The Hedgehog Review offers critical reflections on cultural identity, change, and diversity; seeking to understand how we shape culture, and how culture shapes us.  

The Hedgehog Review

Substack and the complicated state of the journalism industry.

Journalists are stepping away from magazines and papers for greener pastures. Alan Jacobs argues that the rise in services such as Substack and Bandcamp, which are supported by the likes of Stripe and Kickstarter, should be seen as a new take on a century-old Roman Catholic influenced economic system proposal.

Chris Brinkley

A new guild system

Are you a good person? How do you know?

B. D. McClay writing in the Hedgehog Review scours books, films and television shows alike in search of an answer to the age-old question - am I a good person?

Betsy Foldes Meiman

Tell me I'm OK

With 1899’s ‘Heart of Darkness’, did Joseph Conrad predict it all? Terrorism, multinational capitalism, technological disruption? Sunil Khilnani, writing in The Hedgehog Review, reviews Maya Jasanoff’s book “The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World”.

Scott Ciscon

The Last Universalist: Joseph Conrad and the modern world

A review of Nobel-prize winning Orhan Pamuk thoughts on the elusive art of fiction. 

Karl Miller

The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist

Masculinity is a moving target, shifting through the sand of time. Phil Christman, writing in The Hedgehog Review, undertakes defining what it means to be a man.

What Is It Like to Be a Man?

John J Lennon is serving a sentence of twenty-eight years to life, currently at Attica Correctional Facility. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, the New York Times and PEN America and he place second in the PEN America Prison Writing Contest. In this very personal article in The Hedgehog Review, he tries to view things from his mother’s perspective and how it may be for her to be a murderer’s mother.

The Murderer's Mother: a murderer tries to view life from his mother’s perspective

Is the term “curation” used too loosely nowadays? Do those who use it understand its meaning, or are they merely chasing the illusion of prestige, cultivation and finesse that the word is linked to? Wilfred M. McClay, writing in The Hedgehog Review, shares his observations about the pretentious and mystifying notion of “curation”.

Rex Anderson

Curate: is there anything more smug and self-congratulatory than a curator?

Is hypocrisy a moral vice? Does unmasking it necessarily make the world a better place? ​

Andi Arndt

How bad is hypocrisy?

Are you a cat person or a dog person? Perhaps you find yourself on the fence in this classic debate. If that’s the case, then Matthew Denton-Edmundson, writing in The Hedgehog Review, explains why you might very possibly be...a goat person.

Andy Field

For the love of goats: pets for the indecisive

Becca Rothfeld, writing in The Hedgehog Review asks why waiting appears as such an inextricable part of women’s relationship with relationships.

Jan Cramer

Ladies in Waiting: is waiting an inextricable part of women’s relationship with relationships?

Wilfred M. McClay, writing in The Hedgehog Review, argues that ageing is not a problem to be solved, but rather a meaning to be lived out.

Being There: Ageing is Not a Problem to be Solved

In our neoliberal world, by “pursuing their dream”, each person becomes a little firm with assets, debts, and a credit score—a success or a failure. Jackson Lears, writing in The Hedgehog Review, examines how the supposedly apolitical free market has come to jeopardize liberal democracy. 

Rhett Samuel Price

Technocratic vistas: the long con of neoliberalism

That Edvard Munch never met Friedrich Nietzsche is one of history’s great missed encounters. Although it would appear that they did meet—in spirit. Leann Davis Alspaugh, writing in The Hedgehog Review, sketches out the influence of the great German philosopher on the Symbolist painter. 

Allyson Johnson

Ecce Homo: Munch Paints Nietzsche

This is the Thoreau we need right now: a scientist, a moralist, a radical democrat, and an artist who might stir us to realize the highest ideals of self and nation. Jonathan Malesic, writing in The Hedgehog Review reviews “Henry David Thoreau: A Life” by Laura Dassow Walls. 

