Books and Ideas

Michael Moore for President

Michael Moore for President Michael Moore for President

If nominated, I will run. If elected, I will serve.

Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Michael Moore

‘Nation’ Editor in the Gilded Age: Communism Will Lead to Smoking at Funerals and Mating in the Streets

‘Nation’ Editor in the Gilded Age: Communism Will Lead to Smoking at Funerals and Mating in the Streets ‘Nation’ Editor in the Gilded Age: Communism Will Lead to Smoking at Funerals and Mating in the Streets

Whatever power there is anywhere is to be lodged in the hands of the most stupid and incapable.

Mar 23, 2015 / Feature / E.L. Godkin

Berlin Wall, 1981

East, West—Is There a Third Way? East, West—Is There a Third Way?

The cold war has become a habit, an addiction, supported by very powerful material interests in each bloc.

Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / E.P. Thompson

A Biography of ‘The Nation’: The First Fifty Years

A Biography of ‘The Nation’: The First Fifty Years A Biography of ‘The Nation’: The First Fifty Years

Founded by abolitionists in 1865, The Nation became a moribund defender of the status quo. But its firm anti-imperialism brought it back to life.

Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / D.D. Guttenplan

Walt Whitman Is An Insult To Art, Says 22-Year Old Henry James

Walt Whitman Is An Insult To Art, Says 22-Year Old Henry James Walt Whitman Is An Insult To Art, Says 22-Year Old Henry James

Drum-Taps is the effort of an essentially prosaic mind to lift itself, by a prolonged muscular strain, into poetry.

Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Henry James

For the Jews—Life or Death?

For the Jews—Life or Death? For the Jews—Life or Death?

An appeal for help from 1944.

Mar 23, 2015 / Feature / I.F. Stone

Tight Rope Tight Rope

July 13, 1963 We live in fragments like speech. Like the fits of wind, shivering against the window. Pieces of meaning, pierced and strung together. The bright bead of the poem, the bright bead of your woman’s laughter. 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. The Nation was one of the first major publications to print LeRoi Jones’s work, including his 1964 essay on the fight between Cassius Clay and Sonny Liston. Jones (1934–2014) later changed his name to Amiri Baraka. 

Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / LeRoi Jones

Testimonials to ‘The Nation’

Testimonials to ‘The Nation’ Testimonials to ‘The Nation’

Encomiums from Elizabeth Warren, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Bernie Sanders and many more.

Mar 23, 2015 / Feature

Weird Bedfellows

Weird Bedfellows Weird Bedfellows

In their defense of “tradition” against the liberating potential of architecture, Prince Charles and Xi Jinping find unlikely common ground.

Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Michael Sorkin

Home Song Home Song

March 24, 1926 Oh breezes blowing on the red hill-top By tall fox-tails, Where through dry twigs and leaves and grasses hop The dull-brown quails! Is there no magic floating in the air To bring to me A breath of you, when I am homesick here Across the sea? Oh black boys holding on the cricket ground A penny race! What other black boy frisking round and round, Plays in my place? When picnic days come with their yearly thrills In warm December, The boy in me romps with you in the hills— Remember! Paris, 1925 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. Claude McKay (1889–1948), author of the novels Home to Harlem (1928) and Banjo (1929), only published this one poem in The Nation, but he also wrote three essays in the mid-1930s on race relations in New York City—including a firsthand report on the 1935 Harlem riot—and one travel dispatch from North Africa. 

Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Claude McKay

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