Reading Lists
Our weekly Reading Lists compile editors’ selections from Boston Review’s decades-long archive that speak to the pressing political, cultural, and intellectual debates of our time.
Sign up for our email newsletter to have them delivered straight to your inbox. A selection appear online, below.
Abolition Isn’t Only About Police
We also need to abolish prisons—as well as put an end to counterterrorism. An abolitionist reading list.
Food for Thought
Our best essays on food and eating from the past forty-six years! From a food anthropologist’s early love affair with Chinese cuisine to the farmers’ protests in India, the pieces in this list consider food from political, cultural, and economic perspectives.
Archival Essays for Juneteenth
“It is a commonplace to say that slavery ‘dehumanized’ enslaved people, but to do so is misleading, harmful, and worth resisting.”
Toward Trans Liberation
“Queerness is not a vertical identity. It hopscotches across communities, blessing only some of us.”
The BR Summer Book Guide
Your beach reads sorted. Fourteen books we loved—and one to avoid at all costs.
Israel’s War on Palestine
The current crisis reflects decades of brutal Israeli occupation in Gaza and the West Bank.
Pandemic Moms. Trans Moms. Marxist Moms. Robot Moms.
—and those who wish they could be mothers. Our annual Mother’s Day reading list.
Why Democracy Needs…
Privacy. Women. Archives. No Cops. Practice. Losers. And more in today’s reading list.
Poetry Collection: Award-Winning Poets
The fourth in our series of reading lists to celebrate National Poetry Month.
COVID and the Climate Crisis Can’t Be Separated
—and nor can our health and the health of animals. An earth day reading list.
Poetry Collection: Uplifting Women’s Voices
The third in our series of reading lists to celebrate National Poetry Month.
Who Deserves Forgiveness?
Biden. Student Loans. Incarcerated People. And more in today’s reading list.