Books & Ideas
In the Shadow of Reagan
Only a few decades old, the corporate autocracy the former president unleashed on the United States is not natural law. It had to be created, and it can also be undone.
What Can Elections Do?
Without pressure from social movements, they won’t produce meaningful and deeply needed reform.
Why We Need Public Journalism
Quality news is essential for democracy. We must stage an intervention to save it.
The Conceit of American Indispensability
As scholars mine the 1940s for alternative visions of international order, we must guard against the presumption that the United States remains the benevolent center of global politics.
The Death and Rebirth of American Internationalism
Internationalists are plotting their return, but they still haven’t learned from the failure of liberal universalism.
What We Can Learn From India’s Improbable Democracy
Though Modi’s government draws concern today, the country’s constitutional history suggests a framework for creating democracy in unlikely settings.
Pigs and Capital
The meat business has become a vast, fragile beast teetering on the brink of ecological and financial ruin.
The Keynesian Revolution
A new biography reveals the full scope of John Maynard Keynes’s critique of unfettered capitalism, emphasizing the economist’s larger philosophical vision of the good life.
America’s Long War on Children and Families
A new book shows how Trump’s family separation policy belongs to a much longer history of child-taking by the U.S. government.
The Unfinished Project of Enlightenment
What Jürgen Habermas’s sweeping history of Western philosophy leaves out.
The Long Fight for LGBT Labor Equality
On the successes and agonies of a legalistic approach to gay activism.
The Future of U.S. Global Leadership
The assumption that only the United States can lead the free world increasingly looks imperiled. What would foreign policy look like without it?
Protest, Passion, Politics
The reissue of Vivian Gornick’s The Romance of American Communism invites a new generation to reflect on what it means to live a life of political commitment.
The Case Against Mars
Contrary to the boosterism of billionaires, the need for space colonization must be argued for, not assumed. And the arguments aren’t good.
The Murderous Legacy of Cold War Anticommunism
How the Washington-backed Indonesian mass killings of 1965 reshaped global politics, securing a decisive victory for U.S. interests against Third World self-determination.
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