Modern Family
It is no accident that our age of hyper-capitalism is also one of aggressive “family values,” pursued in popular culture and legislation alike.
Spring 2025
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Artistic Differences
“He Will Not Divide Us” posited that we could all get along—but instead became a petri dish of American division.
It Gets Wetter
Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140 refuses the typical binary of climate change fiction, offering hope for a future somewhere in between victory or ruin.
Booked: From Welfare City to Fear City, with Kim Phillips-Fein
Kim Phillips-Fein discusses her new book, Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics, and who killed the social-democratic city.
Like the Weather
In his quietly devastating book Another Day in the Death of America, Gary Younge argues that all Americans, not just the ones who pull the trigger, are complicit in gun violence.
On the Dole with Ken Loach
Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake shows the cruelties of the UK’s benefits system, but fails to challenge the idea that benefits should only go to the “deserving” poor.
Don’t Feed the Trolls
Understanding the “alt-right” means spending less time looking to its leaders for ideological coherence and more on understanding how its base exercises power.
The False Economics of Anti-Immigration 
George Borjas argues that a protectionist approach towards immigration would be good for American workers. Economists almost universally disagree.
The Logic of Populism
Jan-Werner Müller’s understanding of populism is built on a theory of anti-totalitarianism designed for an enemy that no longer exists.
Slavery on Screen
The films about slavery that came out during the Obama years have given us more powerful and nuanced representations of slavery than we have seen before.
Is There Such a Thing as the American Ghetto?
Today, the term “ghetto” comes across as at best anachronistic, at worst offensive. Does it still have any value?
It Takes a Lot of Money to Look This Cheap
From Dolly Parton to J.D. Vance, rags-to-riches stories obscure as much as they inspire, reinforcing the notion that poverty can be solved by dreams and gumption.
The Invisible Hand
Somewhere between the apostles and Joel Osteen, mainstream Christianity turned from a wellspring of egalitarian promise into yet another exponent of the market gospel. Two new books chart where things went wrong.
When Labor Fought for Civil Rights
Two new histories show how the CIO of the 1930s and ’40s led the charge for racial equality not just on the shop floor but at the national level, precipitating the Democratic Party’s embrace of civil rights.
Indecent Exposures
Oliver Stone’s Hollywood retelling of the Snowden saga ends up depicting surveillance as little more than an inconvenience that might threaten our sex lives.
