Books & the Arts

A depiction of Herod the Great.

Zora Neale Hurston’s Lost Roman Epic Zora Neale Hurston’s Lost Roman Epic

In The Life of Herod the Great, we get a novel full of intrigue, betrayal, and revolution.

Apr 9, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Edna Bonhomme

Old Chapel Lane, Skibbereen, County Cork in 1846.

What Caused the Irish Famine? What Caused the Irish Famine?

A new book offers a comprehensive and heartbreaking account of the most terrible catastrophe to befall Ireland in the modern era.

Apr 8, 2025 / Books & the Arts / John Banville

The Rebellions of Murray Kempton

The Rebellions of Murray Kempton The Rebellions of Murray Kempton

One of his generation’s most prolific journalists, Kempton never turned a blind eye to the inequalities all around him.

Apr 8, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Vivian Gornick

Nation Poetry

Make It New Make It New

Apr 8, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Emily Skaja

Agnes Callard and the Examined Life

Agnes Callard and the Examined Life Agnes Callard and the Examined Life

In her new book, Callard makes the case that we should all live more philosophically but where does politics fit in?

Apr 8, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Olúfémi O. Táíwò

Donald Trump and Roy Cohn at a press conference.

Donald Trump’s Long Con Donald Trump’s Long Con

Trump’s “Art of” trilogy may be full of willful exaggeration but the books also reveal how the 1980s and ’90s formed his dog-eat-dog worldview. 

Apr 7, 2025 / Books & the Arts / John Ganz

The Excesses of “Mickey 17”

The Excesses of “Mickey 17” The Excesses of “Mickey 17”

Bong Joon-ho’s sci-fi blockbuster is both the director’s simplest and most unwieldy feature yet.

Apr 3, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Phoebe Chen

A man walks past a statue of Charles de Gaulle, with a cardboard speech bubble reading “LONG LIVE THE FREE ZAD” as hundreds of opponents to the Notre-Dame-des-Landes airport and ZAD activists gather to demand a collective management of the land planned for the airport’s construction, 2018.

Living and Learning in the Shadow of the Paris Commune Living and Learning in the Shadow of the Paris Commune

Kristin Ross’s The Commune Form traces a political tradition—based on reimagining class relations—that stretches from the 1871 uprising to the modern-day struggles of ZAD.

Apr 2, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Clinton Williamson

Want to Understand America’s Housing Crisis? Look to Atlanta.

Want to Understand America’s Housing Crisis? Look to Atlanta. Want to Understand America’s Housing Crisis? Look to Atlanta.

A conversation with Brian Goldstone about There Is No Place for Us, a damning account of a city's failure to address homelessness and how it is a microcosm of the rest of the US.

Apr 1, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Daniel Elkind

The Life and Death of Conspiracy Cinema

The Life and Death of Conspiracy Cinema The Life and Death of Conspiracy Cinema

Why did Hollywood lose interest in making paranoid thrillers like The Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor? Was it a change in the culture? Or a change in the marketplace?

Mar 31, 2025 / Books & the Arts / T. M. Brown

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