Books & the Arts

Is Our Food Culture Killing Us?

Is Our Food Culture Killing Us? 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.

Oct 1, 2019 / Books & the Arts / Susan Pedersen

Kamel Daoud and the Paradoxes of Liberation

Kamel Daoud and the Paradoxes of Liberation 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.

Sep 30, 2019 / Books & the Arts / Robyn Creswell

The Vexed Meaning of Equality in Gilded Age America

The Vexed Meaning of Equality in Gilded Age America 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...

Sep 24, 2019 / Books & the Arts / Eric Foner

What Misogyny Does

What Misogyny Does What Misogyny Does

In her new book, philosopher Kate Manne insists that what’s important is not what men intended but how women experience misogyny.

Sep 23, 2019 / Books & the Arts / Clio Chang

Martin Hägglund’s Case for Socialism

Martin Hägglund’s Case for Socialism Martin Hägglund’s Case for Socialism

If we knew there were no afterlife, would we make this life better? 

Sep 23, 2019 / Books & the Arts / Peter E. Gordon

The Business of Being Taylor Swift

The Business of Being Taylor Swift The Business of Being Taylor Swift

Her latest album, Lover, has been heralded as a return to form. It also presents an opportunity to understand the pop star’s many contradictions. 

Sep 18, 2019 / Books & the Arts / Olivia Horn

The Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society Starts Its Third Annual Petition Drive for the Abolition of the Interstate Slave Trade and Slavery in Washington, DC, and the Territories (1836)

The Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society Starts Its Third Annual Petition Drive for the Abolition of the Interstate Slave Trade and Slavery in Washington, DC, and the Territories (1836) The Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society Starts Its Third Annual Petition Drive for the Abolition of the Interstate Slave Trade and Slavery in Washington, DC, and the Territories (1836)

Letters and pamphlets are good. Petitions, better: Ye who have pens, prepare to use them now. We’re going to need all of you to go house to house to collect signatures. We’ve been…

Sep 17, 2019 / Books & the Arts / Melissa Range

The Grimké Sisters at Work on Theodore Dwight Weld’s ‘American Slavery as It Is’ (1838)

The Grimké Sisters at Work on Theodore Dwight Weld’s ‘American Slavery as It Is’ (1838) The Grimké Sisters at Work on Theodore Dwight Weld’s ‘American Slavery as It Is’ (1838)

Somebody had to be the first to amass the proof from slaveholders’ mouths: twenty thousand newspapers from the South, the unthinking testimony parsed, scissored carefully into stri…

Sep 17, 2019 / Books & the Arts / Melissa Range

Sally Rooney and the Millennial Novel of Manners

Sally Rooney and the Millennial Novel of Manners Sally Rooney and the Millennial Novel of Manners

Her second book, Normal People, mines the travails of Irish youth to tell a decidedly contemporary love story. 

Sep 17, 2019 / Books & the Arts / Hannah Gold

The Making of Moroccan Funk

The Making of Moroccan Funk The Making of Moroccan Funk

Led by the Casablanca polymath Abdelakabir Faradjallah, the band Attarazat Addahabia defined the sound of the city.

Sep 17, 2019 / Books & the Arts / Marcus J. Moore

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