Free Teaching Guide

November 21, 2005

Bring America‘s most incisive writers and editors to your classroom with free teaching material from The Nation.
· FREE Weekly Teaching Guides and Educator Email Newsletter
· Discounted subscriptions.

To download the teaching guide click here


  • Feature

    Bringing Down the Bully

    The lesson of the defeat in California of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s referendum revolution is this: The American people will not forever be fooled. The negative message of the Republican right has lost its power to terrorize voters.

    Robert Scheer

  • Oil Tycoons Grilled on Windfall Profits

    Top oil execs were asked numerous questions at a Senate hearing on spectacular profits earned in the wake of tropical storms. But they had no real answers about how to ease the burden on ordinary Americans.

    Ari Berman

  • The GOP Takes a Beating

    As Democrats gloat over two gubernatorial wins and the defeat in California of Gov. Arnold’s intiatives, the GOP approaches off-year elections weighed down by Bush’s baggage.

    Eric Alterman

  • This Time, Rove’s Tactics Failed

    Democrats celebrate electoral victories in Virginia, New Jersey and California, they shouldn’t waste time gloating. They need to find effective candidates like Tim Kaine and Jon Corzine who will build momentum.

    David Corn

  • Five Questions for Robert Greenwald

    What motivated director Robert Greenwald to spend a year on a documentary detailing Wal-Mart’s impact on American life, culture and commerce?

    Sam Graham-Felsen

  • The Soccer Star and the President

    Who is Diego Maradona, and how did a former Argentinian soccer star become the nemesis of an American President?

    Dave Zirin

  • Gas Price-gouging or Business as Usual?

    As the Senate opens hearings this week calling energy execs to account for their windfall profits on gasoline and natural gas, the question must be asked: Is this price-gouging or just good old-fashioned capitalism?

    Nicholas von Hoffman

  • Chávez and Maradona Lead Massive Rebuke of Bush

    Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Argentine soccer hero Diego Maradona led thousands in a massive rebuke of George W. Bush, his trade policies and his neoconservative agenda at the Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata Argentina. Despite some sporadic violence, the protest focused on developing indigenous alternatives to US-led trade initiatives policies.

    Jordana Timerman

  • The Virginia GOP’s Dirty Money

    Republican candidates in Virginia do a lot of posturing on being tough on crime–but behind their self-righteous political ads, there is a hidden history of racism, questionable funding and sexual misconduct.

    Max Blumenthal

  • Spin Control at Wal-Mart

    A hard-hitting documentary, an embarrassing leaked memo on healthcare and abandonment by customers who don’t like its politics. It’s getting harder these days for Wal-Mart to put on a happy public face.

    Liza Featherstone

  • All the King’s Media

    The scandals suffocating the Bush Administration seem less like Nixon and Watergate and more like Louis XV and pre-Revolutionary France. They are harbingers of a potent cultural event that may jolt the public out of complacency.

    William Greider

  • Before School

    San Francisco recently launched universal preschool, designed to make young participants higher earners and better citizens when they reach adulthood. If successful, San Francisco’s initiative could make preschool as commonplace as kindergarten.

    David Kirp

  • Toxic Recycling

    Recycling electronics using US prison labor is a booming business, with a captive workforce paid pennies per hour for dangerous work that is largely unregulated. The human and environmental consequences of negligent handling and disposal of electronic waste are considerable.

    Elizabeth Grossman

  • On the Wal-Mart Money Trail

    As the nation’s wealthiest family, the Waltons could be a force for social good. But when they choose to spend their fortune lobbying for pet projects, tax cuts and charter schools instead of providing a living wage for their workers, they are dangerous (and costly) to the nation.

    Liza Featherstone

  • Editorial

    Passing the Torch

    Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel takes on the role of publisher and general partner at the magazine, and Victor Navasky becomes publisher emeritus and a member of the magazine’s editorial board.

    The Editors

  • Sheryl Swoopes: Out of the Closet–and Ignored

    WNBA star Sheryl Swoopes has just come out of the closet. But why didn’t anyone care?

    Dave Zirin


  • Faith and Fraud

    The fictional world created by the Bush Administration over its five years in power is falling to pieces, with the blood-soaked folly in Iraq, a ruined environment, massive corruption and a basic failure to govern. Yet the faith-based President continues to fashion lies, and believe them.

    Jonathan Schell

  • In Fact…

    WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE…

    The Editors

  • Assad on the Brink

    The Baathist regime is the most opaque on earth, and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must develop a strategy to save himself and his regime, as the UN investigation of the assasination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri unfolds.

    David Hirst

  • Rise of an Opposition?

    As remarkable as the concept may sound after years of Democratic dysfunction, something akin to a two-party system appeared to take shape November 1, the week after Scooter Libby was indicted.

    John Nichols

  • Intolerable Cruelty

    If the US is to prevail in the war on terror, we must do it by distinguishing ourselves from the enemy. Torture and degrading treatment are as morally evil as terrorism, because they brutally disregard the value of human life.

    David Cole

  • After the Libby Indictment

    The CIA leak scandal has revealed the Bush crew’s dishonesty and hypocrisy. But don’t expect the Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald or Bush to ever explain what really happened.

    David Corn

  • Showdown on the Court

    The nomination of Judge Samuel Alito to the US Supreme Court forces the debate the President and the Senate have tried so mightily to avoid: whether the Court should shift decisively and radically to the right.

    The Editors
  • GET UNLIMITED DIGITAL ACCESS FOR LESS THAN $3 A MONTH!


  • Books & the Arts

    Five Questions for Robert Greenwald

    What motivated director Robert Greenwald to spend a year on a documentary detailing Wal-Mart’s impact on American life, culture and commerce?

    Sam Graham-Felsen

  • Scooter Libby: A Republican Nursery Rhyme

    Catching small fry, letting the big fish go.

    Calvin Trillin

  • All the King’s Media

    The scandals suffocating the Bush Administration seem less like Nixon and Watergate and more like Louis XV and pre-Revolutionary France. They are harbingers of a potent cultural event that may jolt the public out of complacency.

    William Greider

  • The True Story of Equiano

    Vincent Carretta’s Equiano, the African is the complex narrative of a Carolina slave who bought his freedom, married an English woman and published a memoir on his life as a seafarer and gentleman.

    Robin Blackburn

  • The Power of Fear

    Jill Lepore’s New York Burning paints a realistic portrait of a purported slave rebellion in 1741 and the hysteria that followed, a harrowing lesson of how abusers of power become haunted by the nightmare of retribution.

    Russell Shorto

  • I Wonder As I Wander

    Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost plumbs the mysteries of losing oneself and finding oneself in the realm of the utter unknown.

    Michael Gorra

  • About a Girl

    Breakfast for Pluto is the upbeat and whimsical fable of a girl in a boy’s body. Watching Claire Danes in Shopgirl will make you forget for a while that other actresses exist.

    Stuart Klawans
  • The stakes are higher now than ever. Get The Nation in your inbox.