Books & the Arts

How Historical Fiction Redefined the Literary Canon

How Historical Fiction Redefined the Literary Canon How Historical Fiction Redefined the Literary Canon

In contemporary publishing, novels fixated on the past rather than the present have garnered the most attention and prestige.

Sep 11, 2024 / Books & the Arts / Alexander Manshel

View of the US-Mexico border wall in Otay Mesa, California, 2021.

Imagining a World of Open Borders Imagining a World of Open Borders

John Washington’s compelling new book lays out the case for abolishing the hellish idea of the border.

Sep 10, 2024 / Books & the Arts / Jake Romm

The Enduring Influence of Marx’s Masterpiece

The Enduring Influence of Marx’s Masterpiece The Enduring Influence of Marx’s Masterpiece

No book has done more than Capital to explain the way the world works.

Sep 9, 2024 / Books & the Arts / Wendy Brown

Audre Lorde, 1983.

Audre Lorde Has More to Tell Us Than a Handful of Quotes Audre Lorde Has More to Tell Us Than a Handful of Quotes

A conversation with Alexis Pauline Gumbs, one of the world's foremost experts on the Black feminist writer, on her biography Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde...

Sep 5, 2024 / Books & the Arts / Marian Jones

A screenshot from a 2011 interview with James C. Scott.

James C. Scott, the Ambivalent Anarchist James C. Scott, the Ambivalent Anarchist

The radical anthropologist offered not only incisive studies of the state but also a vision of what life looked like beyond it.

Sep 5, 2024 / Books & the Arts / Ben Mauk

Bouchra Khalili’s “The Mapping Journey Project,” 2008–11.

The Coming of World Art at the Venice Biennale The Coming of World Art at the Venice Biennale

At one of the oldest biennials on the planet, a glimpse of a more global idea of art history is on view. 

Sep 4, 2024 / Books & the Arts / Barry Schwabsky

Natasha Trethewey’s Life in Poetry and Prose

Natasha Trethewey’s Life in Poetry and Prose Natasha Trethewey’s Life in Poetry and Prose

A work of biography, an essay on literature and memory and the South, a prose poem full of lyrical dexterity, Trethewey's latest book is like all of her others: a master study of ...

Aug 28, 2024 / Books & the Arts / Edna Bonhomme

The Genius of Garth Greenwell

The Genius of Garth Greenwell The Genius of Garth Greenwell

Set abroad or at home, in unfamiliar worlds an ocean away or in an intensive care unit in Iowa, Greenwell's novels are songs of the self and of the United States as a whole.

Aug 28, 2024 / Books & the Arts / Hannah Gold

Buffy (Darren Robinson) of the Fat Boys in Chicago, 1985.

Questlove’s Personal History of Hip-Hop Questlove’s Personal History of Hip-Hop

An elegiac retelling of rap's origins, Hip-Hop Is History also ends with a sense of hope.

Aug 27, 2024 / Books & the Arts / Bijan Stephen

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