Books & the Arts

The Worlds of Kathleen Collins

The quiet brilliance of her films and fiction was found in her ability to to place the interior and subjective in the context of the social and political.

Farah Jasmine Griffin

The Long and Grim Road to ‘Plessy v. Ferguson’

Steven Luxenberg’s new book offers a vivid account of the events that led to the ruling.

David Cole

The Class Politics of the Civil War

By naming a common enemy—the privileged class of slaveholders—the Republican Party and Union Army were able to build and then steer a coalition of Americans toward the systematic destruction of slavery.

James Oakes

From the Magazine

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

The Use and Abuse of International Law in the Occupied Territories

Noura Erakat’s new book examines the legal arguments used to justify Israel's occupation—and the legal arguments that might have been used to counter it.

Raja Shehadeh

Namwali Serpell’s Postcolonial Epic

The Old Drift tells the multigenerational story of Zambia coming into being.

Nawal Arjini

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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