May 18/25, 2020, Issue

Cover art by: Eric Hanson

Editorial

Should We Be Kind to the Rich?

A reader also asks about the ethics of ordering groceries online during the pandemic.
Liza Featherstone
The Most Consequential Decision of Biden’s 2020 Campaign

Democrats really can’t waste the VP slot this time.
John Nichols
What We Know About the Covid-19 Race Gap

The CDC is finally releasing more data that show just how unequal the toll of the pandemic is. But we can’t stop there.
Zoë Carpenter
A Guide to Eye Communication

Peter Kuper
The Faces of Our Crisis

They stock the shelves at grocery stores, dispatch 911 calls, and pick crops. They deserve their due.
Molly Crabapple

Column

Why Did the ERA Die? FX’s ‘Mrs. America’ Has Some Answers.

Phyllis Schlafly, the subject of a new nine-part mini-series, teaches feminists never to underestimate their political enemies.
Katha Pollitt
It’s Time to Bring the Supreme Court Into the Modern Era—and the Light

Justice means making the Supreme Court as transparent as possible—and that means turning on the cameras.
Elie Mystal
Donald J. Trump, MD

Calvin Trillin
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Books & the Arts

The Long Shadow of Cultural Anthropology

Franz Boas, Margaret Mead, and their circle sought to show the fallacy of biological and physical difference, but they also created new forms of categorization that reinforced their underlying biases.
Jennifer Wilson
One Damn Thing After Another

The long roots of liberal democracy’s crisis.
Jan-Werner Müller
How Should Unions Organize?

In A Collective Bargain, Jane McAlevey makes the case for strike-ready unions and whole worker organizing. But in an age of globalized economies and climate change, is this enough?
E. Tammy Kim
Mary Gaitskill’s Art of Loneliness

Through her portraits of solitude, Gaitskill forces us to recognize those moments of subtle connection.
Maggie Doherty
The Making of the Radical Republicans

How did the struggle for emancipation become a mass politics?
Eric Foner
The Worlds of Edward Said

An exile who made the world his home, Said infused his literary style with a cosmopolitan ease and his political commitments with a cosmopolitan ethics.
Rashid Khalidi
Sarah Broom’s New Orleans Saga

In her new memoir, Broom reconstructs not only her family’s history in New Orleans but also the larger arc of black experience in the South.
Lovia Gyarkye
The Inner Life of American Communism

Vivian Gornick’s and Jodi Dean’s books mine a lost history of comradeship, determination, and intimacy.
Corey Robin

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