Crooked Timber is a blog with a left-of-center political slant, primarily administered by academics from countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ireland. The blog's name is inspired by a quotation from philosopher

Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (born Emanuel Kant; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German Philosophy, philosopher and one of the central Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works ...

: "Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made," from his 1784 essay " Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose". The liberal philosopher

Isaiah Berlin Sir Isaiah Berlin (6 June 1909 – 5 November 1997) was a Russian-British social and political theorist, philosopher, and historian of ideas. Although he became increasingly averse to writing for publication, his improvised lectures and talks ...

alluded to the quotation in his 1990 book ''The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas.'' Crooked Timber frequently hosts online book events and includes contributions from a variety of experts in fields such as philosophy, political science, and sociology.

History

Crooked Timber was founded in July 2003 as a merger of several individual blogs, including Junius and Gallowglass, along with some new contributors. Additional members were added over subsequent months until the group reached an agreed optimum of 15 members. Crooked Timber ranked in

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's Top 100 blogs between 2003 and 2005 and is still widely linked to in the academic

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. On March 9, 2008, it was listed as number 33 in

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's list of the world's 50 most important blogs. On April 15, 2011, an article on academic blogs in

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

listed Crooked Timber as one of seven influential examples of the type, describing it as having "built a reputation as an intellectual global powerhouse". Crooked Timber has held several online book events, during which a subset of members (and often also invited guestbloggers) read a book and each write a blog post about it, either a review or a post inspired by the book.

History

Current contributors

Former contributors

References

External links