The Latest

Politics

Back of the Yards

Lessons from a community organizer on building political power.

Politics

Leftists and Liberals in the Political Heartland

The Clinton-Sanders conflict reveals the contentious history of the Democratic Party—and holds the key to its future.

Arts in Society

Essay on Terry Pratchett (A Corollary)

If you die you are by definition not a reader.

This is the immortality afforded by literature.

Arts in Society

The Lost Neruda Poems

As questions about Neruda’s death linger, a lost archive of unpublished poems, hidden amongst his notebooks, has surfaced.

Class & Inequality

Who’s Afraid of the Student Debt Crisis?

Two new books argue that the student debt crisis is a media myth. But they ignore the exploitation of disadvantaged students by for-profit colleges.

Arts in Society

BR’s Top 25 Poems of 2016

Poetry is a counterattack.

Arts in Society

On Surmising

Did you stagger back to her
            or did you float
Did you wheel into that decade
                        once madly lost

Law

Under Western Eyes

Islamophobia is a shared project of the Democrat and Republican parties, long preceding the rise of white nationalism and Trump.

Arts in Society

You Appalachian, Reappropriating, Asshole Poets

my great uncle pitched
 

for the yankees. he also killed deer.
he never wrote a single poem

 

& i will always love him for it.

Gender & Sexuality Politics

Feeling Paranoid

Phyllis Schlafly, Trump, and the Terror of Difference

Politics

Lost Utopias

Alternatives to Zionism, from the Uganda Scheme to Birobidzhan, present a complex history of the search for a Jewish home.

Politics

The Will of the People

The Electoral College once served an urgent political purpose. The time has now come to abolish it.

Arts in Society

Two Poems

As if pleasure isn’t

           historical. As if our bodies

  are not

 tightened, thinned,

    or relaxed according to

dictators, bureaucrats, the inventors

                                                of trans fats.

Law Politics

Garrison America and the Threat of Global War

The crisis of liberal capitalism has arrived, bringing us to the brink of total global war.

Arts in Society

Urgent Missives

Since when has poetry been without politics? Benjamin Hollander reviews Out of Print by Julien Poirier.

Politics

The New Politics of Hope

Where Trump whipped up faith in authoritarianism, Sanders revived hope in collective action. Sustaining that vision of social progress is the central task of the left today.

Politics

A Special Message from BR Co-Editor Joshua Cohen

You can depend on Boston Review to provide open debate, guided by reason and supported by evidence.

Arts in Society

Reading Yeats in the Age of Trump

No poet captures the feeling of political failure—of having lost an unfair fight—like W. B. Yeats.

Class & Inequality

Leaving Behind the Yellow Submarine

Mentorship is how the humanities justify themselves.

Arts in Society

Fall Poetry Reading

New poetry from Aracelis Girmay, Magdalena Zurawki, Liu Xia, John Wilkinson, and Ruth Madievsky.

Race

The Souls of White Folk

What can W. E. B. Du Bois and the black radical tradition tell us about Trump’s election and radical political action today?

Arts in Society

Contending with Ruin

Matt Donovan interviewed by Dana Levin

Politics

After Trump

A pluralistic democracy is built on debate, disagreement, and wakeful action. This forum begins the conversation.

Law Philosophy

Let Loose the Line

Protest is not merely a matter of personal awakening, but of organizing and mobilizing the power needed to change social relations.

Get our newsletter

Vital reading on politics, ideas, and culture to your inbox


A political and literary forum, independent and nonprofit since 1975

Registered 501(c)(3) organization