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The Carpetbagger Who Saw Texas’s Future
The notion of political realignment in the Lone Star State is older than you think. It goes back to Giant, an acidic novel by Edna Ferber.
by
Chris Vognar
via
The Atlantic
on
December 9, 2024
A History of Black Power We Need and Deserve
A history that is as tactical as it is analytical, as global as it is local, and as based in love as it is in politics.
by
Say Burgin
via
Monthly Review
on
November 1, 2024
Review of "America's Philosopher: John Locke in American Intellectual Life"
We see what we want to see from philosophers such as Locke not because he wrote for our time (or “all time”) but because we imagine he did.
by
Raymond Haberski Jr.
via
American Literary History
on
November 15, 2024
How the United States Tried to Get on Top of the Sex Trade
Why should American exceptionalism end at the red-light district?
by
Rebecca Mead
via
The New Yorker
on
December 9, 2024
The History of Gay Conservatism
LGBTQ voters overwhelmingly went for Harris, but the idea that gay voters are always going to be solidly blue is a myth.
by
Roger Lancaster
via
Damage
on
December 11, 2024
True Crime: Allan Pinkerton’s “Thirty Years a Detective”
Am 1884 guide to vice and crime by the founder of the world’s largest private detective agency.
by
Sasha Archibald
via
The Public Domain Review
on
December 5, 2024
A Cold Warrior for Our Time
James Graham Wilson makes a compelling case that the under-celebrated example of Paul Nitze is both instructive and worthy of our emulation.
by
Max J. Prowant
via
Law & Liberty
on
December 9, 2024
Eroticize the Hood
A new book revamps Newark's reputation as unsexy, violent, destitute, defiantly declaring it “a place of desire, love, eroticism, community, and resistance.”
by
José Sanchez
via
n+1
on
October 8, 2024
The Poverty of Homeownership
On both sides of the color line, to own one’s home remains synonymous with freedom—even as real estate has proven itself to be relentlessly unequal.
by
David Helps
via
Public Books
on
December 4, 2024
Was “Fat Is a Feminist Issue” Liberating? Or Weight-Loss Propaganda?
Susie Orbach’s 1978 book is a fascinating snapshot of diet and physical culture in a very different era.
by
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela
via
The New Republic
on
December 5, 2024
Five Magnificent Years
A recent Otis Redding biography examines what was and what could have been, 50 years after tragedy struck.
by
Geoffrey O'Brien
via
New York Review of Books
on
September 10, 2017
Aging Out
Many of us do not go gentle into that good night.
by
Anne Matthews
via
The American Scholar
on
December 5, 2024
Divided Providence
Faith’s pivotal role in the outcome of the Civil War.
by
Robert Wilson
via
The American Scholar
on
December 2, 2024
The Tragedy of Ryan White
How politicians used the story of one young patient to neglect the AIDS crisis.
by
Scott Wasserman Stern
via
The New Republic
on
November 29, 2024
What Would the Father of American Football Make of the Modern Game?
Walter Camp praised the sport as a way to toughen up élite young white men. Despite changes to the game and society, his legacy remains.
by
Ian Crouch
via
The New Yorker
on
November 19, 2015
What the New Right Learned in School
Many of today's most influential right-wing tactics and arguments have their roots in 1960s-era college campuses.
by
Emily M. Brooks
via
Contingent
on
November 17, 2024
The Second Abolition
Robin Blackburn’s sweeping history of slavery and freedom in the 19th century.
by
Manisha Sinha
via
The Nation
on
November 19, 2024
The Banality of Border Evil
What a long-dead, cartoonishly corrupt Texas bureaucrat can tell us about the nature of immigration enforcement and the U.S.-Mexico divide.
by
Gus Bova
via
The Texas Observer
on
July 23, 2024
Scratching the Surface
How geology shaped American culture.
by
Jacob Mikanowski
via
The Chronicle of Higher Education
on
November 20, 2024
Maurice Isserman’s Red Scare
A new history of the CPUSA reads like a Cold War throwback.
by
Benjamin Balthaser
via
The Baffler
on
November 21, 2024
How Old Age Was Reborn
“The Golden Girls” reframed senior life as being about socializing and sex. But did the cultural narrative of advanced age as continued youth go too far?
by
Daniel Immerwahr
via
The New Yorker
on
November 25, 2024
Review: ‘The Tafts’ by George W. Liebmann
A new book celebrates an American political dynasty dedicated to public service. Why have they been forgotten?
by
Antony Lentin
via
History Today
on
November 25, 2024
The Spirit of '76: A Jewish Perspective on the American Revolution
What was “exceptional” about the American Revolution wasn’t so much the creation of a single republic but the immediate opportunity it provided for action.
by
Michael Hoberman
via
Marginalia Review of Books
on
September 27, 2024
How Cancel Culture Panics Ate the World
A set of peculiarly American anxieties has spread across continents.
by
Samuel P. Catlin
via
The New Republic
on
November 25, 2024
A Sudden, Revealing Searchlight
On Jean Strouse and the art of biography.
by
Ruth Franklin
via
Harper’s
on
October 23, 2024
The Complex Politics of Tribal Enrollment
How did the U.S. government become involved in “adjudicating Indianness”?
by
Rachel Monroe
via
The New Yorker
on
November 20, 2024
The Frenemies Who Fought to Bring Birth Control to the U.S.
