Hacking the Magic System
Translated as "God from the machine," this lazy storytelling device provides a contrived, sudden solution to an impossible difficulty.
What is Deus ex machina?
In a famous 1862 speech, Otto von Bismarck warned that Prussia's borders would not be secured through speeches, but by these two things.
What are "blood and iron"?
This is the geopolitical principle of deterrence based on the notion that a nuclear attack by one superpower would ensure both the attacker and defender are annihilated.
What is Mutual Assured Destruction (or M.A.D.)?
Unlike history written by the winners, this two-word term refers to a student's ability to understand how historical interpretations are made and used to control the future.
What is powerful knowledge?
His policies of glasnost and perestroika inadvertently led to the collapse of the USSR, prompting his resignation on December 25, 1991.
Who is Mikhail Gorbachev?
In literary analysis, this is the original interpretation of a work intended by its creator, often debated against "Reader Response."
What is Authorial Intent?
To unite the German states behind Prussia and complete his empire, Bismarck essentially tricked this French emperor into starting a war in 1870.
Who is Napoleon III?
This 1961 U.S.-sponsored invasion of Cuba by 1,400 trained exiles ended in total disaster and humiliated the Kennedy administration.
What is the Bay of Pigs
This scholar posited the existence of a "monomyth"—a universal narrative pattern common to heroic tales in every culture.
Who is Joseph Campbell?
This unified military command was formed in 1949 by the U.S. and its European allies to resist the Soviet presence in Europe.
What is NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)?
Sanderson’s First Law states that an author’s ability to solve conflict with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader does this.
What is understands the magic?
True "World Orders" are considered an anomaly in history; one of the earliest examples was the overwhelming hegemony of this empire in the thirteenth century.
What is the Mongol Empire?
During the Cold War, the U.S. employed this catchy, three-word civil defense campaign, even though strategic planners knew it would be effectively worthless in an actual nuclear attack.
What is "Duck and Cover"?
Studying history purely as a hero-driven narrative where powerful characters push events forward is sometimes criticized as this metallic "type" of history.
What is Bronze History?
In response to West Germany joining NATO in 1955, the Soviet Union quickly established this rival military alliance with its Eastern Bloc satellite states.
What is the Warsaw Pact?
Coined by Darko Suvin, this literary concept presents the familiar in an unfamiliar way to provoke critical thinking about our own world.
What is Cognitive Estrangement?
Realpolitik advocates for a relentless, pragmatic focus on this two-word concept, often defined in terms of security and strategic advantage.
What is the national interest?
Dangerous miscommunications during the Cuban Missile Crisis led directly to the creation of this specific communication link between Washington and Moscow.
What is Hot line?
Developed by Karl Marx, this formal construct explains economic change based on the premise that humans derive meaning from the physical world and are defined by what they produce.
What is Historical Materialism?
Following World War II, Germany and the city of Berlin were divided into occupation zones controlled by these four specific Allied powers.
What are the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union?
his is the frame of reference created by an artist's technical devices to differentiate a work psychologically from reality, keeping the audience from getting overly emotional.
What is Aesthetic Distance?
To maintain his delicate balance of power and avoid a war between European states, Bismarck hosted an 1884 conference in this city to divide up Africa.
What is Berlin?
Between 1945 and 1991, nearly 20 million people died—99% of them outside of Europe—in these types of conflicts, where superpowers orchestrated battles through surrogate forces.
What are proxy wars?
Dozens of countries in the Global South searching for an alternative to U.S. predominance have announced their intentions to join this five-letter economic coalition.
What is BRICS?
Signed by Reagan and Gorbachev in 1987 at the Washington Summit, this landmark treaty eliminated a whole class of nuclear weapons.
What is the INF (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces) Treaty?