The Rise and Fall of the Mall

Alexandra Lange’s Meet Me by the Fountain recovers the forgotten past and the still hopeful future of the American shopping mall.

Melvin Backman

Margo Jefferson and the Art of Life

In her work, especially her new book Constructing a Nervous System, she transforms criticism into an experience one feels in the body, not just the mind.

Kelton Ellis

Dawning

Dashaun Washington

The Melancholy Return of “Black Panther”

After the death of Chadwick Boseman, the makers of the superhero movie had to reimagine the series. The result makes for a sobering and affecting sequel. 

Stephen Kearse

The Myth of the Knicks

In Chris Herring’s recent history of the New York basketball team, we get a behind-the-scenes look at the sports commentariat’s fixation on grit and toughness.

Zito Madu

A New Kind of Trans Poetics

In A Queen in Bucks County, Kay Gabriel finds a connection between trans femininity and modernism as she documents one person’s winding journey from suburb to city.

McKenzie Wark

The Question of the Offensive Monument

What do we lose by simply removing monuments? Robert Bevan attempts to answer that question in a recent book, Monumental Lies.

Erin L. Thompson

The Polycrisis at the Border

Levi Vonk’s Border Hacker digs into the intersecting failures that have led to a brutal system of forced displacement in the Americas.

Caroline Tracey

What the Grimkes’s Family History Tells Us About the United States

In The Grimkes, historian Kerri Greenidge offers a powerful and unique account of this family’s history—an account that offers tales of slavery, violence, loss, resilience, and redemption.

Kellie Carter Jackson

Can the Origins of Today’s Right Be Traced to the 1990s?

While some might remember the 1990s as an era of good feelings, Nicole Hemmer’s Partisans argues that this period coincided with the rise of a more combative conservative movement.

John Ganz