Ryan Gingeras

The story of the fall of the Ottoman Empire offers a new way of understanding the twentieth century. The Ottoman Empire had been one of the major facts in European history since the Middle Ages. Stretching from the Adriatic to the Indian Ocean, the Empire was both a great political entity and a religious one, with the Sultan, as Caliph,...

Few forces have shaped our world as powerfully – or as secretly – as mafias. Groups such as La Cosa Nostra, the Medellín Cartel, New York’s Five Families, the Japanese yakuza and Russian vory are notorious, endlessly covered in news stories and popular media. Yet when official histories are written, their role in shaping nations, economies and societies is rarely...