Nation Topics - critic | The Nation

In a city divided by extremes, the festival brings together all kinds of people to cook up something marvelous.

This is your brain on two weeks of non-stop Fox News.

In Life Sentences, William Gass shows that consciousness needs to be stressed to be strengthened.

The brash webzine +972 is challenging a political and media culture that has moved steadily to the right.

Two new biographies differ over the astronomer’s view of the relationship between science and faith.

The critic James Wolcott has been gamely fighting losing battles for most of his career.

A critic of pop’s retro turn can’t shake his own strain of pop nostalgia.

In 11/22/63, Stephen King conveys the horrors of American exceptionalism.

Dwight Macdonald’s panic about Midcult now seems less prescient than misplaced.

Jonathan Raban has made a persona out of the self that feels nowhere at home.