Books & the Arts

Adam Gopnik and the Cul-de-sac of 21st-Century Liberalism

In his new book, the New Yorker writer sets out to defend liberalism from its critics, but only ends up revealing its current limitations.

David A. Bell

Vasily Grossman in War and Peace

In both his life and his writing, the novelist and journalist captured the complications and contradictions of the Soviet century.

Sheila Fitzpatrick

Melii Is Not Playing Around

The Afro-Latina Harlem rapper’s brash music slides seamlessly between languages, cultures, and the boundaries of genre.

Julyssa Lopez

From the Magazine

Martin Luther King Jr.’s Social Democracy

In her new book, King and the Other America, historian Sylvie Laurent situates the Poor People’s Campaign and Martin Luther King Jr.’s later years in a longer history of black activism and social-democratic thinking.

Robert Greene II

The Political Odyssey of Sean Wilentz

How one of America's original Bernie Bros became an outspoken critic of the left.

Timothy Shenk

David Treuer’s Monumental History of Native American Life in the 20th Century

The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee tells the story of Native life as it flourished amidst hardship.

E. Tammy Kim

History & Politics

Julius Scott’s Epic About Black Resistance in the Age of Revolution

Modeled after Braudel’s masterpiece on the Mediterranean, The Common Wind helps recovers the radical world of black mariners, rebels, and runaways banding together to realize their freedom.

Manisha Sinha

The Inescapable Politics of Climate Change

What we need to know now is not what climate change will do in the future, but what we should about it in the present.

Alyssa Battistoni

Navigating Freedom With Cass Sunstein

When nudges won’t set you free.

Samuel Moyn

Literary Criticism

Grace Paley’s Crowded World

In her life, as in her writing, the boundaries between the personal and the political were remarkably porous.

Maggie Doherty

Wideman’s Ghosts

A profound sense of hope and despair haunts John Edgar Wideman’s new work of nonfiction.

Jesse McCarthy

John Lanchester’s Eerily Resonant Novel About Borders and Rising Sea Levels

His speculative new novel, The Wall, imagines a dystopian future but offers us a warning about our present. 

Laila Lalami
Ad Policy

History

Congress’s History of Violence

A new history of the antebellum years reminds us that politics on Capitol Hill has never been civil.
Andrew Delbanco

In a speech spanning two days in May 1856, Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner spent five hours on the floor of the Old Senate Chamber denouncing the Kansas-Nebraska Act, a compromise bill that left the fate of slavery in those territories to be decided by local popular vote. In the course… Continue Reading >

Music

Vampire Weekend Grows Up

Over a decade since their debut, the band that soundtracked the Great Recession returns with one of their most ambitious albums. 

Bijan Stephen

Quelle Chris Upends How We Talk About Guns

The Detroit rapper’s new album offers a panorama of gun culture that brims with disarming nuance and clarity.

Stephen Kearse

This Is How You Make an Electronic Masterpiece

Helado Negro’s new album of deeply intimate electronic music is simply stunning.

Julyssa Lopez

Philosophy & Political Theory

Can Charles Mills Save Liberal Philosophy From Itself?

In his new book, the philosopher argues that political theory has obscured the history of racism in liberal societies.
Christopher Lebron

Charles Mills’s Black Rights/White Wrongs represents the culmination of more than two decades of work on the philosophy of race and social justice. Mills received his PhD from the University of Toronto in 1985, working with the left-wing philosophers Frank Cunningham and Daniel Goldstick on the concept of ideology in… Continue Reading >

Poems

Editor's Picks

In the Shadow of the CMS

Kyle Chayka

Thoreau: A Radical for All Seasons

Jedediah Britton-Purdy

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