Ron Butler

Out of the woods—a review of "Henry David Thoreau: A Life" by Laura Dassow Walls

You enjoy yourself, pushing beyond your inhibitions. But the sobriety of the next day punishes you. So is the hangover a  spiritual or biological experience? 

Simon Mattacks

The metaphysics of the hangover

Our criminal justice system is built on the idea that once they have served their time, prisoners should be able to return to civil society. We accept that people deserve a second chance, but what if their second chance is a Ph.D at Harvard? Lisa Lorish looks at the case of Michelle Jones, a murderer who became a historian.

Ashley Klanac

Once and always a criminal? From prison to PhD

One of the reasons many people voted for Donald Trump is because of his claims of being a successful businessman. We revisit an article by Lisa Ann Cockrel and Micah Lott from The Hedgehog Review, published after Trump’s nomination as the Republican party candidate. Even without going into the veracity of his claims, Cockrel and Lott ask the question “does being a successful businessman qualify you to be president?”

Diane Piron-Gelman

Running the country like a business

There are billionaire orphans and moody detectives, but how many of your heroes were historians?

We need a (historian) hero

For decades, elite-whisperers like Yascha Mounk provided the missing connective tissue between natural rulers and the ruled. The rise in populism appears to be disrupting the 'natural order' of things.

There are only alternatives - how populism is disrupting the elite-whisperers

Can you measure wonder? In an academic world dominated by data and prediction models, the humanities appear to be in crisis.

Michael Bott

On the value of not knowing everything

American food critic Jonathan Gold, who passed away in July 2018, was considered by many an intellectual. Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft, writing in The Hedgehog Review, considers what it really means to be a true ‘intellectual’.

Intellectuals are ordinary: on the late food critic Jonathan Gold

Paleo, vegan, raw, vegetarian - are the moral and ethical choices we make about food distracting us?

In 2019, the personal diet became not only a cult but a political statement writes James McWilliams in the Hedgehog Review, as he examines whether our focus on individualised acts of social responsibility is distracting us from looking at the real problem: the larger food system itself.

You are what you (don’t) eat

By embracing its counter-narrative, the Great American Novel can achieve its potential.

In an era of rising social division, the Great American Novel has found itself back at the fore. Tyler Malone writing in the Hedgehog Review reflects on the literature's ambition of uniting and defining a nation and why it's still so relevant.

Tim Paige

An ever more perfect novel

How to confront our biases when it comes to plant intelligence.

"Intelligence, however, is more than consciousness; it is also the ability to acquire and apply knowledge, to learn. Marder says that at least some plants can learn, citing a 1999 Dutch study in which lima bean plants were observed summoning insects as allies against organisms harmful to the plants." Amy Wright, writing in The Hedgehog Review, explores.

Sarah Naughton

Learning from plants

True crime is not all about watching people die, but it does require an interest in the subject.

Senior editor of The Hedgehog Review, B.D. McClay, analyses where exactly does our interest in true crime stories and blood sports comes from.

Monita Rajpal

Blood sports

Should the monuments of history's darkest figures be pulled down?

James McWilliams writing in The Hedgehog Review explores the debate and the argument that statues to Confederate generals and famous slaveholders should stand tall in order to force white people to feel shame. 

Shame: an argument for preserving 'those' monuments

Have our written words lost their significance in modern times?

The simple frictionless design of modern technology has made the world more convenient, but our ability to continuously update our online profiles has also taken away the meaning of our words. Richard Hughes Gibson contemplates the importance of resistance in writing and how it can offer significant opportunities for self-reflection in a world of constant oversharing.

“Frictionless environments give us the false sense that we can stay on top of things all by ourselves. But against that often destructive delusion we can cultivate a healthy sense of humility about what we know, what we ought to share, when we need to speak up. That humility, in turn, may lead us to seek out a still better source of friction, the counsel of others — trusted friends, a fellow writer or scholar, or maybe even an editor — before we weigh in on the topic du jour. The baleful social effects of the frictionless sharing approach are increasingly plain. Now is the time to waste more words in hopes of sharing better ones.”

