This Is What the Founding Fathers Wanted

Just another day of wrecking America for fun and profit.

Tom Tomorrow

How has Religious Experience Changed in a Secular Age?

A new book by Tara Isabella Burton explores how people are infusing new cultural forms with quasi-religious meaning.

Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow

Trump and Pardons

Calvin Trillin

Theodor Adorno and the Crises of Liberalism

At the center of Adorno’s work was a reminder that fascist movements are not exceptional to liberal democracy but signs of its failure.

Peter E. Gordon

How Did We End Up With Our Current Public Defender System?

Sara Mayeux’s new history highlights how without a more fundamental transformation of criminal law, public defenders often provide only a limited form of equality and fairness before the law.

Matthew Clair

How Bob Dylan Wrote the Second Great American Songbook

The sale of the singer-songwriter’s catalogue is a reminder of his massive cultural legacy.

Jeet Heer

Human Rights Day

Will the USA remember our promise?

Jos Sances

The Vanishing Queer Underground of Los Angeles

Reynaldo Rivera’s photos of the city's nightlife document a time of cheap rent and possibility.

Kate Wolf

A Guide to Giving: Worst Year Ever Edition

Get a fresh start after a rotten year—help those who help others.

Katha Pollitt

How Rural China Became an Engine for Global Consumer Capitalism

Xiaowei Wang’s Blockchain Chicken Farm surveys the tech industry in the Chinese countryside to upend the way we talk about the Internet in the West.

A.Y. Li