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The Cults of Wagner

In his ambitious new book, Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music, Alex Ross explores the impact of Richard Wagner’s art and ideas from his own time down to the present.

If Trump leaves the White House on January 20, 2021, he will not go gentle into that good night. Addicted as he is to Twitter and the limelight, he is likely to continue attacking his successor, stirring up his base, and suggesting that the election was stolen, thereby continuing to undermine the legitimacy of the democratic system.

Deportation Nation

Julia Preston

The deportation system held sway over immigrant communities long before Trump became president, but under his direction it has become even more far-reaching, arbitrary, and cruel.

The Desk and the Daring

Dayna Tortorici

Vivian Gornick has long enjoyed an audience of literary depressives and feminists. Now, a late-career revival is expanding her readership.

Simulating Democracy

James Gleick

Jill Lepore’s ‘If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future’

Confinement and Contagion

Justine van der Leun

How coronavirus has made those in women’s prisons more vulnerable

The Oracle of Our Unease

Sarah Churchwell

The enchanted terms in which F. Scott Fitzgerald portrayed modern America still blind us to how scathingly he judged it.

Ball Don’t Lie

Jay Caspian Kang

Robert Scoop Jackson’s ‘The Game Is Not a Game: The Power, Protest, and Politics of American Sports’

A Second Chance

Janet Malcolm

A trial jury is like an audience at a play that wants to be entertained. Witnesses, like stage actors, have to play to that audience if their performances are to be convincing.

Making Order of the Breakdown

Elaine Blair

Elena Ferrante’s ‘The Lying Life of Adults’

Night and Day

Fintan O’Toole

Democrats are gambling that abhorrence of Trump is sufficiently strong to motivate voters, and Biden and Harris can offer comfort and empathy instead.

The Wages of Whiteness

Hari Kunzru

Whiteness is a concept that can be made to serve many interests and positions, not all of them compatible.

Mourning in Place

Edwidge Danticat

It’s hard to figure out how to mourn during a pandemic. Our mourning rituals have all been disrupted or taken away.

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130 Degrees

Bill McKibben

This is going to be a century of crises, many of them more dangerous than what we’re living through now.

Stepping Out

Clair Wills

I hold hands with strangers. I do it quite often, and for long minutes at a time.

A Horse’s Remorse

Adam Thirlwell

The most accurate portrait of contemporary malaise might be a cartoon that stars an asshole sublebrity horse.

Speech and Slavery in the West Indies

Fara Dabhoiwala

Slavery was foundational to Britain’s prosperity and rise to global power.

The New Nuclear Threat

Jessica T. Mathews

A second nuclear arms race has begun—one that could be more dangerous than the first.

Buzz Buzz Buzz

Michelle Nijhuis

Humans have spent decades trying to teach other animals our languages, but we’ve made little effort to learn theirs.

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Unpresidented

Fintan O’Toole

Toxic residues from the Civil War, the Vietnam War, and the so-called war on terror continue to flow into American politics

Clear, Inclusive, and Lasting

Mark Mazower

Eric Hobsbawm’s works themselves are his memorial. What is there to learn from his biography?

Sun Ra: ‘I’m Everything and Nothing’

Namwali Serpell

The photographer Ming Smith’s pictures of Sun Ra from 1978 beautifully capture his energy.

How to Fix Child Poverty

Jason DeParle

The National Academies estimate that child poverty costs the country $800 billion to $1.1 trillion a year—including lower adult earnings, worse health, and higher crime.

Wanting Wrong

Anne Enright

On Miranda Popkey’s ‘Topics of Conversation’ and Ariana Harwicz’s ‘Die, My Love’

Less Punishment, More Justice

David Cole

We need to rethink the institutional structures that will determine criminal justice policy for years to come.

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Ransacking the Republic

Walter M. Shaub Jr.

Trump and his Republican wrecking crew are ripping out the floorboards under the government ethics program.

Democracy’s Red Line

Hari Kunzru

On Masha Gessen’s ‘Surviving Autocracy’

Just Use Your Thinking Pump!

Jessica Riskin

What is the scientific method, and when, where, and how did it become, as the kids say, a thing?

What Is College Worth?

Jonathan Zimmerman

As tuition and student debt continue to skyrocket, it’s worth asking how much longer we can sustain this system.

A Legacy of Torture in Chicago

Peter C. Baker

Laurence Ralph’s ‘The Torture Letters: Reckoning with Police Violence’

An Ethical Path to a Covid Vaccine

Carl Elliott

Many idealistic young people seem willing to risk their health for the common good. The question is how to make Phase I studies safe and fair.

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