Though Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett shared a mission, they took very different approaches. Their rivalry was political, sometimes even personal.
by
Margaret Talbot
via
The New Yorker
on
November 18, 2024
The Woman Who Defined the Great Depression
John Steinbeck based “The Grapes of Wrath” on Sanora Babb’s notes. But she was writing her own American epic.
by
Scott Bradfield
via
The New Republic
on
November 12, 2024
Gulp Fiction, or Into the Missouri-verse
On Percival Everett’s “James.”
by
Matt Seybold
via
Cleveland Review of Books
on
March 25, 2024
The “Fascist” With a Popular Majority
Donald Trump’s victory will inevitably reopen the “fascism debate.” But does a populist whose appeal cuts across diverse groups truly fit the fascist profile?
by
Tristan Hughes
via
Jacobin
on
November 19, 2024
The Rotting of the College Board
Testing is necessary. The SAT’s creator is not.
by
Naomi Schaefer Riley
via
Commentary
on
November 13, 2024
Why Americans Are Obsessed With Poor Posture
The 20th-century movement to fix slouching questions the moral and political dimensions of addressing bad backs over wider public health concerns.
by
Zoe Adams
via
The Nation
on
November 20, 2024
How R.E.M. Created Alternative Music
In the cultural wasteland of the Reagan era, they showed that a band could have mass appeal without being cheesy, or nostalgic, or playing hair metal.
by
Mark Krotov
via
The New Yorker
on
November 13, 2024
What’s the Difference Between a Rampaging Mob and a Righteous Protest?
From the French Revolution to January 6th, crowds have been heroized and vilified. Now they’re a field of study.
by
Adam Gopnik
via
The New Yorker
on
November 18, 2024
The Right Uses College Campuses as Its Training Grounds
Conservatives love to bemoan their supposed status as oppressed minorities in universities. But the college campus has long been a key site for the Right.
by
Scott Wasserman Stern
via
Jacobin
on
August 17, 2023
Friend of the Family
Jean Strouse explores the relationship between the Anglo-Jewish Wertheimers and John Singer Sargent, who painted twelve portraits of them.
by
Ruth Bernard Yeazell
via
New York Review of Books
on
October 31, 2024
FDR’s Compliant Justices
The Supreme Court’s deference to FDR during World War II resulted in unjustifiable ethical breaches.
by
Jed S. Rakoff
via
New York Review of Books
on
November 14, 2024
Between The Many and The One
Stephanie Mueller´s book sheds light on the percieved death of liberalism and the fear of corporations.
by
Kevin Musgrave
via
The New Rambler
on
September 29, 2023
States’ Rights or Inalienable Rights?
Some early progressives may have been advocates of states’ rights, but they misunderstood the philosophy of the American Founding.
by
Samuel Postell
via
Law & Liberty
on
November 13, 2024
How a Mid-Century Paramour Became a Democratic Power Broker
Churchill weaponized her powers of seduction—but Pamela Harriman came into her own when she brought her glamour to Washington.
by
Margaret Talbot
via
The New Yorker
on
September 16, 2024
Today’s Echoes of the First ‘America First’
Charles Lindbergh’s ideology prefigured Donald Trump’s—and was rightly disgraced.
by
Casey Michel
via
The Bulwark
on
November 13, 2024
In the 1970s, the Left Put a Good Crisis to Waste
In "Counterrevolution," Melinda Cooper reads the 1970s economic crisis as an elite revolt rather than proof of the New Deal order’s unsustainability.
by
Scott Aquanno
,
Stephen Maher
via
Jacobin
on
October 24, 2024
Ralph Ellison’s Alchemical Camera
The novelist's aestheticizing impulse contrasts with the relentless seriousness of his observations and critiques of American society.
by
Jed Perl
via
New York Review of Books
on
October 17, 2024
A Dark Reminder of What American Society Has Been and Could Be Again
How an obsessive hatred of immigrants and people of color and deep-seated fears about the empowerment of women led to the Klan’s rule in Indiana.
by
Annette Gordon-Reed
via
The New Yorker
on
November 9, 2024
Before Operation Dixie
What the failed Southern labor movement teaches us about the rightward shift in US politics.
by
Joe William Trotter Jr.
via
Dissent
on
December 16, 2020
The Political Afterlife of Paradise Lost
From white supremacists to black activists, readers have sought moral legitimacy in Milton’s epic poem.
by
Lucy Hughes-Hallett
via
New Statesman
on
November 7, 2024
The Amazing, Disappearing Johnny Carson
Carson pioneered a new style of late-night hosting—relaxed, improvisatory, risk-averse, and inscrutable.
by
Isaac Butler
via
The New Yorker
on
November 6, 2024
American Feudalism
A liberalism that divides humanity into a master class and a slave class deserves an asterisk as “white liberalism.”
by
Paul Crider
via
Liberal Currents
on
October 2, 2024
God’s Directive
In the wake of the September 11 attacks, evangelical American missionaries followed military tanks into Afghanistan and Iraq to convert Muslims.
by
Rozina Ali
via
New York Review of Books
on
October 31, 2024
A Fundamentally Anti-Democratic Tradition: Zack Beauchamp's "The Reactionary Spirit"
Where conservatives may seek to conserve their democratic systems, reactionaries by their nature seek to weaken or abolish them.
by
Matthew McManus
via
Liberal Currents
on
October 14, 2024
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