Cover of May 18/25, 2020, Issue

Print Magazine

May 18/25, 2020, Issue

Cover art by: Eric Hanson

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Editorial

Should We Be Kind to the Rich?

A reader also asks about the ethics of ordering groceries online during the pandemic.

Liza Featherstone

The Most Consequential Decision of Biden’s 2020 Campaign

Democrats really can’t waste the VP slot this time.

What We Know About the Covid-19 Race Gap

The CDC is finally releasing more data that show just how unequal the toll of the pandemic is. But we can’t stop there.

A Guide to Eye Communication

The Faces of Our Crisis

They stock the shelves at grocery stores, dispatch 911 calls, and pick crops. They deserve their due.

Molly Crabapple

Column

Cate Blanchett as Phyllis Schlafly

Why Did the ERA Die? FX’s ‘Mrs. America’ Has Some Answers.

Phyllis Schlafly, the subject of a new nine-part mini-series, teaches feminists never to underestimate their political enemies.

Lady Justice silhouette

It’s Time to Bring the Supreme Court Into the Modern Era—and the Light

Justice means making the Supreme Court as transparent as possible—and that means turning on the cameras.

President Donald Trump speaks with his hands in the air while standing at a podium

Donald J. Trump, MD

Letters

Letters From the May 18/25, 2020, Issue

Neither snow nor rain nor Covid-19… On holding your nose… Progress v. progressive values… Essential tributes… No more neoliberalism…

Books & the Arts

The Long Shadow of Cultural Anthropology

Franz Boas, Margaret Mead, and their circle sought to show the fallacy of biological and physical difference, but they also created new forms of categorization that reinforced thei...

Jennifer Wilson

One Damn Thing After Another

The long roots of liberal democracy’s crisis.

Jan-Werner Müller

How Should Unions Organize?

In A Collective Bargain, Jane McAlevey makes the case for strike-ready unions and whole worker organizing. But in an age of globalized economies and climate change, is thi...

Mary Gaitskill’s Art of Loneliness

Through her portraits of solitude, Gaitskill forces us to recognize those moments of subtle connection.

The Making of the Radical Republicans

How did the struggle for emancipation become a mass politics?

The Worlds of Edward Said

An exile who made the world his home, Said infused his literary style with a cosmopolitan ease and his political commitments with a cosmopolitan ethics.

Sarah Broom’s New Orleans Saga

In her new memoir, Broom reconstructs not only her family’s history in New Orleans but also the larger arc of black experience in the South.

The Inner Life of American Communism

Vivian Gornick’s and Jodi Dean’s books mine a lost history of comradeship, determination, and intimacy.

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