E Pluribus Country
Politics flattens, but the best country music invites us into people’s complex and contradictory lives.
Winter 2024
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Listening in an Emergency
Big Thief makes protest music for a moment when even language, even stories, even voices, have betrayed us.
Lifestyle Migrants
The contrasts between North Americans moving south and Central Americans traveling north, or Western migrants frolicking on Thai beaches while Burmese refugees languish in camps, are numerous and stark.
What’s Left of Generation X
To be Gen X was to be disaffected from the consumer norms of the 1980s, but to be pessimistic about any chance for social transformation.
Can Conservatives Write Good U.S. History?
By not giving the battle against racism and for equality its due, Wilfred McClay’s Land of Hope fails to explain how and for whom power was and continues to be wielded in America.
Ursula K. Le Guin’s Revolutions
Le Guin’s work is distinctive not only because it is imaginative, or because it is political, but because she thought so deeply about the work of building a future worth living.
What Amos Oz Couldn’t See
The late writer’s displays of moral courage will serve as a kind of record for future historians, proof of the efforts of Israelis who did not stand idly by as their country’s skies darkened—as well as proof of their shortcomings.
Already Great
On the dead-end optimism of Parks and Recreation.
Bisbee’s Ghosts
A forced exodus haunts a border town’s past. Can a new documentary force a reckoning?
Character Limits
Olivia Laing’s novel Crudo is a tragicomic monument to our hyper-atrophied attention spans.
Privacy Settings
Today, we are watched as never before, through surreptitious governmental data collection and through corporate profiles of our desires and habits. Yet we also divulge private matters aggressively, seeking freedom through publicity.
The Dirtbag Manifesto
As liberal comedy flounders, Chapo Trap House issues a welcome corrective—a brand of humor that is not just combative, but offers a systemic explanation for capitalism’s ills.
Doomsday Goes Mainstream
Doomsday prepping has long been associated with the right. Why is it catching on among liberals?
Atlanta Dreaming
The genius of Donald Glover’s Atlanta is to show the surreality of black life in America.
Harlem Is Everywhere
As the old neighborhood gentrifies, its transatlantic spirit lives on as the influence of black culture grows—from Lagos to London, from Havana to Atlanta.
