Books & the Arts

A Century of Struggle in Palestine

Rashid Khalidi’s new history offers a political and personal portrait of more than a hundred years of colonization and resistance in Palestine.

Kaleem Hawa

J.M. Coetzee’s States of Exile

In writing an allegory that is barely an allegory and a trilogy of novels that are often not novels, Coetzee appears to have made his own literary displacement total. 

Siddhartha Deb

The 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 Pinkham

From the Magazine

The Past and Future of Latinx Politics

Two new books look at the history of Latinx Democrats and Republicans and the role each will play in the future.

Ed Morales

Maria Reva’s Mordant and Profound Fiction

In her short story collection, Good Citizens Need Not Fear, Reva documents the chaos, joy, and serendipity of life before and after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Jennifer Wilson

Run the Jewels’ Wake-up Call

While other mainstream rappers might create one song or one album dedicated to the unrest, Killer Mike and El-P have carried that torch for six years.

Marcus J. Moore

History & Politics

The Lost History of Southern Communism

Mary Stanton’s Red, Black, White offers a close examination of the triumphs and travails of Alabama’s local Communist Party chapter.

Robert Greene II

How Does One Tell the Story of Asian America?

Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings grapples with the contradictions of Asian American experience in order to tell a story of solidarity.

Jane Hu

The Making of the Radical Republicans

How did the struggle for emancipation become a mass politics?

Eric Foner

Economics

The Long Roots of Corporate Irresponsibility

Nicholas Lemann’s history of 20th century corporations, Transaction Man, shows how an unrelenting faith in the market and profit doomed the American economy.
Rick Perlstein

What are corporations for? In his 1962 book Capitalism and Freedom, Milton Friedman gave a blunt answer: profit. “Few trends could so thoroughly undermine the very foundations of our free society,” he argued, “as the acceptance by corporate officials of a social responsibility other than to make as much money… Continue Reading >

Literary Criticism

Jenny Offill’s Novel of Climate Dread

In Weather, Offill is reluctant to offer false comfort, but she does ask us if worrying is enough.

Tony Tulathimutte

Lorraine Hansberry’s Radicalism

For the playwright and activist, neither liberal reform nor countercultural art were enough. The very foundations of American democracy needed to be transformed. 

Elias Rodriques

Ricardo Piglia’s Books of Disquiet

As he witnessed the dissolution of civil society under a series of repressive governments, the Argentine novelist and critic began recording the most mundane parts of everyday life.

Jessica Loudis
Ad Policy

Television and Films

On the Record’s Act of Witness

Telling the stories of three women who accused Russell Simmons of sexual assault, the documentary is a powerful case study in how institutions have failed Black women.

Stephen Kearse

The Tangle of Desire and Class in ‘Normal People’

The television adaptation of the Sally Rooney novel depicts how people can fall in love in a world structured by power.

Erin Schwartz

Shaking Up Your Perceptions

How films chosen for the Human Rights Watch Film Festival test the limits of both authority and documentary filmmaking.

Stuart Klawans

History

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 Chen

One 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

Editor's Picks

The Workers That Built America

William P. Jones

Is Our Food Culture Killing Us?

Susan Pedersen

More in Culture