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For Don DeLillo, 'The Silence' Is Deafening
In Don DeLillo's latest novel, The Silence, it is much like our post-pandemic life -- everything changed but nothing happened. Are we listening?
30 Sep 2020
Books
'We're Not Here to Entertain' Is Not Here to Break the Cycle of Punk's Failures
Even as it irritates me, Kevin Mattson's We're Not Here to Entertain is worth reading because it has so much direct relevance to American punks operating today.
29 Sep 2020
By the Book
The Story of Life in 10 1/2 Species (excerpt)
If an alien visitor were to collect ten souvenir life forms to represent life on earth, which would they be? This excerpt of Marianne Taylor's The Story of Life in 10 and a Half Species explores in text and photos the tiny but powerful earthling, the virus.
Marianne Taylor
28 Sep 2020
Books
Ignorance, Fear, and Democracy in America
Anti-intellectualism in America is, sadly, older than the nation itself. A new collection of Richard Hofstadter's work from Library of America traces the history of ideas and cultural currents in American society and politics.
17 Sep 2020
Books
On Bruce Springsteen's Music in Film and TV
Bruce Springsteen's music in film and television captured author Caroline Madden's imagination. She discuses her book, Springsteen as Soundtrack, and other things Springsteen in this interview.
16 Sep 2020
By the Book
'Anti-vaxxers: How to Challenge a Misinformed Movement' (excerpt)
Jonathan M. Berman's Anti-vaxxers, argues that anti-vaccination activism is tied closely to how people see themselves as parents and community members. Effective pro-vaccination efforts should emphasize these cultural aspects.
Jonathan M. Berman
09 Sep 2020
Books
Stanley Kubrick Biography Goes Beyond Rumors and Mystique
David Mikics casts Kubrick as a kind of modernist tragedian in this biography, showing how meticulous planning often gives way to vanity, error, or random chaos.
04 Sep 2020
Books
UbuWeb's Kenneth Goldsmith Writes the Book on Internet Archiving
Kenneth Goldsmith's Duchamp Is My Lawyer, a tale of the creation and upkeep of the anti-internet internet, UbuWeb, is highly engaging and avoids the risk of ploughing down theoretical wormholes of limited interest.
02 Sep 2020
Books
Comics Artists Yanow and Hanawalt Draw Vastly Different Self-Portraits
Despite their considerable differences in genre, style, and character temperament, Sophie Yanow and Lisa Hanawalt explore the same inexplicable underworld of longing.
24 Aug 2020
Books
Privacy and Alt-Right Transhumanism in Hari Kunzru's 'Red Pill'
Kunzru excels in capturing the geist in alt-right circles in his latest work, Red Pill, from the callous philosophy down to the very language.
21 Aug 2020
Love in the Time of Coronavirus
COVID-19 Is but One Indication of the Return of the Pandemic Monster
Mike Davis' COVID-era update about emerging flu pandemics, The Monster Enters, is concise, disturbing, and valuable.
20 Aug 2020
Books
Joe Sacco's 'Paying the Land' Reflects Journalistic Nuance in a Way Other Media Does Not
The insights Joe Sacco shares in his comics journalism offer important lessons in understanding and compassion to readers around the world. No less so with his latest work, the excellent Paying the Land.
19 Aug 2020
Books
'Bigger Than History: Why Archaeology Matters'
On everything from climate change to gender identity, archaeologists offer vital insight into contemporary issues.
06 Aug 2020
Books
John Lewis, C.T. Vivian, and Their Fellow Freedom Riders Are Celebrated in 'Breach of Peace'
John Lewis and C.T. Vivian were titans of the Civil Rights struggle, but they are far from alone in fighting for change. Eric Etheridge's masterful then-and-now project, Breach of Peace, tells the stories of many of the Freedom Riders.
04 Aug 2020
Reading Pandemics
Colonial Pandemics and Indigenous Futurism in Louise Erdrich and Gerald Vizenor
From a non-Native perspective, COVID-19 may be experienced as an unexpected and unprecedented catastrophe. Yet from a Native perspective, this current catastrophe links to a longer history that is synonymous with European colonization.
03 Aug 2020
Books
Isabel Wilkerson's 'Caste' Reveals the Other Kind of American Exceptionalism
By comparing the American race-based class system to that of India and Nazi Germany, Isabel Wilkerson makes us see a familiar evil in a different light with her latest work, Caste.
31 Jul 2020
Featured: Top of Home Page
'Breathing Through the Wound' Will Leave You Gasping for Air
As dizzying as Víctor Del Árbol's philosophy of crime may appear, the layering of motifs in Breathing Through the Wound is vertiginous.
15 Jul 2020
Books
Five Women Who Fought the Patriarchy
Whether one chooses to read Square Haunting for the sketches of the five fascinating women, or to understand how misogyny and patriarchy constricted intellectual and public life in the period, Francesca Wade's book is a superb achievement.
