Adam Hochschild

The Cruelties of Empire

Whether they were labeled internal revolts, police actions, or states of emergency, colonial wars were especially brutal.

Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire

by Caroline Elkins

In the Forest of No Joy: The Congo-Océan Railroad and the Tragedy of French Colonialism

by J.P. Daughton

November 24, 2022 issue

Who’s to Blame?

Three new books argue that disappearing jobs and widening inequality helped make possible Trump’s politics of resentment.

Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury

by Evan Osnos

Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump

by Spencer Ackerman

American Made: What Happens to People When Work Disappears

by Farah Stockman

May 12, 2022 issue

All-American Vigilantes

When the US entered World War I, right-wing organizations seized the opportunity to round up leftists, labor organizers, and suspected draft dodgers.

July 22, 2021 issue

LaVoy Finicum, the only fatality during the Oregon standoff, at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, January 2016

Another Great Yesterday

Shadowlands: Fear and Freedom at the Oregon Standoff—A Western Tale of America in Crisis

by Anthony McCann

No Man’s Land

a PBS Independent Lens documentary film directed by David Byars

December 19, 2019 issue

Former white nationalist Derek Black and his father, Don Black, on their radio show The Don and Derek Black Show, December 2011

Family Values

Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist

by Eli Saslow

September 26, 2019 issue

Robert Colescott: Knowledge of the Past Is the Key to the Future: Some Afterthoughts on Discovery, 1986; from ‘Figuring History,’ a recent exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum. The catalog is edited by Catharina Manchanda and includes essays by Jacqueline Francis and Lowery Stokes Sims. It is published by the museum and Yale University Press.

American Devilry

Beautiful Country Burn Again: Democracy, Rebellion, and Revolution

by Ben Fountain

Behold, America: The Entangled History of “America First” and “The American Dream”

by Sarah Churchwell

Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law

by James Q. Whitman

October 25, 2018 issue

Bang for the Buck

Congress, terrified of the NRA, has shielded manufacturers and dealers from any liability for firearms deaths, and has prevented the Centers for Disease Control from doing any studies of gun violence.

Armed in America: A History of Gun Rights from Colonial Militias to Concealed Carry

by Patrick J. Charles

Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment

by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Chosen Country: A Rebellion in the West

by James Pogue

April 5, 2018 issue

Ku Klux Klan paraders, Muncie, Indiana, 1922

Ku Klux Klambakes

Two new books give us a fresh look at the Klan in the 1920s.

The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition

by Linda Gordon

Ku Klux Kulture: America and the Klan in the 1920s

by Felix Harcourt

December 7, 2017 issue

Boston police with seized radical literature, November 1919

When Dissent Became Treason

A period of unparalleled censorship, mass imprisonment, and anti-immigrant terror

America and the Great War: A Library of Congress Illustrated History

by Margaret E. Wagner, with an introduction by David M. Kennedy

The Great War

a three-part television series produced by Stephen Ives and Amanda Pollak for PBS’s American Experience

War Against War: The American Fight for Peace, 1914–1918

by Michael Kazin

Spider Web: The Birth of American Anticommunism

by Nick Fischer

September 28, 2017 issue

A shakedown of inmates in the main corridor of the Ellis Prison Farm, Huntsville, Texas, 1968; photograph by Danny Lyon from his 1971 book Conversations with the Dead, which has just been reissued by Phaidon. A retrospective of his work, ‘Danny Lyon: Message to the Future,’ will be on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, June 17–September 25, 2016.

Our Awful Prisons: How They Can Be Changed

Today we have 710 people per 100,000 in prison in the US, compared to fifty-eight in Finland.

Mr. Smith Goes to Prison: What My Year Behind Bars Taught Me About America’s Prison Crisis

by Jeff Smith

Understanding Mass Incarceration: A People’s Guide to the Key Civil Rights Struggle of Our Time

by James Kilgore

The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America

by Naomi Murakawa

From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America

by Elizabeth Hinton

Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics

by Marie Gottschalk

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May 26, 2016 issue

Motorized gun carriage with an antiaircraft gun, Verdun, 1916

The Trenches in Color

Because of the photography of their day, we tend to think of the world wars in black and white. Peter Walther’s The First World War in Colour feels like looking at a familiar scene through a different pair of eyeglasses.

September 5, 2014

George Orwell (standing behind the machine-gunner) and his wife Eileen (crouching at Orwell’s feet) with the British Independent Labour Party contingent at the Huesca Front during the Spanish Civil War, March 1937

Orwell: Homage to the ‘Homage’

December 19, 2013 issue

Clark Kerr and Ronald Reagan leaving the meeting of the University of California’s board of regents at which Kerr was fired from his position as president of the university at Reagan’s insistence, Berkeley, January 1967

Berkeley: What We Didn’t Know

Seth Rosenfeld’s ‘Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power’

Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power

by Seth Rosenfeld

May 23, 2013 issue

Letter

Seth Rosenfeld

‘Subversives’

August 15, 2013 issue

Former rebel fighters being integrated into the regular army of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bunia, eastern Congo, 2007; photograph by Susan Meiselas

Rape of the Congo

August 13, 2009 issue

English Abolition: The Movie

Amazing Grace

a film directed by Michael Apted

June 14, 2007 issue

‘In the Heart of Darkness’

January 12, 2006 issue

In the Heart of Darkness

Memory of Congo: The Colonial Era

an exhibition at the Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium, February 4–October 9, 2005.

La mémoire du Congo: Le temps colonial

catalog of the exhibition, in French or Dutch, edited by Jean-Luc Vellut et al

October 6, 2005 issue

Letter

Jean-Luc Vellut

‘In the Heart of Darkness’

January 12, 2006 issue

An Open Letter to the President

December 21, 2000 issue

Magic Journalism

Imperium

by Ryszard Kapuscinski, translated by Klara Glowczewska

November 3, 1994 issue

Against Loans to Chile

June 11, 1987 issue