Books and Ideas

America’s Largest, Most Neglected Machine Could Be the Key to Radical Climate Activism

America’s Largest, Most Neglected Machine Could Be the Key to Radical Climate Activism America’s Largest, Most Neglected Machine Could Be the Key to Radical Climate Activism

Most of us ignore the electrical grid, but it’s a crucial part of the transition to renewable energy capacity.

May 23, 2022 / Feature / Jessi Jezewska Stevens

How It Actually Sounded: Gene Santoro, 1950–2022

How It Actually Sounded: Gene Santoro, 1950–2022 How It Actually Sounded: Gene Santoro, 1950–2022

A superb reporter whose journalism will remain a vivid and reliable record of its time.

May 20, 2022 / Obituary / Gene Seymour

The Disastrous History of Rikers

The Disastrous History of Rikers The Disastrous History of Rikers

How a failed agenda of jail reform produced one of the country's most infamous penal colonies.

May 19, 2022 / Books & the Arts / Kay Gabriel

When Right-Wing Attacks on School Textbooks Fell Short

When Right-Wing Attacks on School Textbooks Fell Short When Right-Wing Attacks on School Textbooks Fell Short

Some essential lessons from an earlier culture war.

May 18, 2022 / Jonathan Zimmerman

Olga Ravn’s Office Novel in Space

Olga Ravn’s Office Novel in Space Olga Ravn’s Office Novel in Space

The Employees offers a surreal and biting account of all the hazards and indignities of the contemporary workplace.

May 18, 2022 / Books & the Arts / Jessica Loudis

Nation Poetry

Currency Communion Currency Communion

  the first time i ever read the word God was on a piece of money We The People every time i dug in my denims i was uprooting evil * i can make any color out of concrete if yo…

May 17, 2022 / Poems / Eduardo “Echo” Martinez

How Economic Sanctions Shaped Today’s Global Powers

How Economic Sanctions Shaped Today’s Global Powers How Economic Sanctions Shaped Today’s Global Powers

A conversation with Nicholas Mulder on the evolution and history of sanctions, his new book The Economic Weapon, and the role sanctions play after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

May 17, 2022 / Q&A / Pablo Pryluka

To the Hypocrite Go the Spoils

To the Hypocrite Go the Spoils To the Hypocrite Go the Spoils

Mitch McConnell refused to schedule hearings on the nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court on the novel rationale that a presidential election was too close, and he the…

May 17, 2022 / Column / Calvin Trillin

Stormy Sea Breaking on a Shore, by J.M.W. Turner

The Sea According to Rachel Carson The Sea According to Rachel Carson

Her first three books were odes to the world’s bodies of water and their creative power over all life forms.

May 17, 2022 / Books & the Arts / Hannah Gold

British colonials

The British Empire’s Worldwide Devastation The British Empire’s Worldwide Devastation

Caroline Elkins’s new history of the British Empire is a damning account of its violent crimes against its subjects. 

May 16, 2022 / Books & the Arts / Howard W. French

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