Books & the Arts
In the Shadow of 9/11
Did the War on Terror put our democracy at risk—or reveal its flaws?
Samuel MoynAdam Curtis’s Modern Discontents
In his new eight-hour epic, the British filmmaker offers a globe-trotting chronicle of our times.
Kevin LozanoSandi Tan’s Magical Americana
Her new novel, Lurkers, captures the defiant and surreal exuberance that has defined her work across fiction and film.
Rebecca LiuFrom the Magazine
The Liberation of Alice Neel
Her paintings were a site of expression for populist politics and in her art she found something close to freedom from the doldrums of her personal life.
Jillian Steinhauer
Literary Criticism
Brandon Taylor’s Potlucks and Parties
In his new collection of short stories, the Booker-Prize nominated novelist explores the desires and discontents of people living in small university towns.
Jennifer Wilson
The Rise of Adjunct Lit
How a bleak future in and out of the academy has produced a new kind of campus novel.
Maggie Doherty
Diane Johnson’s Homecoming
In her new novel, the novelist returns to the United States to offer a self-conscious story of American fragmentation.
Becca RothfeldB&A Newsletter
History & Politics
Ami Ayalon’s Political Journey
In Friendly Fire, the former Shin Bet director offers two narratives—one of the story that Israel tells the world, the other of the story Israel tries not to tell the world.
Raja Shehadeh
The Gilded Age’s Democratic Contradictions
A new history examines how the late 19th century’s raucous party system gave way to a more sedate and exclusionary political culture that erected more and more barriers to participation.
Eric Foner
Telling the Story of Undocumented America
Using both journalism and visionary vignettes, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio examines undocumented life in contemporary United States.
Gaiutra BahadurFiction
The Distortions of Pinochet
Nona Fernández’s novels reckon with the Chilean dictatorship through surreality and memory.
Lucas Iberico LozadaOn August 27, 1984, a man named Andrés Valenzuela walked into a magazine’s offices in Santiago, Chile, and asked to speak with a journalist. The magazine, Cauce, had been founded during a brief thaw in Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship, then entering its 11th year. Valenzuela surprised the journalist when he… Continue Reading >
Television and Films
“Zola” and the Limits of the Internet Movie
An adaptation of a viral Twitter thread only scratches the surface of how film storytelling might intersect with life online.
Erin Schwartz
The Unfinished Evolution of Aziz Ansari
With the latest season of Master of None, the comedian and director’s attempt at a reboot of his creative approach reveals the limits of his perspective.
Vikram MurthiPolitics
Whose Side Is the Supreme Court On?
Many people who came of age in the 1950s and 60s view the Supreme Court as a force for good when it comes to race. But the court has often been the most anti-progressive branch of the federal government.
Randall KennedyMany people who came of age between, say, 1940 and 1970 have become accustomed to seeing the Supreme Court as a force for good when it comes to race. They have developed a faith in the justices’ claim, voiced in 1940 in a decision overturning the convictions of Black defendants… Continue Reading >
Poems
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September 9, 2021
The Board Meeting
Heather Christle -
August 26, 2021
Jackie Wang’s Dream Poetics
Her poetry and essays explore the personal, aesthetic, and political possibilities of dreaming.
Thea Ballard -
June 10, 2021
Boxes of Ashes
Rigoberto González -
June 8, 2021
Observations from the conqueror’s diary
Tsering Wangmo Dhompa
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Who’s to Blame in “The White Lotus”?
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Fulton Leroy Washington Was a Prison Painter. Now He’s an Art-World Star.
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Adam Curtis’s Modern Discontents
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Seeing the Climate Crisis Through the Eyes of Henry Thoreau
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Luchita Hurtado’s Spiritual Modernism
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Annette Gordon-Reed’s Personal History of Juneteenth
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David Graeber and David Wengrow’s Anarchist History of Humanity
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Russia’s War Against the Cold
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Republicans Urge Defiance of Biden Mandates
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Undanced Dances During a Pandemic
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The Coronavirus Means Curtains for Artists
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Dismantling Transphobia at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival
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Dana Spiotta’s Political Fiction
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The Climate Apocalypse According to Joy Williams
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Adalbert Stifter’s Disappearing World
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Adam Curtis’s Modern Discontents
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What the Harlem Cultural Festival Represented
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Barry Jenkins’s American Saga
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Fulton Leroy Washington Was a Prison Painter. Now He’s an Art-World Star.
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Art and Exile in the Third Republic
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Luchita Hurtado’s Spiritual Modernism
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Fighting Inequality After Occupy Wall Street
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How Students Pressured Harvard to Divest From Fossil Fuels– and Won
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Joe Biden Can Cancel Your Student Loan Debt
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Why We Need a New Federal Writers’ Project
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Did ‘Cancel Culture’ Drive Richard Wright Underground?
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Hello, Poetry, You ‘Lamenting Pleasure’
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The Age of Irrationality
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A Night With Palestine’s Defenders of the Mountain
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Commemorating the 20th Anniversary of the September 11 Attacks
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Will the Public Internet Survive?
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Máirtín Ó Cadhain: Found in Translation
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Tony Tulathimutte’s Worst-Case Scenarios