Booksmart Deserved Better
In the opening scene of Booksmart, a winsome comedy about two try-hards who set out to prove they can have fun on the eve of their high school graduation, Molly (Beanie Feldstein) wakes in the...
View ArticleTariffs Are a Bad Response to an Imaginary Border Crisis
Donald Trump won the presidency–despite losing the popular vote by 2.8 million—with a campaign that careened wildly from one distraction to another. He has clung to this as a Twitter and governing...
View ArticleTwo Fronts: Normandy and England
I have just returned from a visit to the American-held sector of the Normandy coast, a week after I saw it captured. Now in London, I admire the cool courage of the English civilians, once more...
View ArticleD-Day
I. In the Channel Britain’s reaction to the invasion has been one of elation mixed with anxiety. Britain has been in the war and subject to war nerves two years longer than the United States. She is...
View ArticleThe 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...
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Aleksandar 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...
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The 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,...
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