Red Scares, Past and Present Red Scares, Past and Present
What are the parallels between the rise of McCarthyism in the 1950s and today?
Aug 12, 2025 / Books & the Arts / David Cole
Imposter Ghazal for Forugh Imposter Ghazal for Forugh
Aug 12, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Mandana Chaffa
Mark Twain’s Many Lives Mark Twain’s Many Lives
A new biography depicts the different sides of the American author.
Aug 11, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Adam Hochschild
The Cold and Forbidding Worlds of Cynthia Ozick The Cold and Forbidding Worlds of Cynthia Ozick
In a new career-spanning collection of shorter fiction and nonfiction, the past often looms larger for Ozick than the present.
Aug 6, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Hannah Gold
Magnus Hirschfeld’s Forgotten Revolution Magnus Hirschfeld’s Forgotten Revolution
The Weimar physician advocated for a more fluid understanding of sexuality and gender—a pioneering idea that was erased by the rise of Nazism.
Aug 5, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Lizzie Tribone
The Story of America Can Be Found on the Banks of the Rio Grande The Story of America Can Be Found on the Banks of the Rio Grande
Richard Parker’s love letter to El Paso, The Crossing, argues that the Texas city can illustrate the best and the worst of the nation’s history.
Aug 4, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Kyle Paoletta
Essex Hemphill’s Poetry of Belonging Essex Hemphill’s Poetry of Belonging
He was an artist and activist who found in his verse a tool for both community and agitprop.
Jul 30, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Daniel Felsenthal
Is Pitching a Novel All That Different From “Shark Tank”? Is Pitching a Novel All That Different From “Shark Tank”?
Alex Higley’s True Failure, which dramatizes one man’s dream to pitch his business idea on reality TV, slyly compares this bathetic task to publishing literary fiction.
Jul 29, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Ben Sandman
Before Sebald Was Great Before Sebald Was Great
By looking at his early work, we can better understand who the German writer was beyond his persona as the melancholy intellectual and serious man of letters.
Jul 28, 2025 / Books & the Arts / David Schurman Wallace
The Argentine Grandmothers Who Resisted the Junta The Argentine Grandmothers Who Resisted the Junta
Haley Cohen Gilliland’s A Flower Traveled in My Blood looks at the efforts of a human rights group to find the children and grandchildren who were disappeared by a dictatorship.
Jul 24, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Jacob Sugarman