Picturing the Straits
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Looking Through the Past
Illuminating forgotten corners of history and using them to think about the present
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Latest posts
The Bosporus: Where Two Seas Meet
The strait as connector and divider for two millennia
How Iran and the US Learned to Distrust Each Other
The first Cold War crisis still resonates today
Gibraltar: Non Plus Ultra
There was nothing beyond the rock, until there was
The Man Who Cataloged How Italians Talk With Their Hands
Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?
The Struggle over Hormuz
Five centuries of conflict over one of the world's most important chokepoints
The Long War on Urban Dogs
Beware the spitz!
A Narrow Gate
The long history of the Khyber Pass, from the archives
Why Is Mongolian Script on Renaissance Paintings?
Pseudoscripts and globalization
The Huns, Through Others' Eyes
What's can we know about the Romans' most fearsome opponents?
How the West Almost Turned the Cold War Hot
When nuclear war was anything but unthinkable
Greek Kings on the Nile
The hybrid culture of Ptolemaic Egypt