Censor This? Censor This?
The bogus moral outrage over The Interview.
Jan 7, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Joshua Clover
How White Liberals Used Civil Rights to Create More Prisons How White Liberals Used Civil Rights to Create More Prisons
In their quest to wipe out extra-legal racial violence, white liberals created a system that continues to kill black people—legally.
Jan 6, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Vicky Osterweil
‘The Story of Hurry’—a Children’s Book that Brings Gaza to Life ‘The Story of Hurry’—a Children’s Book that Brings Gaza to Life
In this uncommon book by Emma Williams, Jean Stein and Ibrahim Quraishi, a donkey tries to cheer Gaza’s traumatized children—by becoming a zebra.
Dec 24, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Lizzy Ratner
Dancing With Shiva Dancing With Shiva
Shantala Shivalingappa smolders as she dances the lives of the gods.
Dec 23, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Marina Harss
Liberalism Doesn’t Start With Liberty Liberalism Doesn’t Start With Liberty
In Edmund Fawcett’s new history, liberalism begins with capitalism and revolution.
Dec 23, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Katrina Forrester
Paul Thomas Anderson, Director of Depravity Paul Thomas Anderson, Director of Depravity
Joaquin Phoenix and Owen Wilson star in Inherent Vice, a delirious romp through all of man’s perversions.
Dec 23, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
Salt Song Salt Song
—Zunis make shrines on the way to a lake where I emerge and Miwoks gather me out of pools along the Pacific the cheetah thirsts for me and when you sprinkle me on rib eye you have no idea how I balance silence with thunder in crystal you dream of butterfly hunting in Madagascar spelunking through caves echoing with dripping stalactites and you don’t see how I yearn to shimmer an orange aurora against flame look at me in your hand in Egypt I scrubbed the bodies of kings and queens in Pakistan I zigzag upward through twenty-six miles of tunnels before drawing my first breath in sunlight if you heat a kiln to 2380 degrees and scatter me inside I vaporize and bond with clay in this unseen moment a potter prays because my pattern is out of his hands and when I touch your lips you salivate and when I dissolve on your tongue your hair rises ozone unlocks a single stroke of lightning sizzles to earth—
Dec 23, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Arthur Sze
Anniversary or Apathy? Anniversary or Apathy?
Memory and revolution in Poland since 1989
Dec 16, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Piotr H. Kosicki
Barber Barber
From the hotel in Martyrs’ Square we drive west into Achrafieh in search of a barber, where I learn there are four words for barber— three of which are spit out, the last of which—coiffeur—anoints the tongue with its mellifluence, like the milky coffee served by the small African woman who never stops bending and refilling. We sit with a group of men wearing three-piece suits fingering their prayer beads and crosses and watch a man, larger than most, giggle through his haircut. He has some advice for what I ought to do with my sideburns. They are too long, and my beard, it is not good, there are ways to fix this, and so these men, who in another time would have other advice, and other things to offer, gather around to officiate as my coiffeur takes a blade to my neck, and gently trims until my head is as smooth and perfumed as a past which is not past, but present.
Dec 16, 2014 / Books & the Arts / John Freeman
Howard Zinn and the Joy of a Political Life Howard Zinn and the Joy of a Political Life
The essays in Some Truths Are Not Self-Evident remind us that Zinn was not just a historian: he was also deeply involved in the major twentieth-century struggles for social justice...
Dec 15, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Frances Fox Piven