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Arts in Society

The Bird at the Window

Since 1970 North America has lost 29 percent of its bird population. New York City alone kills almost a quarter of a million birds each year. More than most people, poets have tried to respond to these unremarked—and mostly preventable—deaths.

Calista McRae

Politics

How Not to Do Activism

The calculus of power isn’t defined by hits or clicks or tweets. It is measured in relationships and meaningful reactions over time.

Michael Gecan

Arts in Society, Class & Inequality

Zero Hour: The First Days of New Berlin

30 years after the Wall, the story of Berlin's anarchist utopia.

Paul Hockenos

Race

The Revolutionary and the Historian

Harvard professor Walter Johnson and rapper Tef Poe reflect on their shared activism, and the place they see for allies—accomplices, even—in the long struggle for racial justice.

Walter Johnson, Tef Poe, Mordecai Lyon

Class & Inequality

Homes for Citizens

New York public housing is plagued with problems, but it possesses a democratic advantage that voucher systems lack: residents can hold the state accountable not only as tenants but as constituents.

Salonee Bhaman, Pedro A. Regalado

Reading Lists

Killing the Commons

A reading list on the privatization of public space.

Rosie Gillies, Boston Review

Science & Nature

The Sins of “Smart” Cities

What happens when we reframe complex social and political issues as technical puzzles? Two new books challenge modern cities' over-reliance on data and technology.

Ruth Miller

Arts in Society

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.

Jae Won Chung

Arts in Society

Was Architecture Better Under Socialism?

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

Anthony Paletta

Reading Lists

Amazon’s Empire

Our best writers take on the retail giant.

Rosie Gillies, Boston Review

Race

When the Klan Came to Town

History reminds us that firm and sometimes violent opposition to racists is a time-honored American tradition.

Michael McCanne

Class & Inequality

The Last Man to Know Everything

The Marxist-environmental historian Mike Davis has produced a rich corpus critical of capitalism.

Troy Vettese

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