Stumbling on Chilean Stones—and Chilean History

Chile has a new leader and a bright future. But a country in which 44 percent of the electorate voted for an admirer of Pinochet is in need of as many obstacles to forgetting as possible.

Ariel Dorfman

The Sublime Ironies of John Ashbery

Does his first posthumous collection, Parallel Movement of the Hands, help answer the riddle of his poetic project? 

Ryan Ruby

The Surprising History of the Comic Book

Since their initial popularity during World War II, comic books have always been a medium for American counterculture and for nativism and empire. 

J. Hoberman

Republicans Replace Local Election Officials With Trump Loyalists

Calvin Trillin

Danielle Allen Is Running for Massachusetts Governor to Revive American Democracy

Can she convince the state’s voters to put her ideas into practice?

Serena Cho

The Making of a Coronavirus-Criminal Presidency

If you want to know how the US ended up in a pandemic with a swindler president who could not be bothered to take basic steps to save lives, don’t start with Trump.

John Nichols

John Roberts Gets an F on His Annual Report

The chief justice’s year-end appraisal of the federal judiciary reads as innocuous at first glance—it’s anything but.

Elie Mystal

The Past and Future of Native California

A new book retells California’s history through the experience of its Native peoples.

Julian Brave NoiseCat

Terry Teachout and the Last of the Conservative Critics

He was a generation younger than Joan Didion and her cohort of critics who got their start at National Review. With his death, their strain of criticism seems not only rare but perhaps extinct.

Jeet Heer

Learning From Decades of Public Health Failure

A conversation with George Aumoithe on the history of disease prevention, the economic roots of the crisis American hospitals face, and why we need to do better.

Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins