TimeGoggles

The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People’s History of Afghanistan is about an institution tasked with the job of housing strangers – Kabul’s Intercontinental Hotel. Through this hotel, which sits high on a hill, and the people within it, seasoned BBC journalist and current foreign affairs editor, Lyse Doucet, attempts tell an immersive history of the sweeping changes that have faced Afghanistan since it opened in 1969. The book has won the third ever Women’s prize in non-fiction.

Bona Sforza, woodcut in the De vetustatibus Polonorum liber I. Cracoviae, 1521. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY Bona Sforza was one of the most remarkable women of Renaissance Europe. Born into one of Italy’s leading ruling families and connected to figures such as Lucrezia Borgia through the tangled politics of Italian dynasties, she became queen consort of Poland and grand duchess of Lithuania.

Cover of the book Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi. BalkansCat/Shutterstock Comic book author Marjane Satrapi passed away last week in Paris at age 56, just before conflict between Israel and her native Iran re-erupted. While her work has enjoyed enduring fame, the present conflict has made it more relevant than ever before. Satrapi’s work is unique for how it weaves her own personal story with Iran’s history and politics.

The aerodynamics of the knuckleball was one of the hundreds of academic theses and dissertations that were recently compiled in a database. Diamond Images/Getty Images Today’s fans may associate baseball research with cutting edge analytics. But long before data-driven tools like Statcast and FanGraphs, university students were conducting research about baseball. About three years ago, I came across a 1988 article published by the Society for American Baseball Research.

If I say the word “hobby”, you’ll likely think of something you like to do in your spare time – gardening, walking, reading, knitting, model kits. Maybe it’s pottery classes, DIY projects or learning something new on YouTube. But what you may not know is many hobbies were originally forms of work that evolved into something to do in our spare time as manufacturing practices changed. Crafts are one type of hobby that have always been popular.

The Beach at Trouville by Claude Monet (1870). The National Gallery, London Burnout feels like a thoroughly modern concept – one borne from our age of global digital communication and long office hours. But the Victorians also had an idea of burnout, one they termed “overwork”. The Victorian doctor, C.H.F. Routh, for example, published On Overwork and Premature Mental Decay: Its Treatment, which ran to four editions between 1873 and 1888.

Within the pages of old newspapers, you’ll find a bustling world of kitchen technology that time forgot. Long before air fryers and pre-chopped ingredients, the American home kitchen demanded intense physical labor. Old kitchenware advertisements reveal a time when sugar came in rock-hard loaves, raisins arrived packed with seeds, and whipping egg whites required muscle.

Ben Franklin played a key role in America's founding, which included helping to design its paper currency. Kristina Davis Benjamin Franklin understood something fundamental about money that still shapes modern economies: Money only works when people believe it is real. In the early 18th century, the British colonies suffered from a chronic shortage of gold and silver coins, forcing local governments to rely on paper bills for trade and everyday commerce.

Buying groceries at a big supermarket is a relatively new phenomenon. Prior to the early 1900s you would have done your shop in the small, family-owned, butchers, bakeries or greengrocers that lined our high streets. Now, online shopping, “dark stores” and AI chatbots are helping with your groceries, and supermarkets are adapting. It might sound exciting, or terrifying, but what we’re most interested in is what happens next. Will we trade choice, autonomy and our health for convenience?

In the popular imagination, the phrase “Viking hoard” might evoke images of plunder stashed by marauding Norse pirates. Or perhaps you picture sacred objects hidden by frantic monks in the uproar of a violent raid. The Galloway Hoard reveals the truth of the Viking expansion was less dramatic. But as the richest Viking-era hoard discovered so far in the United Kingdom and Ireland, it also exposes a more complex and intriguing past. The hoard was buried in southwestern Scotland around 900 CE.