How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love ‘Nation’ Readers How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love ‘Nation’ Readers
On a Nation cruise, the maritime adventure I usually refer to as “Lefties at Sea,” I used to take it for granted that some of the guests were troubled by my presence.
Mar 23, 2015 / Feature / Calvin Trillin
1895–1905: When the American Empire Was Born 1895–1905: When the American Empire Was Born
Whenever a small force of Americans undertakes an expedition, the woods and hills become alive with enemies.
Mar 23, 2015 / Feature / The Nation
1945–1955: We Face a Choice Between One World or None 1945–1955: We Face a Choice Between One World or None
The atomic bomb represents a revolution in science. It calls for a comparable revolution in our thinking.
Mar 23, 2015 / Feature / The Nation
When Leftists Become Conservatives When Leftists Become Conservatives
It sure is a bracing feeling for the chair-bound intellectual to imagine himself the drivetrain in the engine of history.
Mar 23, 2015 / Feature / Rick Perlstein
When Respectability Was No Longer Respectable, and Virtue Required Acting Out, Not Leaning In When Respectability Was No Longer Respectable, and Virtue Required Acting Out, Not Leaning In
Spelman College girls are still “nice,” but not enough to keep them from walking up and down, carrying picket signs, in front of supermarkets in the heart of Atlanta.
Mar 23, 2015 / Feature / Howard Zinn and Paula J. Giddings
What Does ‘The Communist Manifesto’ Have to Offer 150 Years After Its Publication? What Does ‘The Communist Manifesto’ Have to Offer 150 Years After Its Publication?
At the dawn of the twentieth century, there were workers who were ready to die with The Communist Manifesto. At the dawn of the twenty-first, there may be even more who are ready t...
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Marshall Berman
What Would Lincoln Think of Race Relations on His 100th Birthday? What Would Lincoln Think of Race Relations on His 100th Birthday?
The Nation’s publisher writes about “the negro problem” during the very week he helped found the NAACP.
Mar 23, 2015 / Feature / Oswald Garrison Villard
Present Present
December 28, 1964 The stranded gulch below Grand Central the gentle purr of cab tires in snow and hidden stars tears on the windshield torn inexorably away in whining motion and the dark thoughts which surround neon in Union Square I see you for a moment red green yellow searchlights cutting through falling flakes, head bent to the wind wet and frowning, melancholy, trying I know perfectly well where you walk to and that we’ll meet in even greater darkness later and will be warm so our cross of paths will not be just muddy footprints in the morning not like celestial bodies’ yearly passes, nothing pushes us away from each other even now I can lean forward across the square and see your surprised grey look become greener as I wipe the city’s moisture from your face and you shake the snow off onto my shoulder, light as a breath where the quarrels and vices of estranged companions weighed so bitterly and accidentally before, I saw you on the floor of my life walking slowly that time in summer rain stranger and nearer to become a way of feeling that is not painful casual or diffuse and seems to explore some peculiar insight of the heavens for its favorite bodies in the mixed-up air This article is part of The Nation’s 150th Anniversary Special Issue. Download a free PDF of the issue, with articles by James Baldwin, Barbara Ehrenreich, Toni Morrison, Howard Zinn and many more, here. This poem by Frank O’Hara (1926–1966) was published the same year his collection Lunch Poems brought him to fame.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Frank O’Hara
How to Lose Friends and Influence People How to Lose Friends and Influence People
…and other tales from the “back of the book.”
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Elizabeth Pochoda
The Indignant Generation The Indignant Generation
The current crop of students has gone far to shake the label of apathy and conformity that had stuck through the 1950s.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Jessica Mitford