All Work and No Play
Video games, like any creative product, reflect and refract the conditions of their production. Today, what they most resemble is twenty-first-century work.
Spring 2025
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Rage Against American Healthcare
In the United States, sick patients spend hours coordinating, haggling, and sometimes pleading with the healthcare system. Can these frustrations become a source of radical change?
A Friend to the Dissidents
The late Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal said his style was a “defense against politics.” But by collecting and describing the debris of life, he made the everyday seem mythic and earned the affection of the dissident movement.
The Conservative Court
Since the Nixon era, the Supreme Court’s treatment of poverty and racial justice has made it a consistent enemy of society’s most marginalized.
After Homosexuality
Sexual Hegemony, an ambitious retelling of the history of capitalism through the politics of gay sex, arrives just in time to help dissuade us of the idea that we have reached the end of gay history.
Cult Capitalism
To understand how NXIVM’s members went from the pursuit of professional success to facilitating and enduring horrific wrongs requires examining the world of contemporary business from which the cult emerged.
“Were We Not Promised To Be Free?”
The pandemic has revealed how the rapid urbanization fueling India’s economic ascent is rooted in migrant labor.
Majority-Minority Myths
It’s time to let go of the belief that changing demographics will bring about a progressive America.
Red London
Owen Hatherley’s eye-opening account of the left in power in London suggests both the possibilities and limits for municipal socialism.
The Problem of Pain
It’s easier to blame individuals for the opioid crisis than to attempt to diagnose and cure the ills of a society.
The Global Climate Ledger
The rise of the global middle class threatens to blow up the environmental envelope. Can the link between income and emissions be broken?
What Caste Leaves Out
Isabel Wilkerson’s account of racial oppression elides crucial differences between social inequality in South Asia and the United States—differences with real implications for emancipatory political projects.
Backlash Forever
It’s time to abandon the assumption that workers have a “natural” home on the center-left. But we should also reject the idea that social conservatism always lies latent within working-class culture, ready for right-wing politicians to activate.
Repression in Xi’s China
The tightening of state control over Hong Kong and Xinjiang reveal a consolidation of authority in Xi’s CCP, intent on stifling any signs of nonconformity.
The Price of Empire
U.S. elites are not victims of China and Germany’s export-oriented policies. They are engaged in the complex balancing act needed to maintain global hegemony.