Gary Furlong

An appeal for friction writing

Does humanity need a break?

"The Trial of Adolf Eichmann", "The Milgram Shock Experiment", and "The Murder of Kitty Genovese" are notorious pop-psychology stories that are used to highlight the cruelty of society. But they are also built on distorted facts. In this interesting analysis, Jackson Arn debunks these moral fables and argues that to successfully tackle the problems of the 21st century, we need to put our trust in the righteousness of humankind.

Michael Satow

Thinking the worst of ourselves

Patriotism might be holding America back.

Thomas Jefferson’s "pursuit of happiness" is still deeply ingrained in the USA’s cultural aspirations, but can it truly be gained in a modern era? William M. Chace — honorary professor of English at Stanford University — explores the complexities of this famous definition. In this elaborate analysis of American identity, he argues that although another core value may have pushed hopeful aspirations aside, a more philosophical approach to happiness is as important as ever.

Mark Deakins

The unhappiness of happiness

Anne Applebaum's latest book is a "six-chapter journey of privilege and loss."

In The Hedgehog Review, researcher Jonathan D. Teubner reviews Applebaum's "Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism", where the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian charts the evolution of her own centre-right liberalism.

"Our populist narratives, often driven by a kind of economic determinism, would suggest that the haves of Berlin and the have-nots of Brandenburg would clash. Yet there has been very little populist animosity aimed at the citadel of Berlin from the fields of Brandenburg. But why is this? Why do such divisions spark revolt in some regions, while in others, people, well, get on with it? Why do some democracies seem fragile, teetering on the edge of collapse, while others appear robust even in the midst of the unprecedented challenges of widespread disease, joblessness, and general discontent?"

Another betrayal of the intellectuals

Whether a crisis of public health or public safety, is the best response increased surveillance?

When the pandemic hit the West in March 2020, Zoom and other types of digital communications became a first-response-type to the crisis it had ensued. Almost a year later, what was a silver lining for human interaction has turned into the thing of nightmares for many. For author Christine Rosen, this highlights one thing: tech doesn't solve deeper human issues. In this piece for The Hedgehog Review, she explains why.

"The appeal of technosolutionism is understandable, particularly in a time of increased political polarization, social unrest, and, now, a public health crisis. Technosolutionism alleviates widespread anxiety by promising certainty when uncertainty prevails. It offers efficient responses to complex problems while eliding thorny questions of ethics, politics, or justice. It gives us the how without forcing us to ask the why."

This story was originally published in The Hedgehog Review in the fall of 2020.

Technosolutionism isn’t the fix

The case for collecting books.

Why do we keep books even though we may never read them, read them again and we only really love a few of them? Nan Z. Da finds in The Hedgehog Review that books, reading, and literature cultivate “a way of being in time.”

Good on paper

Online shaming, cancel culture. It's easy to turn someone into an instant monster.

Vanessa Place is a lawyer specialising in representing sex offenders on appeal. In The Hedgehog Review, she examines the ease with which we characterise people as monsters — and how this says just as much about us, as them.

Marni Penning

Monstering

Exploring the relationship between a mother and her child through childhood psychoanalysis.

Motherhood is supposed to be all-encompassing and all-transforming. But now, women are also required to maintain their sense of self, through their relationships, their jobs, their bodies — as a sign that they love their children enough to be good role models. Claire Jarvis examines this in The Hedgehog Review.

Tell me about your Mother

Ethically, how are we to evaluate the practice of getting stoned?

The public conversation around marijuana seems to have shifted entirely from being about its ramifications in liberal law, to now focusing purely on what does it do to our health. In this interesting piece from The Hedgehog Review, author James Mumford reflects on what change means to society, as well as his relationship with cannabis.

