Anna Christina Bering has now come as far as the Pacific Ocean. She started her journey seven years ago, with her husband and their two small children – Anton, who was then two years old, and Anna Hedvig, just one year old – along with servants and five soldiers who escorted them starting in the town of Tobolsk.

Many parents use a spot on the wall or in a door frame to track how quickly their children grow. If our forebears in the Stone Age had made horizontal marks on walls like modern people do, Eva Rosenstock’s research would be a bit easier.

Defamatory poems, outrage on the Internet, hate-filled public tirades at demonstrations, and an American President who cuts down his critics on Twitter. Everywhere you look, it seems society is flooded with hateful outbursts these days. Why is that? And why now, specifically?