Winter 2024

Over the past ten years, there has been a growing gap in perception over the state of American democracy. The vast majority of the Washington press corps-including many pundits critical of the Bush administration-is inclined to see what has happened …

The name James Chapin may not be familiar to many Dissent readers. He didn’t write a great deal for the magazine. Until the last year or so of his life—when he turned out superb political analysis for an unlikely outlet, …

Now that the dust has started to settle, it’s time to assess why the congressional Republicans, in the face of overwhelmingly hostile public opinion, pursue the impeachment of President Clinton to the bitter end. Overwrought idealism was partly responsible, as …

Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes by Greil Marcus Henry Holt and Company, 1997 286 pp $22.50 Time out of Mind by Bob Dylan Columbia Records, 1997 Anthology of American Folk Music Harry Smith, ed. Smithsonian/Folkways Recordings, 1997, re-issue 6 …

“All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor,” Walt Whitman wrote in 1855. Allen Ginsberg, who was candid about his faults and about much else, died a beloved and forgiven poet. To be sure, there are those …

The view from Seats 17 and 18, Row G, Main Section 26, down the left-field line at Yankee Stadium, is terrible. The left-fielder, when not obscured by the foul pole, is the only player who is easily recognizable. Everyone and …

The November elections produced, at best, mixed results. Apart from the marginal Democratic gains in the House and the marginal Republican gains in the Senate, the political landscape looked the same the morning after Election Day as it had the …

When Jeffrey Isaac calls for chastened political expectations, I can’t help but agree. Given the political blockages and intellectual disarray of the moment, who wouldn’t? As I write this, in early July, the New York Times reports that federal cutbacks …

The aim of my essay was not to measure reputations, as Martin Kilson claims The aim was to assess how reputations get measured these days. The essay grew from my dismay at how the conceits of celebrity journalism have increasingly …

In The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois reflected on the ironies of reaching the academic heights, always sensing his racial distinctiveness, always confronting the hesitant curiosity of sympathetic whites, always coping with their unasked question: “How does it …

Populism is all the rage in this political season—an enraged and often outrageous populism. Judging from the last election, American voters have hit the boiling point. They hate taxes, big government, and spending on the poor. They hate the Washington …

The abbreviation of the 1994 baseball season depressed millions of Americans, but it was crushing for fans of the New York Yankees. What a team we had: not Murderers’ Row, maybe, but strong up the middle, deep on the bench, …

The Waterworks is E.L. Doctorow’s latest meditation on history, memory, genius, and the City of New York. And also on municipal corruption, big-city newspapers (and toadying big-city newspaper tycoons), science, technology, the homeless, and the evils of private health care …

Eugene Genovese’s essay is an uneasy mixture of expiation and accusation, and so it elicits a mixed response. In challenging American leftists to face up to an overdue reckoning with history and morality, he says some things that badly need …