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
The Gospel According to Wendell Berry The Gospel According to Wendell Berry
To destroy a forest is an act of greater seriousness than we have yet grasped. But to destroy the earth itself is to destroy the possibility of recovery.
Mar 23, 2015 / Feature / Wendell Berry and Wen Stephenson
1995–2005: Our Enemies Cannot Defeat Us—Only We Can 1995–2005: Our Enemies Cannot Defeat Us—Only We Can
Nation writers on sensationalist art, financial deregulation, September 11, The Sopranos, Texas, the Iraq war and reactionary conservatism.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / The Nation
The Bear The Bear
April 18, 1928 The bear puts both arms round the tree above her And draws it down as if it were a lover And its choke-cherries lips to kiss goodby, Then lets it snap back upright in the sky. Her next step rocks a boulder on the wall. (She’s making her cross-country in the fall.) Her great weight creaks the barbed wire in its staples As she flings over and off down through the maples, Leaving on one wire tooth a lock of hair. Such is the uncaged progress of the bear. The world has room to make a bear feel free. The universe seems cramped to you and me. Man acts more like the poor bear in a cage That all day fights a nervous inward rage, His mood rejecting all his mind suggests. He paces back and forth and never rests The toe-nail click and shuffle of his feet, The telescope at one end of his beat, And at the other end the microscope, Two instruments of nearly equal hope, And in conjunction giving quite a spread. Or if he rests from scientific tread, ’Tis only to sit back and sway his head Through ninety-odd degrees of arc it seems, Between two metaphysical extremes. He sits back on his fundamental butt With lifted snout and eyes (if any) shut (He almost looks religious but he’s not), And back and forth he sways from cheek to cheek, At one extreme agreeing with one Greek, At the other agreeing with another Greek, Which may be thought but only so to speak. A baggy figure equally pathetic When sedentary and when peripatetic. 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. Reviewing Robert Frost’s first book, A Boy’s Will, in 1915, The Nation described him as “a poet by endowment,” but “a symbolist only by trade.” Frost (1874–1963) wrote four poems for The Nation in the 1920s. When he died, the sportswriter Roger Kahn wrote in the magazine of his friend: “Robert Frost is dead and my mortality and yours is thus more stark.”
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Robert Frost
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
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
How I Got That Story How I Got That Story
“Stay to the end…and read everything”: Reporting the Iran/Contra scandal taught me everything I needed to know about covering Washington.
Mar 23, 2015 / Feature / David Corn
A Report From Occupied Territory A Report From Occupied Territory
The law is meant to be my servant and not my master, still less my torturer and my murderer.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / James Baldwin and Carrie Mae Weems
2005–2015: This All Seems Eerily Familiar 2005–2015: This All Seems Eerily Familiar
Nation writers on disaster capitalism, Blackwater, Obama, the financial bailout, austerity, Occupy Wall Street, Trayvon Martin and Charlie Hebdo.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / The Nation