The Limits of Climate Change Litigation

For two decades, climate scientists have been developing tools to pin the blame for hurricanes, floods, and heatwaves on fossil fuel companies. But judges say climate change is too big for court.

November 3, 2021

An AIDS Activist’s Archive

The obituaries saved by one social worker are, essentially, a list of names and the barest outlines of biography. But in their silences, they contain multitudes.

October 29, 2021

Why Israel Calls Human Rights ‘Terrorism’

In a widely condemned move, the Israeli government has banned the group I founded. This is how it enforces impunity for its illegal policies of occupation.

October 27, 2021

A Good Story to Tell

“As an editor, I liked it when writers opened my eyes to their passions, however obscure they might seem. As a writer, I want to do the same.”

October 30, 2021

Unknown Sources of Lift

“I think there’s an understandable but perilous tendency to conflate art and artist when the artist in question uses autobiographical elements in their work.”

October 9, 2021

On the Trail Blazed by W.E.B. Du Bois

“Writing, teaching, activism, organizing—he did everything. And I feel a responsibility, or desire, to reach as many people as I can with my writing that grows out of my interest in the Black struggle.”

August 28, 2021

She Shampooed & Renewed Us

For those who dreamed upward in the late 1960s, there was not only Woodstock, there was also its commemoration by Mitchell in her optimistic paean to the festival’s significance in her song of the same name.

October 26, 2017 issue

Dylan’s Time

Dylan, through his ambiguity, his ability to throw down puzzles that continue to echo and to generate interpretations, almost singlehandedly created a climate in which lyrics were taken seriously.

October 13, 2016

Paul Simon: Fathers, Sons, Troubled Water

Paul Simon’s emotive, androgynous tenor and sensitive, imagistic songwriting have sustained a sixty-year career in American pop music that came to a close in September with three farewell concerts.

October 13, 2018

Swept Away by Springsteen

For a generation or two of listeners, Springsteen has been rock’s steadfast working-class hero, the self-made superstar who never forgot where he came from and a flesh-and-blood affirmation of tenacity against long odds.

December 22, 2016 issue

A Dance to the Music of Death

Thomas Adès turns fleetingly recognizable musical elements into unstable, volatile substances tending toward evanescence and escape.

May 13, 2021 issue

The Witch Hunters’ Crusade

Why did sixteenth-century investigators of witchcraft place such an inordinate emphasis on demonic sex, and why did they concentrate their inquiries on women?

September 26, 2002 issue

The Hide That Binds

A medical librarian’s history of books covered in human skin.

November 5, 2020 issue

Arthur Kern's Creatures

Arthur Kern’s unsettling, grotesque sculptures bring to mind twins fighting for space within the womb, disembodied heads frozen in cryogenic pods, an astronaut doomed to float forever through outer space.

June 1, 2016