Books & the Arts
The Magic of Denis Johnson
The Largesse of the Sea Maiden isn't exactly a sequel to Jesus’ Son, but it has the same breezy, epiphanic quality.
J. Robert LennonThe Long Road to ‘Citizens United’
Adam Winkler's new history argues that the problem with Citizens United is its inability to see the distorting effects of concentrated wealth.
David ColeJames Baldwin, Robert Penn Warren, and the Politics of Southern Multiculturalism
The search for cultural diversity and social equality.
Robert GreeneFrom the Magazine
The Many Philip Roths
The novelist’s wide-ranging work spanned from irreverent short stories to self-lacerating picaresque to experimental fiction, but at its center there was still a moral core.
David Marcus
Zora Neale Hurston and the Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade’s Last Survivor
Even after Emancipation, Kossula Oluales spent the rest of his life trying to recover what was lost.
Elias RodriquesLiterary Criticism
Wallace Thurman in Harlem
As an editor, novelist, and playwright, Wallace Thurman sought to offer honest, unabashed portraits of black life in Harlem.
Allyson Hobbs As an editor, novelist, and playwright, Wallace Thurman sought to offer honest, unabashed portraits of black life in Harlem.
The World of ‘Crime and Punishment’
A new translation captures the painful backdrop of Dostoyevsky’s classic: the poverty, crime, and violence that shaped much of everyday life in 19th-century St. Petersburg.
Jennifer Wilson
Joseph Conrad and the Dawn of Globalization
What passes for civilization is often just refined savagery.
Greg GrandinSocial Criticism
Perry Anderson’s Long Goodbye
In the absence of revolution, Perry Anderson embraces realism.
Bruce RobbinsPublished in the late 1940s, a decade after his death, the Italian volumes of Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks started the process of his secular canonization. A founder of the Italian Communist Party, Gramsci had spent 11 years in Fascist custody. During this period, while his teeth fell out and his… Continue Reading >
History & Politics
Organized Labor’s Lost Generations
Unions have struggled to make substantial gains since the ’70s, but not for the reasons historians think.
Gabriel Winant
Waiting for Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment
The genre that Pinker’s latest book most closely resembles is not 18th-century philosophie but a TED Talk.
David A. Bell
From Progress to Poverty: America’s Long Gilded Age
The America that emerged out of the Civil War was meant to be a radically more equal place. What went wrong?
Steven HahnMusic
Cardi B’s Best Life
What some would consider missteps, the rapper has turned into the stuff of stardom, and Invasion of Privacy is a momentous testament to perseverance.
Briana Younger
The Lamentations of Mount Eerie and David Byrne
Mount Eerie’s Now Only and David Byrne’s American Utopia both try to find meaning in a world of loss and death.
Bijan Stephen
The Genre of Post-Genre
William Brittelle has drawn from classical music, punk rock, and electronica to produce music that is at once free-ranging and a thrill to experience.
David HajduPolitical Theory
Arbitrary Rule
A new work of political theory captures the workplace power dynamics behind sexual harassment.
J.C. PanIt’s the rare person who works for a living and can’t easily recall their worst boss. In October, The New York Times and The New Yorker reported that for dozens of women in Hollywood, that boss was Harvey Weinstein. The revelations prompted a surge of women in other industries to… Continue Reading >
Poems
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February 1, 2018
America Will Be
Joshua Bennett -
December 14, 2017
Lincoln, Midnight
Sandra Beasley -
November 2, 2017
A Guide to the Louisa County Free Negro & Slave Records, 1770–1865
Kiki Petrosino -
October 26, 2017
Gay Bingo at a Pasadena Animal Shelter
Henri Cole
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Anthony Bourdain Knew There Was Nothing More Political Than Food
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Kanye’s Discontents
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Away With Monsieur Periné
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Satire Now Dead in the Age of Trump
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Remembering Jeanne Singer
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It’s Time for Americans to Reckon With the True History of Racial Oppression in This Country
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‘Call Me a Refugee, Not an Immigrant’: Viet Thanh Nguyen
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The Many Philip Roths
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What Does It Take to Write a Novel About Prison?
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The Presence and Absence of Basquiat
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The History of Lynching and the Present of Policing
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The Nazis Among Us
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Americans Are Drowning in Student-Loan Debt. The US Should Forgive All of It.
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At the University of Pittsburgh, Graduate Students Are Organizing to Survive
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We Need to Include Black Women’s Experience in the Movement Against Campus Sexual Assault
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The Many Philip Roths
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Language Is a ‘War Zone’: A Conversation With Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
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In Turkey, Repression of the Kurdish Language Is Back, With No End in Sight
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Satire Now Dead in the Age of Trump
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Will an Independent Press Survive in Russia?
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Trump’s Genius Is His Entertaining Idiocy