In ‘Succession,’ Who Is the Joke Really On?

The show is heralded as a nuanced and cutting critique of the 1 percent. But whose side is it really on?

Erin Schwartz

The Absurdist Imaginings of ‘Los Espookys’

An irreverent Spanish-speaking show was a step forward for HBO, but its first season fell short of pushing the boundaries of Latinx representation.

Julyssa Lopez

How Silicon Valley Broke the Economy

The question of how to fix the tech industry is now inseparable from the question of how to fix the system of capitalism that the late 20th century gave us.

Adrian Chen

Ben Lerner’s Quandary

The Topeka School captures the novelist at a crossroads between politics and aesthetics, fiction and poetry.

Evan Kindley

Tenderness

Derrick Austin

The Catholic Church at a Crossroads

In their new books, Ross Douthat and James Chappel present two radically different versions of Catholicism’s past and future.

Jan-Werner Müller

The Workers That Built America

A new book puts the black working class at the center of American history.

William P. Jones

Is Our Food Culture Killing Us?

How we “choose” what to eat takes place within a contained food environment shaped by availability and advertising, traditions and trends—and, above all else, economics.

Susan Pedersen

Kamel Daoud and the Paradoxes of Liberation

In a new collection of his political writings, the Algerian novelist contemplates the unfinished business of his country’s struggle for independence.

Robyn Creswell

The Vexed Meaning of Equality in Gilded Age America

The agrarian, feminist, and labor movements of the 19th century elevated equality to a cardinal principle, but all three  fell short when it came to transcending the divide of race.  

Eric Foner