Caroline Fraser

Dispirited Away

The rise and fall of an evangelical church, founded with progressive intentions and undone by dissension and bad faith

Trouble in River City

Two recent books examine the idea of the Midwest as a haven for white supremacy and patriarchy.

‘Anxious for a Mayflower’

In A Nation of Descendants, Francesca Morgan traces the American use and abuse of genealogy from the Daughters of the American Revolution to Roots.

From Hell and Back

A harrowing, suppressed memoir by Gertrude Beasley and a revisionist western by Robin McLean add up to a savage indictment of regional misogyny.

Where Sheep May Safely Graze

A cri de coeur against our current state of abject agricultural illiteracy, James Rebanks’s new book may be the most passionate ecological corrective since Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.

Murder Is My Business

In the true crime genre’s latest iteration, writers, reporters, bloggers, documentary filmmakers, and podcast hosts have taken a soiled brand and turned it into a collective exercise in retributive justice, recording and correcting the history of sexual violence.

The Stench of American Neglect

In her new book, the activist Catherine Coleman Flowers chronicles her efforts to expose criminally deficient sanitation in her home county of Lowndes, Alabama and around the US.

The Representative

Ilhan Omar’s ability to survive, even thrive, under chaotic conditions appears to have been a harbinger of a taste for political battle.

Red Wedding

No Haven

In ‘This Is All I Got,’ a report about a year in the life of a homeless single mother in New York City, Lauren Sandler finds the intractable source of homelessness in the piratical inequities of the housing market.

Confronting Male Violence

For centuries, men have been saying, “I’ll tear her all to pieces,” and doing it, too

Working-Class Women and Warren

Warren in the Trap

In her rhetoric, in the media, and in voters’ reactions to her, perceptions of Elizabeth Warren have always been driven by gender.

The Road Taken

‘Shortest Way Home: One Mayor’s Challenge and a Model for America’s Future’ by Pete Buttigieg

‘Our Bodies Were Born into Hard Labor’

Sarah Smarsh’s ‘Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth’

‘A Strange, Bloody, Broken Beauty’

Confidence Games

Heart of Darkness

Customs of the Country

The Mormon Murder Case