Books & the Arts

‘All You Want Is Money! All I Want Is Revolution!’

‘All You Want Is Money! All I Want Is Revolution!’ ‘All You Want Is Money! All I Want Is Revolution!’

Before the Tiananmen Square massacre, everyone loved China; now everyone loves the renminbi.

Nov 17, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Liao Yiwu

Why Does Ta-Nehisi Coates Say Less Than He Knows?

Why Does Ta-Nehisi Coates Say Less Than He Knows? Why Does Ta-Nehisi Coates Say Less Than He Knows?

The journalist’s best-selling memoir offers eloquent testimony to the vulnerability of black life, but it surrenders too much to despair.

Nov 15, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Jesse McCarthy

Larissa MacFarquhar.

The Beauty and the Costs of Extreme Altruism The Beauty and the Costs of Extreme Altruism

What if you were so troubled by suffering and inequality that you changed your life entirely?

Nov 5, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Samuel Moyn

Clarice Lispector at home in Rio de Janeiro in the 1970s.

Not the Word, but the Thing Itself Not the Word, but the Thing Itself

With each successive work, Clarice Lispector polished her prose until it shimmered with a taut irregularity.

Nov 5, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Ava Kofman

She’s Leaving Home

She’s Leaving Home She’s Leaving Home

In Crimson Peak and Brooklyn, women have to find the world in order to find their place in it.

Nov 5, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans

A demonstrator offers a flower to military police at a Vietnam War demonstration at the Pentagon in 1967.

Politics, Principle, and Risk Politics, Principle, and Risk

For political theorist Philip Green, taking sides has always meant taking action.

Nov 5, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Sara Rathod

Jorie Graham. By Marina Cook

Modernist Poetry in a Crowdsourcing Age Modernist Poetry in a Crowdsourcing Age

Jorie Graham resists classic pleasures like closure, a concept anathema to the poet and her country.

Oct 29, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Ange Mlinko

Ester Dean (left) and B.o.B. perform at CinemaCon, March 27, 2014.

It’s an Old Trope, but How Well Does the Factory Model Explain Pop Music? It’s an Old Trope, but How Well Does the Factory Model Explain Pop Music?

A new book about the music industry misses the fact that we’ve already entered the post-industrial age.

Oct 29, 2015 / Books & the Arts / David Hajdu

Mandate boundary lines in the Pacific islands, 1921.

Imperialism With an Internationalist Face Imperialism With an Internationalist Face

In her masterful new study of the League of Nations, Susan Pedersen shows how the organization helped prolong the era of colonialism.

Oct 29, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Martti Koskenniemi

Abandoned newspaper vending machines, Covina, California, 2011.

Is Complicity Now the Entry Fee for Critique? Is Complicity Now the Entry Fee for Critique?

A new app brings clarity to an old situation: the collaboration between journalism and capitalism.

Oct 29, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Joshua Clover

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