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
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
If We Repossessed Empty Homes, Homelessness Would Be Over If We Repossessed Empty Homes, Homelessness Would Be Over
It will need a robust Mayor and city government to take the law into their own hands; but the people would support them.
Mar 23, 2015 / Feature / William MacDonald and Bill de Blasio
Voting Does Not Make a Difference Voting Does Not Make a Difference
Democracy is dead in the United States. Yet there is still nothing to replace real democracy.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / W.E.B. Du Bois
Adolph Reed Destroys ‘The Bell Curve’ Adolph Reed Destroys ‘The Bell Curve’
Despite their concern to insulate themselves from the appearance of racism, Herrnstein and Murray display a perspective worthy of an Alabama filling station.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Adolph Reed Jr.
Parting Parting
December 7, 1963 White morning flows into the mirror. Her eye, still old with sleep, meets itself like a sister. How they slept last night, the dream that caged them back to back, was nothing new. Last words, tears, most often come wrapped as the everyday familiar failure. Now, pulling the comb slowly through her loosened hair, she tries to find the parting; it must come out after all: hidden in all that tangle there is a way. 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. Over a half-century, Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) wrote twenty-two poems for The Nation and several reviews and essays, including a 2002 piece exploring the meaning of “antiwar.”
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Adrienne Rich
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
Can Men and Women Be Friends? Can Men and Women Be Friends?
Feminism has opened up far more space than could have been imagined in the 1920s.
Mar 23, 2015 / Feature / Floyd Dell and Michelle Goldberg
The Article That Launched the Consumer-Rights Movement The Article That Launched the Consumer-Rights Movement
Innumerable precedents show that the consumer must be protected from his own indiscretion and vanity.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Ralph Nader
1985–1995: American Politics and Culture is Being Radically Reformed 1985–1995: American Politics and Culture is Being Radically Reformed
Nation writers on late 1980s New York, Jesse Jackson's presidential campaign, gay rights, Rupert Murdoch's ambitions and the case for federal funding of the arts.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / The Nation