Books and Ideas

When ‘Commentary’ Parroted ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’

When ‘Commentary’ Parroted ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ When ‘Commentary’ Parroted ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’

Like it or not, Jews and homosexualists are in the same fragile boat, and one would have to be pretty obtuse not to see the common danger.

Mar 23, 2015 / Feature / Gore Vidal

We Have Been Talking About Football’s Brutality for 120 Years

We Have Been Talking About Football’s Brutality for 120 Years We Have Been Talking About Football’s Brutality for 120 Years

American parents should keep their sons out of the game.

Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / The Editors

Where Reaganism and Astrology Meet

Where Reaganism and Astrology Meet Where Reaganism and Astrology Meet

It is scarcely news that the President is in the mainstream of popular American credulity. He has been nurtured in the same rich loam of folk ignorance, historical figment and para...

Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Alexander Cockburn

1965–2015 1965–2015

A forum for debate between radicals and liberals in an age of austerity, surveillance and endless war, The Nation has long had one foot inside the establishment and one outside it....

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

What Would Lincoln Think of Race Relations on His 100th Birthday?

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 How to Lose Friends and Influence People

…and other tales from the “back of the book.”

Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Elizabeth Pochoda

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

Clickbait Has Plagued Journalism for 125 Years

Clickbait Has Plagued Journalism for 125 Years Clickbait Has Plagued Journalism for 125 Years

The dragging down of the mighty has been not unpleasing sport in all ages.

Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / E.L. Godkin and Rochelle Gurstein

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