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America owes Kurt Vonnegut a debt of gratitude for infusing its culture with the brilliant insight found in books like Mother Night, Player Piano and Slaughterhouse—5—and for the mordantly funny writings assembled in this collection.
The Nation was one of Vonnegut’s outlets for his political writings. He contributed to the magazine once or twice a year from 1978 to 1998, like a regular donation to the United Way. His politics were consistently on the left, and after fighting in World War II—which, for all its horrors, he considered just—he angrily condemned all of the United States’ subsequent wars of choice.
He wrote in a kind of faux-simpleminded style. He avoided the high seriousness demanded by some critics, who dismissed his body of work as a product of the 1960s counterculture, popular only among shaggy-haired youths with callow taste.
But his best work, as you’ll see, deals with ultimate questions.
The Nation: A Biography tells the surprising story behind America’s oldest weekly magazine, instigator of progress since 1865—the bickering abolitionists who founded it; the campaigns, causes and controversies that shaped it; the rebels, mavericks and visionaries who have written, edited and fought in its pages for 150 years and counting.
Bill de Blasio’s election as mayor of New York captured the attention of a typically restless city. But it also made progressives across the country—and, indeed, around the world—sit up and take notice. With unprecedented popular support, de Blasio took office pledging to ìput an end to economic and social inequalities that threaten to unravel the city we love. Based on interviews with dozens of key figures in New York politics, including the mayor himself, Eric Alterman’s new e-book is a rigorous, fascinating and indispensable account of what happened next.
Some Truths Are Not Self-Evident
Essays in The Nation on Civil Rights, Vietnam and "The War on Terror"
Introduction byFrances Fox Piven
Edited byRichard Kreitner
$9.99Millions of Americans have read and been galvanized by A People’s History of the United States. But many years before Howard Zinn published that epic saga of exploitation and resistance, he was organizing civil-rights protests and agitating for an end to the Vietnam War—and writing about those efforts in the pages of The Nation.
Writing in her native “Texlish,” Molly Ivins planted herself squarely in the tradition of plain-spoken and earthy American humor, the big river that runs from Mark Twain straight through to Will Rogers, Ring Lardner and George Carlin.
Gore Vidal was the pre-eminent essayist of his generation—a writer known for his switchblade wit, elegant style, deep erudition and passionate devotion to progressive politics. The essays collected here all appeared in The Nation from 1958 to 2005 and cover a wide range of subjects—from politics and society to religion, manners and morals.
Smoking Gun
The Nation on Watergate
Introduction by
1952 – 2010Elizabeth Holtzman
Edited byRichard Kreitner
$9.99Four decades ago, Richard Nixon resigned as President of the United States when audiotapes confirmed what many had long suspected: a crook was living in the White House.
Surveillance Nation
Critical Reflections on Privacy and Its Threats Articles from The Nation 1931-2014
Introduction byDavid Cole
Edited byRichard Kreitner
$9.99We’ve been living in 1984 since 1941. That was the year the Justice Department first authorized the wiretapping of Americans. “We shudder to think of what its agents will do with this new authorization,” The Nation warned in an editorial that year.
This Immigrant Nation
Perspectives on an American Dilemma Articles from The Nation 1868-the Present
Edited byRichard Lingeman
$9.99This unvarnished collection of articles traces evolving issues and provides a unique history of the long-running national immigration dilemma.
American immigration has been debated in the pages of The Nation almost since its founding in 1865. The magazine has generally come down on the inclusive or “liberal” side of the great debate, but the editors were not immune from the prejudices of their times—an 1891 editorial called for the exclusion of “lunatics, paupers and cripples.”
Lived History: Lives We’ve Lost, 2012-13, celebrates the memory of thirty remarkable people. These tributes each embrace the personal as well as the political. Loving, intimate recollections offer the kind of telling biographical detail often left out of conventional obituaries.