How the CIA Tricked the World’s Best Writers How the CIA Tricked the World’s Best Writers
Joel Whitney talks about his book Finks, which exposes the agency’s corruption of American culture during the Cold War.
May 31, 2017 / Patrick Lawrence
Factory or Forest, Modernity and Climate Change Factory or Forest, Modernity and Climate Change
In India, the pathology of denial about global warming reveals the real crisis at our door—one of imagination.
May 19, 2017 / Abhrajyoti Chakraborty
George Saunders’s Lincoln George Saunders’s Lincoln
The novel ‘Lincoln in the Bardo’ examines the Civil War as the root of America’s violent past—and as a possible source of empathy that might release us from it.
May 3, 2017 / Books & the Arts / Jon Baskin
The Fight Over Sexual Freedom The Fight Over Sexual Freedom
Geoffrey Stone’s book is a powerful reminder that the history of sexual equality is one of backlash as well as progress.
May 3, 2017 / Books & the Arts / Anna North
The Corporatization of the Web Has Thinned Out Our Culture and Undermined American Democracy The Corporatization of the Web Has Thinned Out Our Culture and Undermined American Democracy
In his new book Move Fast and Break Things, Jonathan Taplin argues that, among its many downsides, the digital revolution has diminished our very humanity.
Apr 27, 2017 / David Dayen
Marxism With Soul Marxism With Soul
Marshall Berman was committed not only to the radical promise of socialism and modernism, but to those masterpieces and revolutions that seemed to erupt out of our everyday lives.
Apr 26, 2017 / David Marcus
Can the Pain of Others Be Transmuted Into Art? Can the Pain of Others Be Transmuted Into Art?
While Dana Schutz’s Open Casket has received the lion’s share of attention, much of the Whitney Biennial seems to seek out controversy.
Apr 25, 2017 / Barry Schwabsky
Inside the Birth of a Trump-Inspired Intellectual Magazine Inside the Birth of a Trump-Inspired Intellectual Magazine
Reading through American Affairs, one gets the sense that avoiding policy questions is as much a strategy as a politics.
Apr 19, 2017 / Books & the Arts / Gideon Lewis-Kraus
What America’s 19th-Century Reformers and Radicals Missed What America’s 19th-Century Reformers and Radicals Missed
A new book on the antebellum period captures the dangers of confusing self-improvement with institutional change.
Apr 18, 2017 / Books & the Arts / Brenda Wineapple
It’s Time to Resurrect the Counterculture Movement It’s Time to Resurrect the Counterculture Movement
The largest progressive mobilization since the Vietnam era offers a unique opportunity.
Apr 17, 2017 / Ira Chernus