Cannabis as a cultural question

Monopoly and culture in the Digital Age.

They distort financial markets, endanger innovation and intrude on your privacy. Google; Facebook; Apple; Amazon; Microsoft. How afraid are you of the Frightful Five? Edward Tenner reveals in The Hedgehog Review, the true implications of the largest tech companies’ growing monopolistic power.

Who’s afraid of the frightful five?

Imagine there are no countries…

"We have not found an adequate substitute for the nation-state, whether by seeking it through the consolidation of existing polities into ever more massive postnational entities like the EU, or by allowing nations to disaggregate into homogeneous and even tribal entities." Wilfred M. McClay considers in The Hedgehog Review the fading vision of a world without nations.

Why nations matter: the state of belonging

M.F.K Fisher on existing without many of the things we have always accepted as our due.

Laurel Berger, for The Hedgehog Review, revisits How to Cook a Wolf, MFK Fisher’s darkly funny yet practical ‘self-help' book and kitchen guide for the hard-up — which feels especially relevant in a pandemic.

Kelsey Navarro

How to Cook a Wolf under lockdown

Race is an absurdity. Yet as a means of defining and separating people, it retains its power.

W. Ralph Eubanks author of Ever Is a Long Time and The House at the End of the Road, writing in The Hedgehog Review shares this personal story about growing up in an interracial family in America's South.

What makes me black? What makes you white?

A moving reflection from an imprisoned men on the correctional facility he spent ten years in.

John J. Lennon is currently serving a 28 years to life sentence. In this piece from The Hedgehog Review, he reflects on Heather Ann Thompson’s 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winning book titled Blood in the Water: The Attica Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy, about the correctional facility in which Lennon served ten years of his sentence.

A legacy of payback: the Attica Uprising

Moral growth doesn't just mean looking to the future but reconciling past and present selfhood.

"To test your commitment to the philosophy of no regrets, imagine, as Friedrich Nietzsche suggests, that a demon comes to find you 'in your loneliest loneliness' to tell you that you will repeat all your actions, past and future, in exact sequence, an infinite number of times. Even the demon's visit, and your response to it, will recur forever. 'Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?' Nietzsche asks. 'Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?'" Jonathan Malesic explores in The Hedgehog Review.

Ken Foster

Je regrette tout

"The necessity of physical distancing creates the need to find new ways to be close to one another."

"Distance tends to be conceptualized as either a problem for living in modern societies and so something to overcome, or, conversely, as a solution to some of the problems in modern societies and so something to be cultivated. In the current crisis, we see that these two approaches can go together: There is the necessity of social distancing but also the need to overcome interpersonal, cultural, and spatial distances in an effort to slow the spread of the virus." Author Marie Kolkenbrock analyses in The Hedgehog Review.

The dance of the porcupines

Vampire and zombie stories have dreamt themselves into us for specific reasons.

Associate professor of philosophy at Catholic University in Washington, Antón Barba-Kay, delves deeper into the mythology behind vampire and zombies stories. Here, he analyses how they have become part of a 'new folklore', and why they have resonated so strongly with modern audiences.

Our mindless and our damned

In Christian music, the line between sacred and secular can be blurred.

Paul W. Gleason, writing in The Hedgehog Review, offers an analysis of the 2018 book, The Devil’s Music: How Christians Inspired, Condemned, and Embraced Rock ’n’ Roll, by Randall J. Stephens.

Shout at the devil: How Christians inspired, condemned, and embraced Rock ’n’ Roll

Are outdated views holding us back from seeing the world in all its grey?

"There is black and there is white; there is right and there is wrong."  Writing in the Hedgehog Review, Mark Edmundson explains the urgent problem with our tendency to hold increasing rigid and oppositional views - encouraging us, instead, to see the world in all its nuanced complexity.

It’s complicated

How do you weigh rehabilitation against the need for retribution, particularly when the crime is murder? 

