Excerpts

To capture the spirit of the poet Audre Lorde, Alexis Pauline Gumbs decided to break all the rules.

Twenty-five years ago, protesters shut down the meeting of the World Trade Organization. At the time, it seemed very important. But is it now?

Anti-Trump Republicans revere Ronald Reagan as Trump’s opposite—yet in critical ways Reagan may have been his forerunner.

Richard Beck’s “Homeland” traces the far-reaching aftereffects of the attacks and tries to recover the events of the day, as they happened.

A new book on how 9/11 altered the national psyche also demonstrates how it stunted progressive politics.

The rhythms of our days may never be the same.

Stephen Breyer criticizes recent Supreme Court decisions and argues for a more pragmatic jurisprudence.

An epic account of a vital economic artery and our many efforts to control it.

Percival Everett refashions a Mark Twain classic.

Liberalism’s relationship to equality has, his­torically, been far from a warm embrace.

The long history of confusions, misconceptions, and miscalculations in the relationship between the US and Iraq, from 1979 to 2003.

Why the far right embraces foreign tyrants.

Should equality, instead of another political ideal, should be at the center of our politics?

Screwball comedies are beloved films, but for decades historians and critics have disagreed over what the genre is and which movies belong to it.

A new book on the famed 1920s court case traces a long-simmering culture war—and the fear that often drives both sides.

Black miners were intentionally erased from the record of the Hawk's Nest Tunnel Disaster. A new book reinserts them into the narrative.

An elegiac retelling of rap's origins, "Hip-Hop Is History" also ends with a sense of hope.

Today’s battles over issues like gender nonconformity and reproductive rights have antecedents that have been lost or suppressed. What can we learn from them?

According to authors of a new book on how Iran has coped with economic sanctions imposed by the U.S., no one does.

The key measure of a healthy economy has long been growth, yet if production and consumption expand at their current rate we risk the health of the planet.

The supposed recluse constantly sent letters to friends, family, and lovers. What do they show us?

Christine Blasey Ford’s memoir captures the hazards of “coming forward.”

In the online era, brick-and-mortar book retailers have been forced to redefine themselves.

In the 20th century, American Communists were seen as an enemy within. In reality, they were ordinary people with complex lives that deserve to be chronicled.

Whose knowledge matters in a changing region?

A look at the psychedlic-inspired music scene of Detroit.

A new book argues that we misunderstand the forces that drove the notorious slave rebel.

Two books that remind us that tone and timbre, musical style and sound, matter to history.

A prison is a difficult thing to kill.

Maurice Isserman’s history of American communism documents both its achievements and its fatal obeisance to Soviet doctrines.

It is hard not to figure the 1968 election as inaugurating the cultural and political polarisation of the American electorate so evident today.

Defining a social type is a way of defining an era. What can the time of the young urban professional tell us about our own?

The convergence of economy and politics in the Sino-US relationship via Jonathan Chatwin’s “The Southern Tour” and Elizabeth O’Brien Ingleson’s “Made in China.”

Plus: One historian’s about-face on the Communist record.

Generally speaking, emergencies tend to reduce productivity, at least in the short and medium terms.

"The Bondwoman’s Narrative" is the first novel by a Black woman to describe slavery from the inside. Recently, scholars have discovered her true identity.

James Shapiro's book "The Playbook" is a timely reminder both of the power of theater and of the vehement antipathy it can generate.

In 2024, the U.S. faces some of the same challenges in the region that it did in 1954.

What was the Popular Front? Where did it come from, and where did its energies go?

John Ganz offers a whirlwind tour of the cranks, conservatives, and con artists who helped remake the American right at the turn of the 21st century.

Can we appreciate Herman Melville’s work without attributing to it schemes for the uplift of modern man?

Jewish masculinity and the New York intellectuals.

After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans replaced all its public schools with charter schools. A new book recovers the decades of work the storm disrupted.

Why conservatives killed America’s federally funded theater.

Revisiting his first book, "The Enormous Room," a reader can get a sense of everything appealing and appalling in his work.

It has suddenly become popular to cast NATO as the first benign military alliance in history, without concealed politics.

On the intertwined history of free speech law and media technology.

The resistance inside prisons is an integral part of the struggle against white supremacy and for Black liberation beyond the walls.

The anthology drama provided a venue for discourses on American national identity during the massive cultural, economic, and political changes occurring at midcentury.

Humans have doodled for as long as they have written and drawn, but psychoanalysis began to imagine the doodle as a key to understanding the unconscious mind.