The upcoming Jewish High Holidays might not seem like a fitting time to ponder Twitter, virtue-signaling, and public shaming. Yet the Days of Awe, which begin with Rosh Hashanah on September 25 and culminate ten days later with the fast of Yom Kippur, offer a timely lesson in how our modern methods of communication might define not only the year ahead but our own long-term legacies.

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Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the late and unlamented USSR, has died at 91. Though he was Soviet leader for fewer than six years, they were hugely eventful years, and that period, coupled with his fame and long post-premiership, led him to have significant interactions with multiple American presidents.

Gorbachev had a keen understanding of the presidency and its outsize ability to shape American perceptions. He acquired this understanding early on: on a visit to Monticello in 1993, after his premiership, he recalled studying Thomas Jefferson's political thought in college.

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The controversy surrounding the FBI's raid on Mar-a-Lago is not going away anytime soon. As more details come out, we know one thing for sure: If we are going to have investigations of presidents after their time in office, we are going to see more controversy about prosecutorial tactics in the years ahead. In thinking about how to engage in these investigations, history, as always, is a helpful guide, as investigating an administration even after the president has left office has actually happened many times.

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A group of former Trump aides is releasing a new invite-only conservative dating app called "The Right Stuff," backed by tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel. The app, launching this September, is pitching itself as being "all about getting into the right dating pool, with people who share the same values and beliefs as you." The nation has long been subdividing into narrower and narrower bands, but a conservatives-only dating app seems like it is taking our divisions to a whole new level. This raises the question: Is such a service development necessary?

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Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough, who died last week at 89, was the preeminent historian of his generation. McCullough wrote 12 widely read books but wisely avoided a university affiliation, which is one reason his writing was so lively. Although he wrote books on a wide variety of subjects, almost always in the realm of American history, he was and will be forever known for his link to the American presidency.

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