Culture

A community member holds a candle by the “Say Their Names” art installation cemetery with headstones representing Black people killed by police, during a vigil marking the fifth anniversary of George Floyd's death, at George Floyd Square in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 25, 2025.

It Has Never Been Easy to Be Both Black and American It Has Never Been Easy to Be Both Black and American

The administration knows that subduing history as it is doing works to keep people of color in this country disunited and at odds with each other.

Jul 28, 2025 / Keenan Norris

W.G. Sebald, 1999.

Before Sebald Was Great Before Sebald Was Great

By looking at his early work, we can better understand who the German writer was beyond his persona as the melancholy intellectual and serious man of letters.

Jul 28, 2025 / Books & the Arts / David Schurman Wallace

A four-panel comic from Action Comics 8, 1939. Superman destroys slum housing to force the government to build public housing for the poor.

The New Deal and the Popular Front Gave Us Superman The New Deal and the Popular Front Gave Us Superman

The real Man of Steel wasn’t woke, but he was radical.

Jul 25, 2025 / Jeet Heer

Ozzy Osbourne, Rock God Despite Himself (1948–2025)

Ozzy Osbourne, Rock God Despite Himself (1948–2025) Ozzy Osbourne, Rock God Despite Himself (1948–2025)

The Prince of Darkness, who gave us heavy metal as we know it, has been laid to rest.

Jul 25, 2025 / Obituary / Kim Kelly

Gazan children playing in the rubble of the Islamic Univerity

Challenging the Silence Over Palestine in the American Historical Association Challenging the Silence Over Palestine in the American Historical Association

Institutional complicity in injustice.

Jul 24, 2025 / Van Gosse

Matilde “Sacha” Artes, of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, in Buenos Aires, 1985.

The Argentine Grandmothers Who Resisted the Junta The Argentine Grandmothers Who Resisted the Junta

Haley Cohen Gilliland’s A Flower Traveled in My Blood looks at the efforts of a human rights group to find the children and grandchildren who were disappeared by a dictatorship.

Jul 24, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Jacob Sugarman

Niloofar Apartment in Tehran by Alidoost and Partners.

Iranian Brickwork Shows Us Better Architecture Is Possible Iranian Brickwork Shows Us Better Architecture Is Possible

Why the beauty and inventiveness of contemporary masonry in Iran has captured Western audiences.

Jul 23, 2025 / Kate Wagner

A man carries electronic waste at Agbogbloshie dumpsite in Ghanaian capital of Accra, 2017.

Want to Understand Global Inequality? Visit the Dump. Want to Understand Global Inequality? Visit the Dump.

Alexander Clapp’s Waste Wars, a world-spanning inquiry into the politics of garbage, makes a case that everything that is wrong with capitalism is embodied in our trash.

Jul 23, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Carol Schaeffer

Illustration by Eric Drooker DROOKER

The Enduring Lessons of Wages for Housework The Enduring Lessons of Wages for Housework

Emily Callaci’s history of the international feminist movement examines the influence of their intellectual and political victories.

Jul 22, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Maia Silber

Stephen Colbert on the set of

How CBS Decided It Couldn’t Afford to Let Stephen Colbert Speak His Mind How CBS Decided It Couldn’t Afford to Let Stephen Colbert Speak His Mind

The network claims it’s canceling The Late Show for financial reasons, but the real bottom line here is Trump appeasement.

Jul 21, 2025 / Ben Schwartz

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