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Alexandra D. Lahav

Medicine Is Made for Men

In medical research, drug regulation, and product design, the male body is too often considered as the default—which can have dangerous, even fatal, consequences for women.

February 11, 2021 issue

Jacqueline Woodson

‘The Tools We Have’: A Photo History of African Women

A new book offers a striking visual history of African women from 1870 to 1970.

January 23, 2021

Christopher Benfey

Life’s Merry-Go-Round

From Rilke to Rodgers and Hammerstein, the carousel has embodied the sadness of lost innocence. And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges—even on Donald Trump.

January 25, 2021

Ruth Franklin

A Sickness in the Air

Rumaan Alam’s Leave the World Behind imagines the world after a global disaster, but its real subject is white entitlement.

February 11, 2021 issue

Joyce Carol Oates

Chronicle of a Death Ignored

Becky Cooper’s We Keep the Dead Close is as much a study of corrosive institutional patriarchy as it is an investigation into an unsolved 1969 murder at Harvard.

February 11, 2021 issue

Simon Callow

A Taste for the Difficult

In his performing, his critical writing, and his conversation, the prodigious Charles Rosen was driven by ceaseless curiosity and the urge to share his knowledge.

February 11, 2021 issue

Elizabeth Kolbert

Chemical Warfare’s Home Front

Since World War I we’ve been solving problems with dangerous chemicals that introduce new problems.

February 11, 2021 issue

Evan Kindley

To Err Is Poetic

The poetry canon is dotted with mistakes large and small; why do some critics seem attached to reading these errors as intentional?

February 11, 2021 issue

Shennette Garrett-Scott

What Price Wholeness?

A detailed new proposal for reparations for slavery raises three critical questions: How much, exactly, does America owe? Where will the money come from? And who gets paid?

February 11, 2021 issue

photographs by Radcliffe Roye, essay by Rebecca Lee Sanchez

‘God, Guns, & Trump’: Anatomy of the Crowd

What the body language of Trump supporters tells us about America’s divided future.

January 22, 2021

Jordan Casteel: Her Turn, 2018

“I feel myself very explicitly when I stand up close and look at the brushstrokes or the gestures. And then when I step back, I see the person in the painting, and it feels like a real relationship comes to life when you’re standing in front of the work.”

— Salamishah Tillet talks with artist Jordan Casteel

February 11, 2021

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Min Jin Lee

The Imperfect and Sublime ‘Gatsby’

Amid a life of disappointments, Fitzgerald’s novel was a crowning achievement. I turn to it because it gives me the sober wisdom to revise my own American dream.

January 21, 2021

Richard Kreitner

Secessionist Talk Is Serious

Disunion is hardly a new theme in American politics. In this moment of tumult, it would be unwise to rule out its return.

January 19, 2021

Peter Lowe

A World Without Us: Josef Koudelka’s ‘Ruins’

These photographs of ancient sites, taken around the Mediterranean between 1991 and 2015, are particularly apt in our time of isolation and upheaval.

January 16, 2021

Michael Eric Dyson

St. Paul’s Letter to America

“After the Capitol offense, all thoughts of American exceptionalism should be dead,” says the apostle. “But you need not despair.”

January 18, 2021

Sarah Churchwell

The Party of Lincoln Ignores His Warning Against Mobocracy

“There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law,” declared the man who would be America’s sixteenth president. Only justice can make a more perfect Union.

January 15, 2021

Lavender Au

China’s First Big #MeToo Case Tests the Party

When the people’s republic claims to have achieved gender equality, how to deal with a high-profile accusation of sexual harassment is a tricky matter.

January 12, 2021

Ankush Khardori

Wanted: Lead Suspect in Election Fraud Conspiracy

Once Trump leaves office, he loses immunity. After his attempted coup, let’s not award him impunity instead.

January 6, 2021

Brief Encounters

Jonathan Stevenson, interviewed by Matt Seaton

The National Security Counselor

“Entrenched constraints would have been damn useful in preventing Trump from heedlessly tearing down the US-led postwar liberal order.”

January 16, 2021

Anna Badkhen, interviewed by Lucy McKeon

Chronicler of a World on the Move

“Despite the immense amount of violence and loss I have witnessed, I remain interested in the miracle of survival, in what keeps us going.”

January 9, 2021

Benjamin Moser, interviewed by Matt Seaton

Desperately Not Seeking Susan

“The strong feelings about Sontag were exactly what I dreaded when I was first asked to do the biography. If I’d cared too much about that, I couldn’t have written it.”

January 2, 2021