Books & the Arts
Why Do Humans Move?
A new history examines how migration has been the rule of history, not the exception.
Daniel ImmerwahrThe Future of Postcolonial Thought
A pair of books—one by Walter Mignolo and Catherine Walsh, another by Achille Mbembe—consider the unfulfilled promise of decolonization.
Arjun AppaduraiHow Pelé Sold Out
A new Netflix documentary revisits the soccer star’s illustrious World Cup career during a pivotal period in Brazilian history.
Miguel SalazarFrom the Magazine
Elena Ferrante’s Class Dramas
Her latest novel, The Lying Life of Adults, mines the contradictions of class identity.
Jennifer Wilson
New York City and the Persistence of the Atlantic Slave Trade
Even after slave trade was banned, the United States and New York City, in particular, were complicit in allowing it to persist.
Gerald Horne
What Comes After Meritocracy?
The long-standing focus by liberals on meritocratic advancement has isolated the working class.
Elizabeth AndersonB&A Newsletter
Literary Criticism
The Worldmaking of N.K. Jemisin
Through her speculative fiction, Jemisin builds worlds and probes them—exploring who they work for and how.
Stephen Kearse
The Blinding Clarity of John Le Carré
His novels of imperial decline speak to a world that has remained at war since his youth.
Siddhartha Deb
Can the Novel Document the Present in Real Time?
Ali Smith’s Seasonal Quartet is an experiment in novel writing that closely tracks and analyzes the news as it happens.
Rumaan AlamHistory & Politics
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 Lemann
How 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 Chatelain
Anne Applebaum and the Crisis of Centrist Politics
In her new book, Applebaum attempts to understand why some of her intellectual bedfellows moved to the far right.
David KlionPolitics
Mike Davis’s Forecast for the Left
His works of history and social criticism have grappled with the political and ecological disasters of the past. His work has now started to become more hopeful about the future.
Micah UetrichtIn early 2009, the historian and social critic Mike Davis sat down for an interview with Bill Moyers to discuss what was then the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. When asked whether, as a socialist, he had anticipated the crisis, Davis said he couldn’t have predicted its scale… Continue Reading >
Television and Films
John Wilson’s Magically Poignant Urban Histories
His documentary series for HBO is a head-spinning interrogation of the chaos of New York City life.
Vikram Murthi
Michael 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 Pedersen
Out of the Ether
On Mank, Let Them All Talk, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Minari, and more films from the end of 2020.
Stuart KlawansHistory
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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How Bob Dylan Wrote the Second Great American Songbook
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The Vanishing Queer Underground of Los Angeles
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Roberto Lovato’s Journalism of the Soul
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Harvard’s History of Inscrutable Tenure Denials
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The Cat in the Tinfoil Hat
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Simple Electoral Strategy
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The Coronavirus Means Curtains for Artists
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Dismantling Transphobia at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival
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What Does It Mean to Remember AIDS?
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Danielle Evans’s Poignant Histories of the Present
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Can a Novel Really Capture the Spirit of the Internet?
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The Body, the State, the Border: On Cristina Rivera Garza
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The Communist Designer, the Fascist Furniture Dealer, and the Politics of Design
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‘What Does It Mean to Be Black and Alive Right Now?’
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The Unknown Radicals of Black Photography
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Harvard’s History of Inscrutable Tenure Denials
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What Joe Biden Gets Totally Wrong About Student Debt
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My Students Are Struggling. You’ll Never Guess Why.
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9 Months Into Touch-Free Living, What Shall We Birth?
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A Lesbian Archive Sends Its Love Letter: Find History, Find Yourself
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How Latin Got Woke
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The Four Horsemen of the Media Apocalypse
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International Women’s Day
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Could One of Your Facebook Friends Be the Next QAnon Shaman?