The End of the German Myth
No one can doubt that when the Allied soldiers went ashore on the coast of France on the morning of June 6, the last phase of the war began. In all probability it will still be long and bloody; indeed,...
View ArticleAustralia’s Media Raids and the Decline of Press Freedom Worldwide
Americans with insomnia and a Twitter account may have seen a disturbing sight on Tuesday night. Half a world away, the Australian Federal Police, the country’s equivalent of the FBI, raided the...
View ArticleThe College Board Hopes to Profit from “Adversity”
Is the College Board #woke now? Formed over a century ago with the mission of expanding college access, the Board is today best known as the developer of standardized tests—the most famous of which is...
View ArticleIs There a Right Way to Cover the Trump White House?
How should reporters cover the White House? Case study number one could be reporter Maggie Haberman of The New York Times, whose work has, during the Trump years, been particularly fraught. Her...
View ArticleThe Outlaw World of Deadwood
On the set of Deadwood: The Movie—a new, 110-minute conclusion to the HBO series—the show’s creator, David Milch, read Robert Penn Warren poems to the cast. Warren was Milch’s writing teacher when he...
View ArticleThis Is Really Happening
Such an odd cloud overcame the nation at that time.A damp breeze and, where a storm should be,defiance. In it, the litter of scorched marigoldsfidgeted on the ground against my feet. My fistsstill...
View ArticleLonging Explained by William James
I know the color blue when I see it, and the flavor ofa pear when I taste it ... but about the inner natureof these facts ... I can say nothing at all. — W.J. Pears will come to you if you are...
View ArticleAleksandar Hemon’s Lost Eden
There are writers who specialize in variety, flitting from genre to genre and reinventing themselves with every book. Then there are those who worry the same subject over and over again, as if every...
View Article1998 Was a Seinfeld Election—Not an Impeachment Referendum
From Henry Ford to Donald Trump, America has lionized business leaders (and shameless bankrupts) who disdain history. But almost as insidious are those politicians and pundits who oversimplify history....
View ArticleThe All-Out Offensive
The landings on the Normandy coast are still a limited operation. It is an operation limited, first in space: as these lines are written, the Allied beachhead is hardly more than fifty miles long. It...
View ArticleMaking Sense of Bernie’s Sandinista Sympathies
Was Bernie Sanders inappropriately, even disloyally, supportive of the Nicaraguan Sandinista government 34 years ago? Sanders, like many liberals and leftists, opposed the United States’ support for...
View ArticleThe Labor Movement’s Newest Warriors: Grad Students
Hannah Kim and Natalia Piland are not your typical labor organizers. Kim, 23, has a bleached mullet, and when we met at a cafe near campus last Friday, she was wearing baggy track pants and chunky dad...
View ArticleIf Trump Belongs in Jail, Democrats Should Impeach Him
Speaking in Normandy, where she’s leading a congressional delegation marking the 75th anniversary of D-Day, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made it clear that she wouldn’t fight Donald Trump on the beaches....
View ArticleThe Promise and Problem of Fake Meat
We have a meat problem. It’s a key driver of the climate crisis, drinking water pollution, and land overuse. And excessive consumption of factory-raised and processed meat increases the risk of cancer,...
View ArticleBeto’s Bet on Iowa
Near dusk on a muggy Saturday night in Cedar Rapids, more than 80 Iowans stood patiently in a slow-moving line in the parking lot of a strip mall near downtown. The attraction: the chance to question...
View ArticleA Historic Breakthrough for Sex Workers’ Rights
Back in February, advocates for sex worker rights in New York announced their intention to fully decriminalize prostitution in the state. But no one really suspected then that within two weeks,...
View ArticleDemocrats Are Winning the Battle of Ideas, but Could Still Lose the War
Joe Biden has spent much of his invisible primary season—the time between when candidacies are declared and people actually go to the polls, the time when money given seems to matter more than votes...
View ArticleThe Impossibility of Impeachment
Polling outfits routinely ask historians and political scientists to rate the presidents from worst to best. It’s an inherently frustrating exercise. Does “greatness” depend on what a chief executive...
View ArticleThe Conspiracy to Discredit Brazil’s Left
On Sunday evening, The Intercept published a series of incendiary articles and documents purporting to expose massive problems of unethical behavior and political motives in Brazil’s Operation Car...
View ArticleOn the Oratory Trail in Iowa
We have reached the stage in the Democratic race when the best candidates have buffed their stump speeches to a shine like a chauffeur polishing the front grill on a Rolls Royce. Every rambling...
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