In this poignant piece, Leann Davis Alspaugh reflects on this question, explaining why we are all more than the worst thing we have ever done. 

The graduate

I think I’m much more humble than you would understand. This was actually said by Donald Trump in response to a comment that he wasn’t known to be a humble man. In an age of twitter wars and alternative facts, Leif Weatherby, writing in the Hedgehog Review, wonders if there is any space left for irony. ​

Irony goes to Washington

Any life-long reader will be familiar with the joy of holding and revisiting a cherished tome. 

Friendship by the book

If libraries are dying, do they deserve saving? 

Libraries: no ordinary place

Our lives online are becoming eternal. Is there no room for mistakes anymore? 

On the Need for Erasure

Think of the name of a famous living scientist. Most people would probably come up with just a couple of names like Neil deGrasse Tyson or Bill Nye. Brendan P. Foht writing in The Hedgehog Review examines why there are so few scientists today that are as widely recognised as Stephen Hawking or Einstein.

Farewell to the Olympian Scientist

Mark Edmundson writing in The Hedgehog Review meditates on whether the body exists if we do not have souls, and the related questions of the apparently dichotomous desires of the body and the soul. Are the desires of the body antagonistic to the “higher” desires of the soul? Or are they actually just one?

Emma Powell

Body and Soul: We came, we saw, we enjoyed

Why has liberalism lost its defenders?

"Liberalism today finds itself in the strange position of being the political philosophy that everyone lives by and no one wants to defend." Writing in the Hedgehog Review, Rita Koganzon reviews Helena Rosenblatt's "The Lost History of Liberalism", which questions our understanding of what it means to be liberal today.

Liberalism strikes back

Can you build a geopolitical empire out of business ethics? 

Empire's regrets

Confessions can be psychologically healing but they are also very healing and for that reason, extremely fun to watch. A look at the confession as genre.

Sharon Bott

Why We Confess: From Augustine to Oprah

Unemployment numbers continue to rise across the world making the need for a solution more and more urgent. Carrie M Lane writing in The Hedgehog Review wonders whether the solution may not be in propping up the ailing traditional job but, instead, in adopting more self-assembled careers.

Molly Ward

The self-assembled career

James Mumford, writing in The Hedgehog Review, considers the true meaning of subscribing to an ideology and the importance of being philosophically consistent.

Malk Williams

Package-Deal Ethics: Do Our Moral Beliefs Have to Be Consistent?

Both sides of the political spectrum exist in vengeful bubbles intent on silencing their opponents. What is the root of this rising illiberalism? B.A. Brown, writing for the Hedgehog Review suggests that the death of religion and reason have contributed to an intellectual climate condemned to intolerance.

David Riley

Illiberalism Rising: What is the root of this rising illiberalism?

Deirdre Nansen McCloskey, born Donald N. McCloskey, writes in The Hedgehog Review about her experience transitioning from a straight man to a queer woman in the 90s.

Melissa Moran

Straight Man to Queer Woman: Untimely Meditations on Transitioning

Self-help books are to be found aplenty and they have also attracted immense criticism – especially that they encourage self-absorption or a withdrawal from civic engagement. But Joseph E Davis writing in The Hedgehog Review argues in favour of self help literature, telling us that they help people respond to a real felt need and navigate real problems. And not just that, even the most crassly self-centered books advocate doing something for others.

The necessity of self-help lit

It takes a certain mood to accuse someone of being privileged. Matthew Crawford, writing in The Hedgehog Review, unearths the rhetoric of Revolutionary France to cast a suspicious eye on the privilege-bashing tendencies of today’s most privileged campuses. 

Privilege: the history of a controversial term

Media coverage of terror events is often caught between the need to document and the risk of glamorising tragedy. Marta Zarzycka looks at how the photography of terrorism can so easily be misrepresented and exploited.

