Books and Ideas

Nation Poetry

Pantoum after Today’s Mass Shooting Pantoum after Today’s Mass Shooting

May 23, 2024 / Poems / Carlos Andrés Gómez

Point West of Algiers, North Africa, travel sketch, 1896.

Claire Messud’s Remarkable Experiment in Historical Fiction Claire Messud’s Remarkable Experiment in Historical Fiction

Chronicling a pied-noir family across generations and continents, she examines the moral and political responsibilities a novelist owes their kin and their readers.

May 22, 2024 / Books & the Arts / Lily Meyer

A portrait of Benedict (Baruch) Spinoza, 1754.

The Uses and Misuses of Spinoza The Uses and Misuses of Spinoza

The beguiling Dutch philosopher’s life and work is prone to misunderstandings and misreadings. A recent biography goes so far as to recruit him into the culture war.

May 20, 2024 / Books & the Arts / FT

The Roots of Trans Women’s Unjust Treatment

The Roots of Trans Women’s Unjust Treatment The Roots of Trans Women’s Unjust Treatment

Jules Gill-Peterson’s A Short History of Trans Misogyny is an essential primer on the colonial and racist origins of hatred against those who refuse to adhere to the gender binary...

May 16, 2024 / Books & the Arts / McKenzie Wark

Nation Poetry

An Inn for the Coven An Inn for the Coven

May 16, 2024 / Poems / Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Martin Peretz and then–New Republic editor Hendrick Hertzberg, 1984.

Marty Peretz and the Travails of American Liberalism Marty Peretz and the Travails of American Liberalism

From his New Left days to his neoliberalism and embrace of interventionism, The Controversialist is a portrait of his own political trajectory and that of American liberalism too....

May 14, 2024 / Books & the Arts / Jeet Heer

Illustration from “The Ship That Sailed to Mars,” by William M. Timlin.

The Radical World-making of Joanna Russ The Radical World-making of Joanna Russ

In her science fiction, the novelist offered not only an astringent critiques of the present but also bold visions of the future.

May 13, 2024 / Books & the Arts / Stephanie Burt

Left: Nazi propaganda poster from the early 1940s depicts Jews as conspiring to provoke a war with Germany. Right: Just as the Nazis recycled medieval antisemitic tropes, this 21st-century update, featured in a “Jerusalem Post” story on vaccine resistance, incorporates the visual vocabulary of the Nazi era.

Antisemitism, Then and Now: A Guide for the Perplexed Antisemitism, Then and Now: A Guide for the Perplexed

A short history of the origins, uses, and abuses of a long hatred.

May 10, 2024 / Feature / Omer Bartov

Nation Poetry

To a Blossoming Saguaro To a Blossoming Saguaro

May 9, 2024 / Poems / Eduardo C. Corral

Keith Haring in his studio in New York City.

Keith Haring and the Downtown Art Revolution Keith Haring and the Downtown Art Revolution

A new biography tells the story of not only Haring’s life but also the exhilarating world of New York art in the 1970s and 80s.

May 8, 2024 / Books & the Arts / Sarah Schulman

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