Politics Literature Arts Ideas

Society & Culture

Namwali Serpell

Black Hole

Black pussy is our absent center. It is everywhere and nowhere on the Internet.

March 26, 2021

Alan Rusbridger

Two Centuries of ‘The Guardian’

There have been both lean and comfortable times over the decades, but the paper has held its editorial nerve.

May 27, 2021 issue

Ursula Lindsey

Ancient Egypt for the Egyptians

Europeans made—and carried away—many of the most famous discoveries of the “Golden Age of Egyptology,” but Egyptians today are beginning to reclaim their own past.

May 13, 2021 issue

Margaret Eby

The Gourmand’s Way

Along with his celebration of American vernacular cooking, James Beard brought playfulness into the kitchen. But an ethical opportunism is part of his legacy and the culture he helped create.

June 10, 2021 issue

Michelle Chen

Chinatown’s Long Covid

A younger generation tackles the latest, greatest threat to the historic district’s survival.

March 4, 2021

Coco Fusco

Deaccessioning Empire

A few daring curators are confronting the imperial histories of their museums.

February 25, 2021 issue

Jenny Uglow

They Made London Their Own

A new book traces the multitudinous contributions of migrants to the capital, as well as their persistent exploitation.

December 3, 2020 issue

Marina Warner

Splash

Fantastic beliefs, in the form of false claims and urban legends, have been traveling irresistibly since the eighteenth century. The effect today has been amplified by social media; mermaid sightings rank in popularity alongside those of aliens, angels, and unicorns.

March 25, 2021 issue

Janet Malcolm (1934–2021)

Honoré Daumier: Le Défenseur, circa 1862–1865

Janet Malcolm

A Second Chance

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.

September 24, 2020 issue

Janet Malcolm

Good Pictures

If the threat of taking boring pix hangs over every photographer of ambition, Diane Arbus was perhaps more conscious of it than any other photographer.

January 15, 2004 issue

Joseph Mitchell in Lower Manhattan, near the old Fulton Fish Market; photograph by his wife, Therese Mitchell

Janet Malcolm

The Master Writer of the City

Joseph Mitchell’s notorious nonfiction inventions revealed a hybrid genre for which he had a singular genius.

April 23, 2015 issue

Janet Malcolm

The Trial of Alyosha

In Václav Havel’s letters, the strictures of censorship elicited from him a strange, unclassifiable, inadvertent masterpiece.

June 14, 1990 issue

David A. Bell

A Haunted Patrimony

Through their art collecting wealthy Jews staked a claim to being French, but the nation they loved savagely betrayed them.

July 1, 2021 issue

Robert Macfarlane

The Landscapes Inside Us

Our navigational ability as a species is closely connected to our ability to tell stories about ourselves that unfold both backward and forward in time.

July 1, 2021 issue

Christopher Carroll

Far from the Realm of the Real

Lafcadio Hearn’s work was marked by a hatred of modern industrial life and a fascination with what he called “survivals”—traditions or folktales that he hoped would provide a living link to a more ancient form of narrative.

June 10, 2021 issue

Naman Ahuja

Open Letter: A Halt to New Delhi’s Demolitions

The Indian government’s Central Vista Redevelopment, pressing ahead amid a pandemic surge, is tearing down vital parts of the country’s cultural heritage without proper consultation or adequate provision.

May 13, 2021

Tim Flannery

Why Did They Vanish?

Recent advancements in archaeology and genetics have granted us previously unimaginable insights into Neanderthal life.

May 13, 2021 issue

Hilton Als

Remembrance of Things Past

Catherine Opie is interested in where her subjects are on the inside at the moment she’s taking a photograph.

May 13, 2021 issue

Erica Armstrong Dunbar

A Praise House of Many Mansions

In a book and documentary series, Henry Louis Gates Jr. offers a wide-ranging tour of Black religion in America.

April 29, 2021 issue

Magda Teter

When Poverty Became Profane

Two recent books, by Debra Kaplan and Natan Meir, examine poverty and charity in European Jewish communities, looking at how a marginalized minority dealt with the problems of destitution and social welfare during periods of rapid change.

April 29, 2021 issue