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Politics, Race

The Fragile Patriotism of the American Conservative

The New York Times’s new 1619 Project argues fiercely for a new understanding of what it means to believe in America—and it is cracking the very foundations of conservatism.

Science & Nature

Is Science Political?

Many take the separation between science and politics for granted, but this view of science has its own political history: it was developed, in part, as an anti-communist tool of the Cold War.

Michael D. Gordin

Law & Justice

The Metastasis of the Misdemeanor System

The misdemeanor system is four times the size of the felony system. With so many gradations of minor crimes—many involving fines in a very informal process—prejudice and inequality shapes prosecution.

Brandon L. Garrett

Class & Inequality, Global Justice

Perpetual Debt in the Silicon Savannah

Kenya's poor were among the first to benefit from digital lending apps; now they call it slavery.

Kevin P. Donovan, Emma Park

Science & Nature

It Was Not Supposed to End This Way

The Anthropocene challenges liberalism’s vision of permanent progress. So why has it become another technocratic tool of liberal bureaucracy?

Arts in Society

The Precarity of Black Motherhood

Jordan Peele's ‘Us’ depicts the terrors faced by black mothers in a way that owes as much to Toni Morrison’s ‘Beloved’ as it does to classic Hollywood horror.

Tao Leigh Goffe

Politics, Race

The Armed and Anxious White Psyche

Contemporary gun violence is not so much terrorism as tradition. It is deeply intertwined with the white supremacist foundations of the United States.

Mark Tseng-Putterman

Arts in Society

The Other Toni Morrison

A timely new documentary celebrates Morrison’s novels, but downplays the enduring power of her work as an editor and essayist.

Politics

The Liberal Who Told Reagan’s Favorite Joke

When Democratic senator Edmund Muskie made a quip about the government being “here to help you,” he surely didn’t know it marked the death of the New Deal.

Lawrence B. Glickman

Science & Nature

Is There a Human Blueprint?

Two new books from intellectual giants Robert Plomin and Nicholas Christakis revive the “nature vs. nurture” debate about what makes people different from one another.

C. Brandon Ogbunu, C. Malik Boykin

Class & Inequality

Everyday Economists

The postwar generation understood why a prosperous working class is crucial to the economy. Can economics be accessible again to ordinary Americans?

Samuel Bowles, Joshua Cohen

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

Aretha Franklin’s Soul

A Hidden Order of Reality

A World of Electric Children

Walt Whitman’s Boys

Jeremy Lybarger

Writing the Twentieth Century

“More Queer Writing, Please”

Andrea Lawlor, Spencer Quong

Announcing Boston Review’s new Arts in Society project

Looking for Solidarity

Sophie Maríñez

Race in Black and White

Alexis L. Boylan

Politics

The Fragile Patriotism of the American Conservative

The Liberal Who Told Reagan’s Favorite Joke

Lawrence B. Glickman

Choosing Hope

Noam Chomsky, Scott Casleton

The Armed and Anxious White Psyche

Mark Tseng-Putterman

“Every Crucifixion Needs a Witness”

Toussaint Losier, William J. Barber II

In Search of an Anti-Fascist Language

Finding the Future in Radical Rural America

Elizabeth Catte

The Anti-Defamation League Is Not What It Seems

Solid Trumpism

READING LISTS

Highway to Hell

READING LIST

A reading list for our time of climate crisis.

Essential Reads on White Supremacy

READING LIST

It's what our country was founded on—and it will take more than voting out Trump to dismantle it.

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