Boston Review | Politics | Philosophy | Literature | Ideas

A Political and Literary Forum

Donate Shop Join

Politics

Obama's Original Sin

A new insider account reveals how the Obama administration’s botched bailout deal not only reinforced neoliberal Clintonism, but also foreshadowed an ongoing failure to fulfill campaign promises.

Literature & Culture, Race

Aretha Franklin’s Soul

‘Amazing Grace,’ the long-lost film of Franklin’s gospel album, offers a lesson in the deep connections between gospel and soul music.

Gender & Sexuality

Gay Liberation Behind the Iron Curtain

A gay golden age in East Germany reveals that Soviet politics were more dynamic than we admit—and that gay rights has less to do with democracy than we tend to assume.

Samuel Clowes Huneke

Forum

How Race Made the Opioid Crisis

The opioid crisis and the War on Drugs are intertwined in the mutually reinforcing framework of racial capitalism.

Literature & Culture, Philosophy & Religion

A Hidden Order of Reality

Far from being consigned to the ash heap of intellectual fashions, the structuralism of Claude Lévi-Strauss, a new biography shows, is in many ways still with us.

Philosophy & Religion, Politics

The Book on Marx That Arendt Never Finished

Hannah Arendt’s unfinished book on Marx offers a timely philosophical dialogue for our era of economic precarity.

Geoffrey Wildanger

Gender & Sexuality, Literature & Culture

“More Queer Writing, Please”

Andrea Lawlor’s Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is being celebrated as the vanguard of a new trans lit. In this interview, Lawlor talks about Paul’s origins, trans identity, and the future of queer literature.

Andrea Lawlor, Spencer Quong

Class & Inequality

Whistling Past the Graveyard

A decade after the financial crisis, economists still have not rethought macroeconomics. A new history takes on the field's unrepentant hubris.

Jonathan Kirshner

Philosophy & Religion

The Myths of Enlightenment

For the philosopher and intellectual historian Hans Blumenberg, myths and metaphors were pivotal to philosophical thinking, not opposed to it.

Marta Figlerowicz

Politics

What Anti-Semitism Is—And What It Is Not

Two Jewish activists discuss the place of anti-Semitism in contemporary movements for social justice.

Donna Nevel, Mark Tseng-Putterman

Forum

Economics After Neoliberalism

Contemporary economics is finally breaking free from its market fetishism, offering plenty of tools we can use to make society more inclusive.

Suresh Naidu, Dani Rodrik, Gabriel Zucman

Race

Succeeding While Black

Michelle Obama’s new book reduces racial inequality to a matter of psychological impairment that can be overcome through grit and grin. This is a dangerous proposition.

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

Science & Nature

Headset Hypocrisy

Defensible Space

The Defeat of Reason

Climate Gut Check

Nature Defends Itself

Dayton Martindale

Programming My Child

“Could You Do Any Better Than We Did?”

William T. Vollmann, Ted Hamilton

No Collision

Democracy vs. the Algorithm

Clara Hendrickson

Education & Opportunity

Teachers with Guns

Scholars in Exile

A Brown v. Board for Higher Ed

Marshall Steinbaum

We Don’t Need No Education?

Jeffrey Aaron Snyder

The Slow and Fast Assault on Public Education

Henry A. Giroux

The Erotics of Mentorship

Marta Figlerowicz, Ayesha Ramachandran

Teaching Citizenship

The Dream Hoarders: How America's Top 20 Percent Perpetuates Inequality

Richard V. Reeves

In the Name of Victims

Kristin Bumiller

READING LISTS

What Marx Got Wrong About Capitalism

READING LIST

A Racial Capitalism Reading List

Writing the Twentieth Century

READING LIST

Poets, philosophers, playwrights.

Support Boston Review

Copyright © 1993-2019 Boston Review and its authors.

Support Boston Review

Make a tax-deductible donation today

A Political and Literary Forum

Search

Boston Review Printing Note: For best printing results try turning on any options your web browser's print dialog makes available for printing backgrounds and background graphics.