Terror, photographed

We’re encouraged to dream big. We idolise the likes of Elon Musk launching their red Teslas into space with Bowie playing on the radio. But sometimes we must look back and take caution from the tales of those who dreamt big and then failed. J.N. Campbell, writing in The Hedgehog Review, reviews ‘A History of the Future: Prophets of Progress from H.G. Wells to Isaac Asimov', by Peter Bowler.

Minority Report: Futurologists Need Historians

When did we accept that superheroes could be villains too?

The Groot gang: superheroes, politics, and art

God might be dead, the influence of religion subliminal, but guilt nonetheless persists—why?

The Strange Persistence of Guilt

Greg Jackson, writing in The Hedgehog Review, deconstructs the concept of the social imaginary.

The Inner Life Of A Sinking Ship

Corporations are coming to our rescue. At work, we can now feel at home and be social, we can feel safe and we can share in a common culture. James Poulos reflects on how the power of the corporation belies the failings of our traditional institutions. 

The last association standing: community in the workplace

In an era when it pays to go against the liberal mainstream, Steve Lagerfeld, writing in The Hedgehog Review considers the meaning of contrarianism. 

In with the Out Crowd: Contrarians, Alone and Together

Technology has made relationships and privacy so fragile. A leading social theorist describes the side-affects of what he calls 'liquid modernity'.

Privacy, Secrecy, Intimacy, Human Bonds–and Other Collateral Casualties of Liquid Modernity

Where medieval manuscripts and illustrations find him towering and glowering, seething with hot, rancid breath and countless animal fangs, the go-to depiction of the Devil, humankind’s ancient enemy, is today often of a being polished though flawed, and a little tragic, more cordial than hypnotically tempting character. Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig says that that’s a great shame. ​

The Devil we know

Jonathan Malesic, writing in The Hedgehog Review, explains what happens when work and meaning part ways.

When Work and Meaning Part Ways

Born over two centuries ago, Thoreau's legacy still inspires awe.

Was Henry David Thoreau a beacon of righteousness in morally dubious times, spearheading abolitionist and transcendentalist literature, or an inconsistent misanthropist? James McWilliams writing in THR explores the leading transcendentalist's legacy.

Being right: The legacy of Henry David Thoreau

Was the social transformation that took place in the 1960s really that radical?

The Summer of Love

Populism here, populism there. The word is used to describe political firebrands of every hue, but does it stand for anything more than a rebellion against the status quo? Wilfred M. McClay contemplates the meaning of a term that can just as easily describe Occupy Wall Street activists as Tea Party enthusiasts. 

The meaning of populism

Despite living with his family in Michigan, Phil Christman still struggles to define exactly what the Midwest is like. Writing in The Hedgehog Review, he tears down the problematic stereotypes surrounding the region and grapples with the true identity of the Midwest.

On Being Midwestern: The Burden of Normality 

As he reviews Adam Kotsko's book "Neoliberalism’s Demons: On the Political Theology of Late Capital", Phil Christman finds that we are all neoliberalism’s little demons, making the choices the system requires while absolving it of all responsibility.

Friedman’s Demon

Humans come together when we have a shared interest, a shared view or often a common enemy. If we started to embrace the things that make us different, perhaps we could see animals for what—and maybe who—they really are. 

Fellow Passengers - the case for recognising animals as our comrades

The late, great journalist William McPherson penned a harrowing account of living in relative poverty.

Falling: from Pulitzer to poverty

What would happen to our politics if everything were possible? B.D. McClay, writing in The Hedgehog Review, laments how reality can limit what we imagine. 

The art of the possible: why limit our political imaginations?

Easily disparaged and seen as the lowest of the lows, housework is often confined to the shadows. It is work we would always rather someone else do. But Mary Townsend considers the intrinsic value of domesticity and the underappreciated mental skill required to perform effective housework.

Housework: there's so much more to a chore

When their bodies are frail, can love sustain the ones we care for?