Allies (Fall 2019) | Boston Review

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Media

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

Politics

It's No Secret Why Republicans Win

The right’s success in media is not a shadowy conspiracy; it has been achieved out in the open, largely through ordinary politics. Much of it can be countered the same way.

Nicole Hemmer

War & Security

Watching the End of the World

The Doomsday Clock is set to two minutes to midnight—the same position it held in 1953, when the United States and USSR detonated their first hydrogen bombs. So why don't we make movies about nuclear war anymore? 

Stephen Phelan

Race

The Racist Politics of the English Language

How we went from “racist” to “racially tinged.”

Lawrence B. Glickman

Law & Justice

Kavanaugh’s Charity Case

We already know how Brett Kavanaugh responds to human suffering.

Sarah Hill

Race

The Forgotten Baldwin

James Baldwin’s book about the Atlanta child murders speaks best to the era of Black Lives Matter.

Joseph Vogel

Arts in Society, Podcast

The Instagrammable Charm of the Bourgeoisie

The modes of perception and living that we attribute to Instagram are rooted in a much older aesthetic of the picturesque.

Daniel Penny

Global Justice

Writing While Socialist

Vijay Prashad on writing, struggle, and hope in difficult times.

Vijay Prashad, Mark Nowak

Arts in Society

Tweeting @ Thoreau

Walden is often championed as an anti-technology manifesto. But this misses the value Thoreau found in conversations spread across vast spans of time and distance.

John Tinnell

Science & Nature

The Man Who Invented Information Theory

Of the pioneers who drove the information technology revolution, Claude Shannon may have been the most brilliant. A new book resurrects his legacy.

Tom Rutledge

Arts in Society

The Obsessions of Hitchcock, Welles, and Kubrick

A new book takes on the titans of twentieth-century cinema, fetishes and all.

Jonathan Kirshner

Arts in Society

Inside Every Utopia Is a Dystopia

A new biography of Norman Bel Geddes, designer of the Futurama, tells the story of American innovation.

John Crowley

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