Politics

United States International Human Rights Climate Change

The Paradox of the American Revolution

Recent books by Woody Holton and Alan Taylor offer fresh perspectives on early US history but overemphasize the importance of white supremacy as its driving force.

January 13, 2022 issue

James McAuley

Who Does Éric Zemmour Speak For?

The far-right French presidential candidate offers a crude exaggeration of what many in France believe but few dare to admit.

January 13, 2022 issue

Fintan O’Toole

‘Arum Arum Araaaaaagh’

Boris Johnson’s clownishness has become both mortifyingly infantile and, for those who have to live in the pandemic-stricken country he governs, quite scary.

January 13, 2022 issue

David S. Reynolds

He Was No Moses

While he opposed slavery and southern secession early in his career, as president Andrew Johnson turned out to be an unsightly bigot.

December 16, 2021 issue

Alma Guillermoprieto

Nicaragua’s Dreadful Duumvirate

Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo’s corrupt and paranoid dictatorship has destroyed the Sandinista movement’s proudest achievements.

December 16, 2021 issue

Coco Fusco

Whose Art Thrives in Cuba?

Art and dance were battlegrounds for the struggle to define the meaning of the revolution.

December 16, 2021 issue

Raja Shehadeh

What Does Israel Fear from This ‘Terrorist’?

The Israeli government smears human rights organizations—like Al Haq, the one I founded—rather than attempting to end the violations they bring to light.

December 2, 2021 issue

Jake Bernstein

Loopholes for Kleptocrats

The term “tax haven” may conjure images of Caribbean islands and palm trees, but two recent books make the case that the world’s leading tax haven is America.

December 2, 2021 issue

Can Health Care Be Cured?

Nathan Whitlock

Where Health Care Is a Human Right

How does the single-payer system work in Canada, and does it need reform?

November 19, 2020 issue

First responders at the Riverside University Health Systems Medical Center, Moreno Valley, California, May 15, 2020

Timothy Snyder

What Ails America

Although I did not understand this then, I had a severe infection in my liver. I was in a condition known as sepsis; death was close.

September 3, 2020

David Oshinsky

Health Care: The Best and the Rest

Ezekiel Emanuel’s new book makes a comparative study of eleven of the world’s health care systems. Who are the winners and losers?

October 22, 2020 issue

Nellie Hermann

Cancer Under Capitalism

In ‘The Undying,’ Anne Boyer rejects the conventions of the cancer memoir in favor of a manifesto.

November 5, 2020 issue

Arnold Relman

On Breaking One’s Neck

A doctor’s near-death experience and what it reveals about the US medical care system

February 6, 2014 issue

Jerome Groopman and Pamela Hartzband

Putting Profits Ahead of Patients

Health care in the US is enormously costly, often in ways that are baffling not only to patients but to doctors themselves.

July 13, 2017 issue

Martin Shkreli, the former head of Turing Pharmaceuticals, outside the federal courthouse in Brooklyn after he was found guilty of fraud, August 2017

Daniel J. Kevles

Why Is Medicine So Expensive?

The system of prescription drug pricing is a patchwork product of history, vulnerable to manipulation by the pharmaceutical industry.

February 21, 2019 issue

Marcia Angell

Right Diagnosis, Wrong Treatment

‘America’s Bitter Pill’ by Steven Brill

April 23, 2015 issue

The Latest

Michael Tomasky

Can He Build Back Better?

Many liberals worry that the Democrats are doomed. But Biden can still rebound.

February 10, 2022 issue

Jill Filipovic

Choice by Mail

With Roe v. Wade under threat, abortion rights in the US are facing their greatest challenge yet. Enter the Dutch doctor who has opened a new front with safe medication on demand.

January 11, 2022

Vincent Bevins

Brazil Turns, Lula Returns

Bolsonaro’s years of misrule have left a yearning for stability. Even conservative elites are adjusting to the idea of the Workers’ Party leader as president again.

January 5, 2022

Frederic Wehrey

The Many Repercussions of the Rif Rebellion

Fittingly for an anticolonial movement that created the template for those that followed, the Berber revolt of the 1920s reverberates across a century of history to this day.

December 18, 2021

Lawrence Lessig

Why the US Is a Failed Democratic State

The self-governing republic works only if it expresses the will of the majority. But one party is now committed to minoritarian rule by any means.

December 10, 2021

Krithika Varagur

The Anti-Nazi Punjabi Princess

Catherine Duleep Singh was an Anglo-Indian aristocrat who lived much of her life quietly with another woman in Germany. Then she became a savior of Jewish refugees.

November 27, 2021

Tariq Mir

Kashmir’s Cycle of Death

The more ruthlessly India uses military force to make its regional power plays, the more ineluctably young Kashmiris are drawn into armed resistance.

November 22, 2021

Matt Seaton

The Etymology of Terror

For more than 150 years after it was coined, “terrorism” meant violence inflicted by the state on its people. How did the word come to mean the reverse?

November 17, 2021

Tareq Baconi

What Apartheid Means for Israel

A growing consensus has formed around the term—not as a rhetorical comparison to South Africa, but describing a system of domination built on the partition of Palestine.

November 5, 2021

Leah Aronowsky

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