Late to the Party

In the aftermath of this summer’s scramble to replace Joe Biden, Democrats will need to confront why they had such trouble thinking and acting as a party—even when it mattered most. 

July 30, 2024

Macronism in Retreat

In France’s parliamentary elections, the left and center made a brief nonaggression pact—then resumed their mutual rancor. How, in the long term, can the country hold off the right?

July 27, 2024

Kashmir: Crackdowns and Plunder

By revoking Kashmir’s semiautonomous status, India has launched a settler-colonial project. 

July 21, 2024

Frozen

For centuries explorers risked their lives seeking passage through the Arctic. A recent exhibition and book juxtapose the region’s mythologized past with its uncertain future.

July 20, 2024

The Heights of Charm

“Though all FDR’s medical advice indicated the job might kill him, he had grown into it. It was what he did and who he was. His love for it was so obvious that millions would have cried out in disbelief if told that he was quitting.”

September 29, 2016 issue

The Ages of Jackson

“If the frontier was the force driving the Jacksonian upheaval, how to account for the preoccupation in the pamphlet literature by Jackson’s supporters with problems of a commercial society—with monopoly, with banking, with the business cycle, with the unequal distribution of the fruits of labor, with workingmen, with trade unions, with class conflict?”

December 7, 1989 issue

The Party Isn’t Over

“Carter is criticized for his Georgia mafia, his personal righteousness, his remaining an ‘outsider’ even while in office. But all of these are necessary if he is to retain some claim upon the South. Denied the easy appeal of Wallace and Nixon to repression and veiled racism, he must cling to the distinctive style that links him to the South.”

June 15, 1978 issue

Buchanan Redux

“James Buchanan’s great accomplishment as president was to relieve Lincoln of the burden of provoking the Civil War.”

August 8, 1974 issue

Flaubert’s Planet

Do novelists, and their readers, bear some responsibility for the climate crisis?

July 21, 2022 issue

A Hotter Russia

The cliché, avidly promoted by Moscow, is that Russia will be a relative winner in climate change, but a new book argues that the country will find itself in trouble.

June 23, 2022 issue

Reasons for Concern

The IPCC’s latest report, with warnings for supply chains and food security, may be the most suspense-filled document in human history.

March 9, 2022

A Sort of Buzzing Inside My Head

Whether ChatGPT passes the Turing Test is a less troubling question than what Alan Turing meant by “intelligence.”

June 25, 2023

DeepL Edizioni

As machine translation software grows more sophisticated, could it entirely replace human translators?

March 22, 2023

Court v. Chatbot

In a recent experiment, chatGPT showed a more developed moral sense than the Supreme Court’s current conservative supermajority.

December 26, 2022

Whose Country?

It is impossible to talk about the blues, country, or where the two might overlap without talking about race, authenticity, and contemporary America’s relationship to its past.

November 23, 2023 issue

Bob Dylan, Historian

Across the six decades of his career, the singer-songwriter has mined America’s past for images, characters, and events that speak to the nation’s turbulent present.

June 19, 2021

The Royal Blues

Dinah Washington’s music is fiery, uncompromising, and devoid of self-pity. She was a rarity among singers, male or female, in the popular music of her era: an unflinching, even merciless figure who was also sensual and musically sophisticated.

June 23, 2005 issue

The You and Me that Used to Be

“Looking back, I am aware that much of my life took place to music as if it were a film with a score: phonograph or radio interminably on, conversations held under the sound of music because sometimes when there was no music and we were driving or sitting around or drinking in a bar, an awkward silence hovered. Something necessary was missing. Things did not go on well without music.”

November 4, 1971 issue

On the Death Sentence

“Two years ago, quoting from an earlier opinion written by Justice White, I wrote that the death penalty represents ‘the pointless and needless extinction of life with only marginal contributions to any discernible social or public purposes.’”

December 23, 2010 issue

America’s Invisible Inferno

People who have spent time in solitary confinement describe being shackled to bunks by their feet and hands, being fed slop or left without food in a state of extreme hunger, and being beaten by hooded guards armed with tasers and bats. Once you see—and smell—a solitary cell, you will never forget it.

December 8, 2016 issue

Goodbye, William!

The lie was that electrocution was both painless and swift. In too many cases, it was anything but. Those sentenced to execution often suffered hideously and for long periods. Nonetheless, such was the blind faith in technology that the public continued to disbelieve what many witnesses reported.

August 14, 2003 issue

Cruel & Unusual Punishment

Since electric shocks can be applied repeatedly, the only restraints on their sadistic repetition are the training, supervision, and ultimately the discretion of the officer involved. There is reason to suspect, however, that such discretion may decline in direct proportion to the increasing physical distance between operator and victim.

April 24, 1997 issue

A ‘Moral, Strategic, and Diplomatic Abyss’

In the latest round of disputes within Israel’s ruling coalition, the eliminationist, messianic far right seems poised to triumph. 

July 2, 2024

Acts of Language

Amid the actual violence of Israel’s assault on Gaza, why have so many writers treated pro-Palestine speech as a threat?

June 13, 2024

Israel’s Universities: The Crackdown

Last October, Palestinian students and academic staff in Israel faced unprecedented penalties for their speech. Now the repression persists. 

June 5, 2024

A View from Cairo

The Egyptian government’s repression of its citizens and the Israeli government’s occupation of Palestine are inextricably linked.

May 12, 2024

Reporting from an Occupation

“In the international press, I have found broad acceptance of my work, but back home the feeling of danger is heavy on my shoulders.”

August 3, 2024

The Right Fight

“The defense of human rights is a hard-ball endeavor, it is not about holding hands and singing kumbaya but about imposing consequences that shift the cost-benefit analysis behind governmental repression.”

July 27, 2024

La Parisienne

“The best way to learn to draw is to look at the world with an endless curiosity.”

July 13, 2024

In a Good Way

“The contemporary novel is not only alive and well but healthier than ever: as brave, as accomplished, certainly more diverse.”

July 6, 2024

Why Do You Do It This Way?

Episode Eleven of “The Critic and Her Publics”

July 9, 2024

The Tuning Fork in the Ear

Episode Ten of “The Critic and Her Publics”

June 25, 2024

The Problem of Other Minds

Episode Nine of “The Critic and Her Publics”

June 11, 2024

Documents of Mundanity

Episode Eight of “The Critic and Her Publics”

May 28, 2024