Books and Ideas

Migrant Caravan In Mexico City

Do We Need Faith as the World Feels Like It’s Ending? Do We Need Faith as the World Feels Like It’s Ending?

Barbara Sostaita writes that religion helps people envision a more just world while Phil Zuckerman argues that faith can lead to pious inaction.

Oct 29, 2021 / The Debate / Barbara Sostaita and Phil Zuckerman

The Moral and Magical Political Fictions of Carolina de Robertis

The Moral and Magical Political Fictions of Carolina de Robertis The Moral and Magical Political Fictions of Carolina de Robertis

The Uruguayan American novelist’s The President and the Frog asks us to consider: What does it mean to be a good political actor?

Oct 29, 2021 / Books & the Arts / Lily Meyer

The Strange State of the Novel in the “Age of Amazon”

The Strange State of the Novel in the “Age of Amazon” The Strange State of the Novel in the “Age of Amazon”

A conversation with Mark McGurl about how the company changed the way books are written and the consequences of a service oriented reading culture.

Oct 28, 2021 / Q&A / Hannah Gold

How the Hell Do We Fix the Creative Writing Workshop?

How the Hell Do We Fix the Creative Writing Workshop? How the Hell Do We Fix the Creative Writing Workshop?

Matthew Salesses’s Craft in the Real World proposes a new way to educate young writers without the baggage of the often biased and bland MFA pedagogy.

Oct 27, 2021 / Books & the Arts / Jennifer Schaffer-Goddard

The Short, Quixotic History of North Korean Internationalism

The Short, Quixotic History of North Korean Internationalism The Short, Quixotic History of North Korean Internationalism

Benjamin R. Young’s Guns, Guerillas, and the Great Leader explores how the country turned to isolationism after a failed influence campaign in the mid 20th century.

Oct 26, 2021 / Books & the Arts / Brian Ng

A family watches the solar eclipse in Germany, 1999.

Richard Powers’s Radical Parenting Lessons Richard Powers’s Radical Parenting Lessons

His new novel Bewilderment examines the challenges of raising a child in a slowly dying world.

Oct 25, 2021 / Books & the Arts / Joshua Adams

John Keats’s Politics of Pain and Renewal

John Keats’s Politics of Pain and Renewal John Keats’s Politics of Pain and Renewal

Anahid Nersessian offers a radical and unforgettable reading of the British writer’s odes—one that upends our sense of his poetic project.

Oct 21, 2021 / Books & the Arts / David B. Hobbs

In Our Orbit: Dave Zirin’s “The Kaepernick Effect”

In Our Orbit: Dave Zirin’s “The Kaepernick Effect” In Our Orbit: Dave Zirin’s “The Kaepernick Effect”

The Nation’s sports editor has a new book out on the politics of “taking a knee.”

Oct 21, 2021 / Peter Rothberg

The Mysteries of the Childhood Memoir

The Mysteries of the Childhood Memoir The Mysteries of the Childhood Memoir

Richard Wollheim’s Germs is a brilliant and curious example of a genre dedicated to unraveling the riddles of a time we have a hard time remembering.

Oct 20, 2021 / Books & the Arts / John Banville

Nation Poetry

I Just Chose My Place and Let the Circle Form Around Me I Just Chose My Place and Let the Circle Form Around Me

N behold the Lord a neutron star had been “missing” for 32 years visible light faded gradually over 500 days, then astrophysicists announced they had seen a hot,…

Oct 19, 2021 / Poems / Oliver Baez Bendorf

x