Books & the Arts

Silicon Valley’s Workplace Problem

Tech start ups have long thrived on an exceptional view of themselves. But far from being the exception, their companies tend to embody much of what is wrong with our economy. 

Clio Chang

How Obama-Era Economics Sold Us Short

Faced with the shattering 2008 crisis, Obama and his key advisers largely sought to restore the wobbly pre-crisis status quo.

Ryan Cooper

The Liberation of Fiona Apple

Her first album in eight years, Fetch the Bolt Cutters, is exquisite.

Rumaan Alam

From the Magazine

The Young Lords’ Revolution

A new book looks at the history of the Afro-Latinx radical activist group and how their influence continues to be felt.

Ed Morales

The Long Roots of Corporate Irresponsibility

Nicholas Lemann’s history of 20th century corporations, Transaction Man, shows how an unrelenting faith in the market and profit doomed the American economy.

Rick Perlstein

Jenny Offill’s Novel of Climate Dread

In Weather, Offill is reluctant to offer false comfort, but she does ask us if worrying is enough.

Tony Tulathimutte

History & Politics

Who Gets to Be British?

In Imperial Intimacies, Hazel Carby offers her readers a personal and often heartbreaking history of British empire and identity. 

Gaiutra Bahadur

The Radical Life and Times of Crystal Eastman

A new biography reveals how the feminist, pacifist, labor activist, and socialist fused the best strains of American leftism into one.  

Vivian Gornick

The Strange and Often Radical Pursuit of Immortality in Russia

A new book looks at the history of a century-long movement to create life after death.

Sophie Pinkham

Politics

The Inescapable Politics of Climate Change

At this point, we all know that climate change is happening (or at least most of us do). But do we really know what it will mean to live on a planet transformed by it?
Alyssa Battistoni

At this point, we all know that climate change is happening (or at least most of us do). But do we really know what it will mean to live on a planet transformed by it? We know the seas will rise, but have we truly reckoned with the fact that… Continue Reading >

Literary Criticism

The Journalism of Gabriel García Márquez

His fiction and nonfiction can be seen as facets of a single, lifelong narrative enterprise.

Tony Wood

Lauren Wilkinson’s Novel of Race, Empire, and Espionage

American Spy examines the intersections between spycraft and living in America as a black person.

Jennifer Wilson

Toni Morrison’s Revolution in American Literature

As with Pilate, the fierce outsider and moral conscience of Song of Solomon, Morrison never asked for the proverbial seat at the table. Instead, she pulled the entire table over to her side of the room.

Jesse McCarthy
Ad Policy

Television and Films

Kelly Reichardt’s Anti-Capitalist Vision of Frontier America

Her latest film, First Cow, challenges the myths of Americana by telling the stories of peripheral, ordinary figures.

Phoebe Chen

Mati Diop’s ‘Atlantics’ Is a Startling Study of Power

As the contemporary film landscape heralds the coming of a class war, Diop’s beautiful movie reckons with capital and labor in groundbreaking fashion.

Namwali Serpell

The Beautiful, Baffling Mysteries of Paolo Sorrentino’s Vatican

His television series, The Young Pope and The New Pope, tell us a story bigger than one focused on just church or state.

Erin Schwartz

History

How Silicon Valley Broke the Economy

The question of how to fix the tech industry is now inseparable from the question of how to fix the system of capitalism that the late 20th century gave us.
Adrian Chen

One of Apple cofounder Steve Jobs’s most audacious marketing triumphs is rarely mentioned in the paeans to his genius that remain a staple of business content farms. In 1982, Jobs offered to donate a computer to every K–12 school in America, provided Congress pass a bill giving Apple substantial tax… Continue Reading >

Poems

Editor's Picks

The Workers That Built America

William P. Jones

Is Our Food Culture Killing Us?

Susan Pedersen

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