Books and Ideas

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

History Repeats Itself

History Repeats Itself History Repeats Itself

And democracy fades.

Feb 24, 2025 / OppArt / Jesse Duquette

Akseli Gallen-Kallela’s “The Lord of the Castle Spying on His Daughter” (circa 1900).

Can We Still Recover the Right to Be Left Alone? Can We Still Recover the Right to Be Left Alone?

The political theorist Lowry Pressly thinks we’ve abandoned a more creative and humanist definition of the concept.

Feb 24, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Cora Currier

Worms

Worms Worms

Free at last.

Feb 21, 2025 / OppArt / Steve Brodner

Beatriz Nascimento’s Histories of Afro-Brazilian Rebellion 

Beatriz Nascimento’s Histories of Afro-Brazilian Rebellion  Beatriz Nascimento’s Histories of Afro-Brazilian Rebellion 

The activist scholar devoted her life to sketching out a revisionist historiography of resistance in Latin America but also the world.

Feb 18, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Yasmina Price

Some day all this will be mine: Trump swears in Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of Health and Human Services.

Donald Trump Is Stealing the Kennedy Brand Donald Trump Is Stealing the Kennedy Brand

Does the Kennedy name stand for liberalism—or oligarchy?

Feb 14, 2025 / Jeet Heer

Florida resident Ann Richter holds antisemitic flyers she found on her lawn.

Some Inconvenient Truths About Antisemitism and the Left Some Inconvenient Truths About Antisemitism and the Left

By ceding the space on antisemitism—responding when we are accused of it, but not taking up the fight against it as our cause—we’ve created a strategic opportunity for the right.

Feb 14, 2025 / Rachel Shabi

It’s Time for the Democrats to Throw Off the Dead Hand of Clintonism

It’s Time for the Democrats to Throw Off the Dead Hand of Clintonism It’s Time for the Democrats to Throw Off the Dead Hand of Clintonism

More than 20 years after Bill Clinton left office, Democrats remain in the grips of his New Democrat politics. That’s a serious problem.

Feb 13, 2025 / Feature / Lily Geismer

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