In Fact…

In Fact…

NATION NOTES

Facebook
Twitter
Email
Flipboard
Pocket

NATION NOTES

We are delighted to announce that Lee Siegel, whose review of David Thomson is on page 29, will serve as a regular book critic for the magazine. Lee’s pungent, irreverent prose has appeared in publications from the New York Times and The New Yorker to Radical History Review and Tikkun. He also writes on television for The New Republic and on art for Slate. Lee will contribute essays on fiction and nonfiction books.
• Recognizing the importance of cartoons and other graphic forms of commentary, we start in this issue a regular feature called Comix Nation.

PASSINGS

John L. Hess, who died on January 21 at 87, contributed more than twenty articles to this magazine. A series he wrote on Social Security is as fresh today as when it appeared in 1990. John was a dissident; he was not, however, “cranky,” as the New York Times, where he was a reporter for twenty-five years, said in an obituary. A soft-spoken, witty, almost courtly man, he enjoyed good food and watching spaghetti westerns. But you didn’t let that pleasant surface fool you: He was fiercely committed to progressive beliefs–a source of contretemps between him and various editors at the Times, from which he prematurely retired in 1978. His career is engagingly recounted in his last book, My Times: A Memoir of Dissent, which should be a required journalism school text on how not to be an organization man.
• We also note the loss of another Nation friend, economist Robert Heilbroner, a superb popularizer in the best sense, who gave us articles on subjects as varied as Clintonomics and the future of socialism, always in lucid, down-to-earth prose.

We cannot back down

We now confront a second Trump presidency.

There’s not a moment to lose. We must harness our fears, our grief, and yes, our anger, to resist the dangerous policies Donald Trump will unleash on our country. We rededicate ourselves to our role as journalists and writers of principle and conscience.

Today, we also steel ourselves for the fight ahead. It will demand a fearless spirit, an informed mind, wise analysis, and humane resistance. We face the enactment of Project 2025, a far-right supreme court, political authoritarianism, increasing inequality and record homelessness, a looming climate crisis, and conflicts abroad. The Nation will expose and propose, nurture investigative reporting, and stand together as a community to keep hope and possibility alive. The Nation’s work will continue—as it has in good and not-so-good times—to develop alternative ideas and visions, to deepen our mission of truth-telling and deep reporting, and to further solidarity in a nation divided.

Armed with a remarkable 160 years of bold, independent journalism, our mandate today remains the same as when abolitionists first founded The Nation—to uphold the principles of democracy and freedom, serve as a beacon through the darkest days of resistance, and to envision and struggle for a brighter future.

The day is dark, the forces arrayed are tenacious, but as the late Nation editorial board member Toni Morrison wrote “No! This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

I urge you to stand with The Nation and donate today.

Onwards,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation

Ad Policy
x