Frederick Law Olmsted Surveys a City Burned to the Ground Frederick Law Olmsted Surveys a City Burned to the Ground
Chicago's struggle to recover from the Great Fire is engaging the study of its best and most conservative minds.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Frederick Law Olmsted
Was Europe a Success? Was Europe a Success?
It would be intolerable to belong to a society which denied the freedom of expression.
Mar 23, 2015 / Feature / Albert Einstein
The Indignant Generation The Indignant Generation
The current crop of students has gone far to shake the label of apathy and conformity that had stuck through the 1950s.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Jessica Mitford
There Cannot Be Peace and Security Until the Cause of Palestinian Suffering Is Addressed There Cannot Be Peace and Security Until the Cause of Palestinian Suffering Is Addressed
There is a racist premise underpinning the “peace process” that Arab lives aren’t worth as much as Jewish lives.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Edward W. Said
Parting Parting
December 7, 1963 White morning flows into the mirror. Her eye, still old with sleep, meets itself like a sister. How they slept last night, the dream that caged them back to back, was nothing new. Last words, tears, most often come wrapped as the everyday familiar failure. Now, pulling the comb slowly through her loosened hair, she tries to find the parting; it must come out after all: hidden in all that tangle there is a way. This article is part of The Nation’s 150th Anniversary Special Issue. Download a free PDF of the issue, with articles by James Baldwin, Barbara Ehrenreich, Toni Morrison, Howard Zinn and many more, here. Over a half-century, Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) wrote twenty-two poems for The Nation and several reviews and essays, including a 2002 piece exploring the meaning of “antiwar.”
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Adrienne Rich
Cuba Libre Cuba Libre
Covering the island has been a central concern for The Nation since the beginning—producing scoops, aiding diplomacy, and pushing for a change in policy.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Peter Kornbluh
The Mind Is an Enchanting Thing The Mind Is an Enchanting Thing
December 18, 1943 is an enchanted thing like the glaze on a katydid-wing subdivided by sun till the nettings are legion. Like Gieseking playing Scarlatti; like the apteryx-awl as a beak, or the kiwi’s rain-shawl of haired feathers, the mind feeling its way as though blind, walks along with its eyes on the ground. It has memory’s ear that can hear without having to hear. Like the gyroscope’s fall, truly unequivocal because trued by regnant certainty, it is a power of strong enchantment. It is like the dove- neck animated by sun; it is memory’s eye; it’s conscientious inconsistency. It tears off the veil, tears the temptation, the mist the heart wears, from its eyes—if the heart has a face; it takes apart dejection. It’s fire in the dove-neck’s iridescence; in the inconsistencies of Scarlatti. Unconfusion submits its confusion to proof; it’s not a Herod’s oath that cannot change. This article is part of The Nation’s 150th Anniversary Special Issue. Download a free PDF of the issue, with articles by James Baldwin, Barbara Ehrenreich, Toni Morrison, Howard Zinn and many more, here. Marianne Moore (1887–1972) wrote eleven essays and seven poems for The Nation between 1936 and 1952. Moore’s biographer, Linda Leavell, indicates that she stopped contributing out of solidarity with her friend, ousted literary editor Margaret Marshall, but also because she disliked The Nation’s criticism of Eisenhower’s “honest, auspicious, genuinely devoted speeches.”
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Marianne Moore
It’s Not Too Late: Save Democracy By Amending the Constitution It’s Not Too Late: Save Democracy By Amending the Constitution
Corporations are not people, money is not speech, and votes must matter more than billionaires’ dollars.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / John Nichols
1865–1875: When Corporations Became America’s Aristocracy 1865–1875: When Corporations Became America’s Aristocracy
Such sayings as, “The less government you have, the better,” were adopted as incontrovertible maxims.
Mar 23, 2015 / Feature / The Nation
Langston Hughes and Touré on Loving Blackness in a Nation Ruled by White Supremacy Langston Hughes and Touré on Loving Blackness in a Nation Ruled by White Supremacy
The Black artist still must confront the choice between being a messenger about the community and being a pure maker of artistic product.
Mar 23, 2015 / Feature / Langston Hughes and Touré