Reality Pawns: The New Money TV
A new set of reality shows thrive on foreclosed property and unpaid bills; they promote a bargain-basement ethos where everything has a price, and where discovering and comparing those prices is a source of pleasure.
Spring 2025
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A Radical Approach to the Climate Crisis
Because of its magnitude, the climate crisis can appear as the sum total of all environmental problems. But halting greenhouse gas emissions is a specific problem, the most pressing subset of the larger apocalyptic panorama. A radical approach to the crisis of climate change begins not with a long-term vision of an alternate society but with an honest engagement with the very compressed timeframe that current climate science implies. In the age of climate change, these are the real parameters of politics.
Green Energy Bust in Germany
Can an energy system move off carbon-based fuels and nuclear energy at the same time? Will Boisvert argues that the German Energiewende shows why not—with a response from Osha Gray Davidson and a reply by Boisvert.
Spring 2013 – Mobile Editions 
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Cheerleaders for Anarchism
The financial crisis of 2007–2008 inspired a shallow but significant revival of Marxist analysis in academic life. A violent upsurge in theory, however, has corresponded to no particular insurrection in practice. If any radical left tendency has been responsible for inspiring action, the palm should go to Marxism’s historic antagonist on the Left—anarchism.
Green Energy Bust: Boisvert Replies
This article is part of a debate on the German plan to eliminate nuclear energy. To read Will Boisvert’s initial article, >click here. To read Osha Gray Davidson’s response, click here. Thanks to Osha Gray Davidson for commenting. I’ll address …
Green Energy Bust: Response to Will Boisvert
This article is part of a debate on the German plan to eliminate nuclear energy. To read Will Boisvert’s initial article, click here. To read his reply to Osha Gray Davidson, click here. Germany’s renewable energy project should be critically …
Twin Tragedies
Two horrifying events occurred this spring that, at first, may seem to have nothing in common. In Bangladesh, more than a thousand garment workers died in the collapse of the Rana Plaza, a building whose owners knew it was a …
Gun Control in America: An Autopsy Report
Last year came news about the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager, at the hands of a nervous neighborhood vigilante. More recently, a graduate student in neuroscience named James Holmes opened fire in a Colorado theater with …
Austerity Agonistes
Austerity: The History of A Dangerous Idea by Mark Blyth Oxford University Press, 2013, 304 pp. Debtors’ Prison: The Politics of Austerity versus Possibility by Robert Kuttner Knopf, 2013, 352 pp. More disheartening than the economic catastrophe in the United …
The Typo Slayer
My first typo trauma came when I was a teenaged summer clerk-typist for the public information office of the state mental health department. Ever since I’d learned to read, I’d been hooked on print. Typing and proofing press releases about …
Firestorm: Napalm and the American Century
Napalm: An American Biography by Robert M. Neer Belknap Press, 2013, 352 pp. Pilots release their ordnance. Silver, cigar-shaped canisters drop away. A simple and deadly munitions miracle, the weapon represents American know-how and military necessity. For close-quarters infantry support …
The Inner Life of the Poor
The poor are pretty much absent from public and political discourse, except as an abstraction—an income category low on the Index of Socioeconomic Status—or as a generalization: people dependent on the government, the “takers,” a problem. Neither abstraction nor generalization …
Starchitects in Spain Left on the Plain
For almost twenty years the phrase “Spanish architecture” was spoken in hushed and reverent tones. It evoked not just Gaudí and his perpetually unfinished spires, but a new breed of visionaries who were reinventing the profession and doing wonders for …
Defending Public Education: An Interview with Karen Lewis of the Chicago Teachers Union
In 2010, a slate led by Karen Lewis ousted the incumbent leadership of the Chicago Teachers Union, promising deeper community engagement and a more aggressive defense of teachers and public education. In 2012, with Lewis as president, CTU mounted the …
