Books and Ideas

Nation Poetry

Kakakin Kakakin

Mar 11, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Hussain Ahmed

The Cruel World According to Stephen Miller

The Cruel World According to Stephen Miller The Cruel World According to Stephen Miller

How did he become the Trump era’s architect of hate? 

Mar 10, 2025 / Books & the Arts / David Klion

Will Scholars Take a Stand Against Scholasticide in Gaza?

Will Scholars Take a Stand Against Scholasticide in Gaza? Will Scholars Take a Stand Against Scholasticide in Gaza?

The fight inside the historical profession heats up.

Mar 6, 2025 / Van Gosse

An interior view of a model condominium at the sales center for the Platinum luxury condominiums in New York City, 2008.

Rumaan Alam’s Haves and Have-Nots Rumaan Alam’s Haves and Have-Nots

With his latest novel, Entitlement, he asks: Can wealth inequality make you lose your mind?

Mar 5, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Jess Bergman

How Do We Combat the Racist History of Public Education?

How Do We Combat the Racist History of Public Education? How Do We Combat the Racist History of Public Education?

A conversation with Eve L. Ewing about the schoolhouse’s role in enforcing racial hierarchy and her book Original Sins.

Mar 4, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Naomi Elias

Art Spiegelman, “Self-Portrait With Maus Mask,” 1989.

Art Spiegelman and the Inescapable Shadow of Fascism Art Spiegelman and the Inescapable Shadow of Fascism

The creator of Maus has learned that the past is always present.

Mar 3, 2025 / Jeet Heer

Nation Poetry

Death in Captivity, a Surrender Death in Captivity, a Surrender

Feb 28, 2025 / Poems / Mai Der Vang

A backcountry road is covered in recent snow, February 2, 2024, in the Catskills Mountain region of New York.

February Storms in a Country That Still Works—for Now February Storms in a Country That Still Works—for Now

The reliable knot that pulls together the threads of basic human life in America is beginning to unravel, and there suddenly arises the possibility that the center will not hold.

Feb 26, 2025 / Susan Brind Morrow

Ronald Johnson

Ronald Johnson’s American Romanticism Ronald Johnson’s American Romanticism

Books & the Arts / February 26, 2025 Ronald Johnson’s American Romanticism An inheritor of a distinct tradition that stretched back to Coleridge and Emerson, Johnson’s natu…

Feb 26, 2025 / Books & the Arts / David B. Hobbs

Djuna Barnes, 1922.

Djuna Barnes’s Playthings Djuna Barnes’s Playthings

Her short fiction provides an odd glimpse at a writer whose interests move beyond the human and into something more inchoate.

Feb 25, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Missouri Williams

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