Richard Cockett

Sep 23, 2024 | engelsbergideas.com | Richard Cockett

The main sessions of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York begin on Tuesday 24 September. The lead-up to this annual conclave has been punctuated by a succession of speeches and press releases from most of the agencies concerned with what is currently the world’s worst humanitarian disaster – Sudan. After 17 months of bloody, unrelenting civil war between the official Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia, their warnings are universally dire.

May 1, 2024 | freakonomics.com | Stephen Dubner |Richard Cockett |Vance Packard |Stefan Zweig

Episode 22 From politics and economics to psychology and the arts, many of the modern ideas we take for granted emerged a century ago from a single European capital. In this episode of the Freakonomics Radio Book Club, the historian Richard Cockett explores all those ideas — and how the arrival of fascism can ruin in a few years what took generations to build.

May 1, 2024 | freakonomics.com | Stephen Dubner |Richard Cockett |Vance Packard |Stefan Zweig

Once upon a time, there was a place that was so dynamic that it seemed as if the future had already arrived. Richard COCKETT: They were trying to take all the most modern disciplines — physiology, medicine, mathematics, statistics — and apply all these new disciplines to building a new civilization. You may think I’m talking about someplace like ancient Athens, or Alexandria. But no, this was much more recent — during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And: it didn’t last.

Apr 2, 2024 | engelsbergideas.com | Richard Cockett

Monday 15 April marks the first anniversary of Sudan’s latest civil war, a bitter, bloody and utterly self-destructive contest between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) — the official army of the Sudanese government — led by General Abdel Fatah al Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, better known just as ‘Hemedti’. I write ‘latest’ advisedly.

Nov 6, 2023 | spectator.org | Richard Cockett |Bruce Bawer

Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern WorldBy Richard Cockett(Yale University Press, 464 pages, $35)A few years ago, I read a very interesting book by Arthur Herman entitled How the Scots Invented the Modern World. Now along comes a book, written by the unfortunately named Richard Cockett, called Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World. I hope Cockett and Herman never run into each other, because I imagine it could get ugly fast.