Toward a Third Reconstruction Toward a Third Reconstruction
A conversation on The Nation, race and history at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture with Eric Foner, Darryl Pinckney, Mychal Denzel Smith, Isabel Wilkerson and Pat...
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / The Nation
The Indignant Generation The Indignant Generation
The current crop of students has gone far to shake the label of apathy and conformity that had stuck through the 1950s.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Jessica Mitford
1995–2005: Our Enemies Cannot Defeat Us—Only We Can 1995–2005: Our Enemies Cannot Defeat Us—Only We Can
Nation writers on sensationalist art, financial deregulation, September 11, The Sopranos, Texas, the Iraq war and reactionary conservatism.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / The Nation
Game Not Over Game Not Over
Despite the Gamergate backlash, a new generation of activists is working to end the racial, sexual and gender stereotypes promoted by the video-game industry.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Helen Lewis
The Injury The Injury
June 22, 1946 From this hospital bed I can hear an engine breathing—somewhere in the night: —Soft coal, soft coal, soft coal! And I know it is men breathing shoveling, resting— —Go about it the slow way, if you can find any way— Christ! who’s a bastard? —quit and quit shoveling. A man beathing and it quiets and the puff of steady work begins slowly: Chug. Chug. Chug. Chug . . . fading off. Enough coal at least for this small job Soft! Soft! —enough for one small engine, enough for that. A man shoveling, working and not lying here in this hospital bed—powerless —with the white-throat calling in the poplars before dawn, his faint flute-call, triple tongued, piercing the shingled curtain of the new leaves; drowned out by car wheels singing now on the rails, taking the curve, slowly, a long wail, high pitched: rounding the curve— —the slow way because (if you can find any way) that is the only way left now for you. This article is part of The Nation’s 150th Anniversary Special Issue. Download a free PDF of the issue, with articles by James Baldwin, Barbara Ehrenreich, Toni Morrison, Howard Zinn and many more, here. William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) published several essays and poems in The Nation between 1937 and 1961; his work has been reviewed in these pages by Philip Rahv, Robert Lowell, Delmore Schwartz, Isaac Rosenfeld, Robert Creeley, Denise Levertov and James Longenbach.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / William Carlos Williams
Have We Reached the End of Jazz Itself? Have We Reached the End of Jazz Itself?
John Coltrane and other “lost” musicians of the ’60s are teaching a new generation of artists to bend time and space.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Gene Seymour
A Report From Occupied Territory A Report From Occupied Territory
The law is meant to be my servant and not my master, still less my torturer and my murderer.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / James Baldwin and Carrie Mae Weems
2005–2015: This All Seems Eerily Familiar 2005–2015: This All Seems Eerily Familiar
Nation writers on disaster capitalism, Blackwater, Obama, the financial bailout, austerity, Occupy Wall Street, Trayvon Martin and Charlie Hebdo.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / The Nation
Michael Moore for President Michael Moore for President
If nominated, I will run. If elected, I will serve.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Michael Moore
It’s Not Too Late: Save Democracy By Amending the Constitution It’s Not Too Late: Save Democracy By Amending the Constitution
Corporations are not people, money is not speech, and votes must matter more than billionaires’ dollars.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / John Nichols