Crooked Timber is a left-of-centre
political blog run by a group of (mostly) academics from and working in several different nations, including the
United States, the
United Kingdom, the
Republic of Ireland,
Australia and
Singapore. The name alludes to an English translation of a quotation by
Immanuel Kant: from his essay "
Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose" (1784).
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
Technorati's Top 100 blogs between 2003 and 2005 and is still widely linked to in the academic
blogosphere
The blogosphere is made up of all blogs and their interconnections. The term implies that blogs exist together as a connected community (or as a collection of connected communities) or as a social networking service in which everyday authors can ...
. On March 9, 2008, it was listed as number 33 in
The Guardian's list of the world's 50 most important blogs. On April 15, 2011, an article on academic blogs in
The New York Times listed Crooked Timber as one of seven influential examples of the type, describing it as having "built a reputation as an intellectual global powerhouse".
The quotation "Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made" (''Aus so krummem Holze, als woraus der Mensch gemacht ist, kann nichts ganz Gerades gezimmert werden'') is from Kant's ''
Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose''. The liberal philosopher
Isaiah Berlin alluded to the quotation in ''The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas''.
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.
Current members
Former members
References
External links
*
Philosophical literature
Political blogs
Economics websites
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