Author: Eric Kohlmann

New York police violently attacking unemployed workers in Tompkins Square Park, 1874

Do We Live in a New Gilded Age? – Income Inequality and the Stability of Societies

Posted by on May 24, 2019 in Economics, Philosophy, Politics
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First a chart… The chart above recently sparked a debate in my family. What does rising wealth inequality mean for millennials’ expectations to continue living in a peaceful, open society? Is the U.S. now really similar to the time of The Great Gatsby when it comes to the “wealth gap”? Or is this chart misleading … Read More →

Portrait of Leonhard Euler (1707-1783). By Jakob Emanuel Handmann [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Leonhard Euler: Mathemtical Genius in the Enlightenment

Posted by on Nov 26, 2017 in Books
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From the first moment it all sounded very promising. A biography about a mathematical genius in the enlightenment period – thus checking off three of my favourite topics in just the book’s title already. With some caveats, I wasn’t disappointed. While not too well-known in popular culture, it is hard to overstate Euler’s accomplishments in … Read More →

Kissinger: 1923-1968: The Idealist by Niall Ferguson

Posted by on Jul 9, 2017 in Books, Politics
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Henry Kissinger is one of the architects of our current political order. First sworn in as fifty-sixth secretary of state on September 22, 1973, he received the Nobel Peace Prize that same year, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and the Medal of Liberty in 1986. This was a world away from Fürth, Germany, where he was born in 1938 as Heinz Alfred Kissinger to an Orthodox Jewish school teacher. With the election of Donal Trump and rising nationalism across the world, we are looking into the next chapter, a new New World Order. As ever, it helps to understand the past to make predictions for the future, which is why I was looking forward to reading Dr. Kissinger’s new biography by Niall Ferguson.

Holocaust Remembrance Day

Posted by on Jan 31, 2017 in Politics
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This post came about in the light of Holocaust Remembrance Day and the Trump administration’s recent ban on immigration to the US for people of certain nationalities despite them holing valid US visa or green cards – which both fell on the same day past weekend. As the descendant of European refugees, many of whom died … Read More →