14 Jul 2020
Reading Pandemics
Parable Pandemics: Octavia E. Butler and Racialized Labor
Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, informed by a deep understanding of the intersectionality of dying ecologies, disease, and structural racism, exposes the ways capitalism's insatiable hunger for profit eclipses humanitarian responses to pandemics.
13 Jul 2020
Reading Pandemics
Pandemic, Hope, Defiance, and Protest in 'Romeo and Juliet'
Shakespeare's well known romantic tale Romeo and Juliet, written during a pandemic, has a surprisingly hopeful message about defiance and protest.
06 Jul 2020
Books
90 Years on 'Olivia' Remains a Classic of Lesbian Literature
It's good that we have our happy LGBTQ stories today, but it's also important to appreciate and understand the daunting depths of feeling that a love repressed can produce. In Dorothy Strachey's case, it produced the masterful Olivia.
30 Jun 2020
Books
'No Modernism Without Lesbians'
Philosopher and historian Diana Souhami's No Modernism Without Lesbians is a work of impeccable scholarship and a vibrant narrative about the essential and lasting philanthropy and patronage of the Arts by four remarkable lesbians.
26 Jun 2020
Books
'Conjure Women' Brings Forth Racism and Reproductive Rights
It is Afia Atakora's reiteration of the current calls for racial justice that positions Conjure Women as an unadulterated masterpiece.
24 Jun 2020
Reading Pandemics
Parallels of HIV/AIDS in Tony Kushner's 'Angels in America' and COVID-19 in Trump's America
Tony Kushner's Angels in America foreshadows our current state of sick politics and bodies and, in particular, the presence of Trump in a time of plague.
23 Jun 2020
Books
Unorthodox Storytelling
Deborah Feldman's memoir, Unorthodox, is more than a depiction, or even indictment, of the Satmar. It's an indictment of any patriarchal social system that shrinks young women's dreams to the size of a kitchen, and then blames them for it.
23 Jun 2020
Books
'Astronauts: Women on the Final Frontier'
The comics format of Jim Ottaviani and Maris Wicks' Astronauts is ideally suited for telling the story of how women fought and overcame sexism in the US Space Program, given the US government and military's ridiculous resistance to female astronauts.
17 Jun 2020
By the Book
The Art of Advertising (excerpt)
The Art of Advertising invites us to consider both the intended and unintended messages of the advertisements of the past.
Julie Anne Lambert
16 Jun 2020
Reading Pandemics
Cookbooks and Contagion: Recipes for Caring from Fannie Farmer
Cookbooks are rarely read as political or even narrative texts. However, alongside the recipes and lists of ingredients is often rich information about the ideologies and social structures that the foods are consumed within.
15 Jun 2020
Love in the Time of Coronavirus
Life Isn't Binary and Neither Is the Coronavirus Pandemic
Non-binary thinking offers new routes for adapting to life with COVID-19.
12 Jun 2020
Books
Looking for the Next Best Version of America? Abrams Wrote the Book on How to Achieve It
"Try this at home": With her latest work, Our Time Is Now, Plotter-in-Chief Stacey Abrams offers a timely playbook for how to ensure free and fair elections in America.
11 Jun 2020
Books
Music and Mind-Bending in David Mitchell's 'Utopia Avenue'
Woven into Utopia Avenue David Mitchell stitches a subtle critique of the impacts of the pot-heavy, lysergic-immersed, and heady music's ambitions on pop culture, moral choices, and even tripping itself.
09 Jun 2020
Books
Lerone Bennett, Jr. Wrote Black History into Modern America at Ebony Magazine
E. James West's new book explores Lerone Bennett, Jr.'s impact as a popular Black historian. It's a gateway to a body of work that still speaks to Black rage, struggle and hope, yesterday and today.
08 Jun 2020
Reading Pandemics
Pandemic from the Janitor's Point of View
Timothy Sheard's murder mystery One Foot in the Grave explores pandemic in a hospital from the point of view of the lowliest, aka "essential", staff.
08 Jun 2020
Books
'The Kill Chain': Why America Might Lose Its Next Big War
Christian Brose's defense-nerd position paper, The Kill Chain, inadvertently reveals that the Pentagon's problems (complacency, inertia, arrogance) reflect those of the country at large.
03 Jun 2020
Books
'Lie With Me': Beauty, Love and Toxic Masculinity in the Gay '80s
How do we write about repression and toxic masculinity without valorizing it? Philippe Besson's Lie With Me is equal parts poignant tribute and glaring warning.
03 Jun 2020
Reading Pandemics
Chaucer's Plague Tales
In 18 months, the "Great Pestilence" of 1348-49 killed half of England's population, and by 1351 half the population of the world. Chaucer's plague tales reveal the conservative edges of an astonishingly innovative medieval poet.
01 Jun 2020
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