Books & the Arts
Hari Kunzru’s Internet Thriller
Hari Kunzru’s ambitious new novel Red Pill plumbs the depth of right-wing and liberal ideas as it tracks one man’s descent into a web-induced mania.
Kevin LozanoHow Did American Cities Become So Unequal?
A new history of Ed Logue and his vision of urban renewal documents the broken promises of midcentury liberalism.
Kim Phillips-FeinMichael Apted’s Flawed but Brilliant Epic of British Social Life
The Up series was meant to investigate inequities of British class. It also ended up telling a different story as well.
Susan PedersenFrom the Magazine
How Did We Get Here?
Three new books by prominent liberal intellectuals—Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson’s Let Them Eat Tweets, Robert B. Reich’s The System, and Robert P. Saldin and Steven M. Teles’s Never Trump—give strikingly different answers.
Nicholas LemannRichard Hofstadter’s Discontents
Why did the historian come to fear the very movements he once would have celebrated?
Jeet HeerThe Supreme Court’s War on Equality
In Supreme Inequality, Adam Cohen offers a damning indictment of Supreme Court jurisprudence, reminding us of just how political the country's highest court is.
Randall KennedyLiterary Criticism
Yaa Gyasi’s Family Chronicle
At the center of Gyasi's new novel are the unspoken bonds and tensions between mothers and daughters.
Lovia GyarkyeNicholson Baker’s Maddening Search for the Truth
Denied access to files about the use of biological weapons during the Cold War, the novelist transformed his new book into a study of how America keeps its secrets.
Charlie SavageClaudia Rankine’s Dialogue With America
In Just Us, the poet offers a searing assessment of racism and loneliness in today’s America. But while she’s pessimistic about the present, she’s also hopeful about the future.
Elias RodriquesHistory & Politics
The Inner Life of American Communism
Vivian Gornick’s and Jodi Dean’s books mine a lost history of comradeship, determination, and intimacy.
Corey RobinHow Federal Housing Programs Failed Black America
In Race for Profit, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor shows how even those housing policies that sought to create more Black homeowners were stymied by racism and a determination to shrink the government’s presence.
Marcia ChatelainPolitics
Orlando Patterson and the Postcolonial Predicament
Out of the ruins of colonialism and empire, the sociologist insisted we could fashion a more egalitarian and liberated future.
Adom GetachewWhen the socialist government of Michael Manley came to power in Jamaica in 1972, the charismatic new prime minister asked the up-and-coming Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson to become his special adviser for social policy and development. Only a decade after the country gained its independence from Britain, Jamaican voters elected… Continue Reading >
Television and Films
The Perils of Creativity and Capitalism in ‘Tesla’
Michael Almereyda’s biopic of the eccentric inventor is a portrait of the tensions that arise when art and commerce intersect.
Vikram MurthiThe Many Lives of Catherine the Great
A new Hulu show presents the life of the Russian empress as a narrative of lean-in empowerment. But was it?
Sophie PinkhamThe Political Use and Misuse of ‘Mulan’
Each new adaptation says more about its own time and place than the story’s ancient setting.
Han ZhangHistory
How Silicon Valley Broke the Economy
The question of how to fix the tech industry is now inseparable from the question of how to fix the system of capitalism that the late 20th century gave us.
Adrian ChenOne of Apple cofounder Steve Jobs’s most audacious marketing triumphs is rarely mentioned in the paeans to his genius that remain a staple of business content farms. In 1982, Jobs offered to donate a computer to every K–12 school in America, provided Congress pass a bill giving Apple substantial tax… Continue Reading >
Poems
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May 21, 2019
Mange Meat
Alicia Mountain -
May 21, 2019
Twenty-First Century Woman / Ankle-Length Cardigans / Looking in the Mirror
Amanda Nadelberg -
April 23, 2019
Dear Melissa—
TC Tolbert -
April 23, 2019
Love Prodigal
Traci Brimhall
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In Memoriam: Michael Sorkin, 1948–2020
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Living in the Shadow of Notre Dame
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The Bare Ruined Choirs of Notre Dame
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Celia Paul Sits for Her Own Portrait
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John Luther Adams’s Songs for a Vanished World
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Melania Trump Really Doesn’t Care
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In a Parallel Universe, Trump Accepts Loss
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Kim Stanley Robinson Bears Witness to Our Climate Futures
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Hari Kunzru’s Internet Thriller
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Abstraction at a Distance
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Celia Paul Sits for Her Own Portrait
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