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Literature & Culture

Dystopia Is Everywhere

Hye-young Pyun’s surreal, violent novels reject stereotypes about Korean women’s writing, taking up global themes of environmental collapse and the loneliness of city life.

Philosophy & Religion, Politics

The Rawlsian Diagnosis of Donald Trump

Does Trump’s success vindicate or undermine liberal theory?

Samuel Scheffler

Literature & Culture

Poland’s Forgotten Bohemian War Hero

From the bisexual demimonde of prewar Paris to investigating Soviet war crimes, Józef Czapski’s life encapsulates the extremes of twentieth-century Europe.

Marta Figlerowicz

Race

When Jamaica Led the Postcolonial Fight Against Exploitation

In the 1970s, a bloc of Third World states forced the United Nations to take seriously the unequal distribution of global wealth. Could their example inspire a new generation?

Literature & Culture

Was Architecture Better Under Socialism?

Yugoslavia produced a thrilling variety of buildings—frequently departing from the prefabricated monotony of the Eastern Bloc.

Anthony Paletta

Education & Opportunity

Teaching Citizenship

Education’s most important job is to teach students to take an active role in their democracy, starting in their own communities.

Poetry

The Limits of Cosmopolitanism

With the dire turn in global politics, Donna Stonecipher’s poetry of globalization and displacement possesses an unprecedented urgency.

Bonnie Costello

Politics

Finding the Future in Radical Rural America

It's time to rewrite the narrative of “Trump Country.” Rural places weren't always red, and many are turning increasingly blue.

Elizabeth Catte

Global Justice

Mass Starvation Is a Crime—It's Time We Treated It That Way

The famine in Yemen is not simply “man-made.” Particular men are responsible, and they should be brought to justice.

Philosophy & Religion

Don't Overthink It

A new book wants us to navigate life’s crossroads with the precision of a military exercise. But personal decisions are more difficult than even the most consequential political decisions.

Race

Confronting the Relics of the Old South

Two attractions in Alabama—the new national lynching memorial and the First Confederate White House—show a nation struggling to contend with its legacy of racial violence.

Politics

American Extremism Has Always Flowed from the Border

Donald Trump says there is “a crisis of the soul” at the border. He is right, though not in the way he thinks.

Class & Inequality

The Market Police

The Democrats’ Yawning Silence on Trade

Puerto Rico’s War on Its Poor

Marisol LeBrón

Free the Beach

Andrew W. Kahrl

Economics After Neoliberalism

Suresh Naidu, Dani Rodrik, Gabriel Zucman

Think Different

Public Benefit, Incorporated

Lenore Palladino

Left Behind by Korea’s Success

The Last Man to Know Everything

Race

The Origins of Birthright Citizenship

When the Klan Came to Town

Michael McCanne

Racism and the Wisconsin Idea

S. Ani Mukherji

When Jamaica Led the Postcolonial Fight Against Exploitation

The Racist Politics of the English Language

Lawrence B. Glickman

What Happened to Kanye West?

Christopher Lebron

Confronting the Relics of the Old South

The Missing Malcolm X

What White Supremacists Know

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

READING LISTS

Our Black History Month Valentines

READING LIST

Those who have changed America—and those you might not have heard of.

Sandra Bland Is Not Alone

READING LIST

Part two of our Black History Month reading series.

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