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From the archives

That Ever Governed Frenzy

Through the eyes of Jody Wilson-Raybould and Michael Wernick

Rumble on Parliament Hill

In the ring with Justin Trudeau

Return of the Robber Barons

Chrystia Freeland asks if we can tell “makers” from “takers” among the new super-rich

Laura Penny

Laura Penny is a professor of contemporary and early modern studies at the University of King’s College. She is the author of Your Call Is Important to Us: The Truth about Bullshit (McClelland and Stewart, 2005) and More Money Than Brains: Why Schools Suck, College Is Crap and Idiots Think They’re Right (McClelland and Stewart, 2010).

Articles by
Laura Penny

Can the Humanities Save Us?

The crisis in education, and the surprising uses of the liberal arts December 2016
In the shocked week after Americans elected Donald Trump their president, the beleaguered liberal arts received a shot in the arm. “Dear Artists: We Need You More Than Ever,” read a headline in the Huffington Post. An exhortation by American author Toni Morrison, beginning with “This is precisely the time when artists go to…

Awaken the Neurotic Within

A lively writer suggests we clear all the self-help books off our shelves March 2014
It is hard to think of two genres that have less in common than contemporary theory and self-help. While The Call of Character: Living a Life Worth Living is certainly not a typical self-help book, and Mari Ruti is explicitly critical of the genre, she also positions her work as a psycho­analytic alternative to those…