The Latest
Plato and the Poets
The centuries-old debate should be settled: an intellectual world bereft of poetry is a damaged one.
Building a Political Home
Activist and scholar Cathy J. Cohen on winning power in the midst of a “generational war.”
The Inventor of the Future
The autobiography of anticolonial luminary Andrée Blouin captures her era’s euphoric highs as well as its tragic denouement.
The Moral Stupefaction of the American Public
Trump’s actions are illegal, yes. Worse than that, they are wrong—precisely what the legality debate is meant to obscure.
A Theory of the List
From runaway slave lists to Canary Mission, the state has long deputized citizens to enforce its will.
What Is Political Violence?
Pundits and politicians conceal the truth: it’s all around us, perpetrated by our political system itself.
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Celebrating 50 years of Boston Review
“
The first time I read Merve Emre was in the pages of Boston Review. It was an essay about the personal essay, the much-maligned form that has been declared dead more than once yet seems to be just as popular as ever, its various iterations marching across the web like some undead army. So even though Emre’s essay was published seven years ago, it still reads like a much-needed rout of all those articles that proliferate on our feeds. It is a call for clarity and rigor, and an argument against sentimental self-exploration and being so much in our feelings, told with lancing wit and enviable erudition.”
—Ryu Spaeth, features editor at New York magazine, on Merve Emre’s “Two Paths for the Personal Essay” (2017)
Forums
Current issue
Our 50th anniversary issue, on the responsibility of intellectuals, journalists, and all of us in the age of fascism and genocide.
Robin D. G. Kelley leads a special section with David Waldstreicher, Jennifer Zacharia, and Martin O’Neill. Plus Vivian Gornick on Shulamith Firestone, Elaine Scarry on Plato and the poets, Joelle M. Abi-Rached on Gaza, and more.
Israel and Palestine
“The way we lived with each other before involved exactly the “social shame and cultural pressure” that Klein and other influential voices now come to condemn.”
—Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, “How Can We Live Together?”
“Blouin’s very birth troubled a colonial order erected on a strict racial hierarchy. She would make sure that her life would be far more of a problem for it.”
—Sandipto Dasgupta, “The Inventor of the Future”
“By cloaking naked power in the trappings of the law, the Trump administration channels objections to its behavior into sterile disputes about who has the best lawyers.”
—Joe Margulies, “The Moral Stupefaction of the American Public”
“What counts as ‘violence,’ and what counts as ‘order,’ are always political determinations made by those in power.”
—Eric Reinhart, “What Is Political Violence?”
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