Occupy Memory

A decade ago, a grassroots anticapitalist movement burst on the scene, galvanizing people with its slogan “We are the 99 percent.” It changed me, and many others, but how much did it change the world?

September 16, 2021

The World of Tadeusz Borowski’s Auschwitz

The Polish writer survived the camps yet died before he was thirty. The stories he left behind provide perhaps the most unflinching literary account we have of the Holocaust.

September 12, 2021

‘I Walk Through My Fear’

The artist became known for her images of a circle that would be decimated by AIDS. Today, she’s using ACT UP-style activism to highlight the Sacklers’ part in the opioid crisis—and stop museums taking their money.

September 13, 2021

Remembering Michael Richards

The young artist was among those killed in the September 11, 2001 attack on the Twin Towers, where he had a studio. Now, twenty years on, his work is enjoying its first major retrospective.

September 11, 2021

Ten Years After Occupy

“For the first time since the huge anti-war demonstrations, I saw protests that everyone was participating in. Since then, taking part in protests has felt like the rent I pay for living in this world.”

September 18, 2021

Giants of the Northeast Kingdom

“Bread and Puppet was part of a Vermont I didn’t know as a kid, or only saw out of the corner of my eye.”

September 11, 2021

In the Drug Archives

“Our current fascination with psychedelics and mental exploration has a longer history than we recognize.”

September 3, 2021

Eastward Ho!

A biography of Josiah Harlan recounts the story of the real-life Man Who Would Be King, a Pennsylvania Quaker who became an Afghan prince.

May 13, 2004 issue

The Faraway War

The Soviets invested considerable resources—material and above all moral—in Afghanistan. Retreating without leaving a Communist government in power will be difficult to disguise as anything other than a humiliating defeat.

December 22, 1983 issue

Afghanistan’s Other War

Caught in the midst of a grownups’ war, young Afghans are under intense political pressure from both the Soviets and the mujahedin.

December 18, 1986 issue

An Artist in Afghanistan

The Afghani artist Ustad Ghausuddin, a portraitist of royalty, renowned landscape painter, and teacher, recounts fleeing his country after the Soviet invasion.

June 12, 1986 issue

The Making of Afghanistan

Years of devastation wrought by the proxy war between the United States and the Soviet Union created a political and economic void in Afghanistan that the Mujahideen-trained Taliban were eager to fill.

November 15, 2001 issue

The Afghan Tragedy

For the rural men who dominated the Taliban, women in Kabul and other Afghan cities, relatively modern Shiite and Persian-speaking minorities, Communists of the past, and foreign aid workers of today were part of the same large, undifferentiated threat to the Pashtun dictatorship that they wished to maintain.

January 17, 2002 issue

The Rise of bin Laden

Steve Coll’s ‘Ghost Wars’ is a rare objective history of the many failures of the CIA and the US government in Afghanistan.

May 27, 2004 issue

Echoes of Rumi

At the heart of Rumi’s teaching is a surrender to a divine presence, which is finally without external attributes.

June 13, 2002 issue

Surprising Consensus at the Supreme Court

With narrow rulings in many of its most controversial cases, the Court defied predictions of a sharp turn to the right.

August 19, 2021 issue

Contagious Constitutions

Linda Colley shows in her new book that written constitutions developed both as a means of shoring up entrenched rulers and of turning successful rebellions into legitimate governments.

June 10, 2021 issue

Merrick Garland’s Moderation to Excess

As attorney general, he is the United States’ top law enforcement officer. But is he enforcing enough?

July 15, 2021

Sentenced by Algorithm

Computer programs used to predict recidivism and determine prison terms have a high error rate, a secret design, and a demonstrable racial bias.

June 10, 2021 issue