supervisors' and planners' course at Sheppard Air Base, Texas, July 1962.

Close Calls: When the Cold War Almost Went Nuclear

Most of the nuclear near-misses during the Cold War were kept under wraps, and they still make for unnerving reading in the twenty-first century.
Mural by Diego Rivera which satirizes the role of the US, UFC, Catholic Church and the military in the Guatemalan coup. The individuals giving the handshake are John Foster Dulles and general Castillo Armas.

A Private Coup: Guatemala, 1954

A 1954 coup, backed by the CIA and private citizen William Pawley, installed an authoritarian regime and touched off four decades of civil war in Guatemala.
Mao Tse-tung facing Nikita Khrushchev during the Russian leader's 1957 visit to Peking

A Messy Divorce: The Sino-Soviet Split

The ideological disagreements between two nations shattered the idea of monolithic communism and re-arranged the chessboard of the Cold War.
From a Russian poster from 1920

The Birth of the Soviet Union and the Death of the Russian Revolution

The Russian Revolution promised—and for a time delivered—freedom to the peoples of the Tsarist Empire. That freedom ended with the creation of the USSR.