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
Langston Hughes and Touré on Loving Blackness in a Nation Ruled by White Supremacy Langston Hughes and Touré on Loving Blackness in a Nation Ruled by White Supremacy
The Black artist still must confront the choice between being a messenger about the community and being a pure maker of artistic product.
Mar 23, 2015 / Feature / Langston Hughes and Touré
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
Night Thoughts Night Thoughts
On reverence, rebellion and other alternatives to social suicide.
Mar 23, 2015 / Feature / JoAnn Wypijewski
The Plain Sense of Things The Plain Sense of Things
December 6, 1952 After the leaves have fallen, we return To a plain sense of things. It is as if We had come to an end of the imagination, Inanimate in an inert savoir. It is difficult even to choose the adjective For this blank cold, this sadness without cause. The great structure has become a minor house. No turban walks across the lessened floors. The greenhouse never so badly needed paint. The chimney is fifty years old and slants to one side. A fantastic effort has failed, a repetition In a repetitiousness of men and flies. Yet the absence of the imagination had Itself to be imagined. The great pond, The plain sense of it, without reflections, leaves, Mud, water like dirty glass, expressing silence Of a sort, silence of a rat come out to see, The great pond and its waste of the lilies, all this Had to be imagined as an inevitable knowledge, Required, as a necessity requires. 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. Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) published ten poems in The Nation between 1936 and 1952.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Wallace Stevens
Have We Reached the End of Jazz Itself? Have We Reached the End of Jazz Itself?
John Coltrane and other “lost” musicians of the ’60s are teaching a new generation of artists to bend time and space.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Gene Seymour
‘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
Christopher Hitchens Was Against the Buzzword ‘Terrorism’ Before He Was For It Christopher Hitchens Was Against the Buzzword ‘Terrorism’ Before He Was For It
The rulers of our world subject us to lectures about the need to oppose terrorism while they prepare, daily and hourly, for the annihilation of us all.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Christopher Hitchens
1925–1935: Is Art Possible in the United States? 1925–1935: Is Art Possible in the United States?
There is no best country to write in. There is only the old world and the new.
Mar 23, 2015 / Feature / The Nation
1915–1965 1915–1965
From World War I to Vietnam, from the red scare to McCarthyism, The Nation stood firm for civil liberties and civil rights, even when that meant being banned—or standing alone.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / D.D. Guttenplan