Culture

What We Can Learn From the Pacifist Movement Against World War I

Although they failed to keep us out of the war, they organized effectively in conditions frighteningly similar to our own.

Theo Anderson

We Hunted Down the 10 Best Films of 2016

From the Iranian mystery Fireworks Wednesday to the German black comedy Toni Erdmann, this year's stand-out films were far off the beaten path.

Michael Atkinson

The High Priest of the Church of Trump

How Stephen Bannon is using evangelical narratives to spread the gospel of Trumpism.

Theo Anderson

The First Hippies

The new book Rebel Crossings showcases a small band of feminist utopians who came to America to try something new.

Jane Miller

CNN’s New Book Is a Master Class in How Not to Cover an Election

The news network's instant retrospective on the Trump-Clinton race is as vacuous as their initial coverage was.

Chris Lehmann

This Christmas, Go See a German Comedy About Consulting. No, Really.

Filmmaker Maren Ade's Toni Erdmann takes a wise and whimsical look at the struggles women face in the corporate world.

Michael Atkinson

The Android Manifesto: Finding Marx in Westworld

The HBO drama is a surprisingly astute tale of alienated labor and false consciousness.

Eileen Jones

Dissident-Poet on the Lam: A New Film Captures Pablo Neruda’s Year as a Fugitive

Pablo Larrain's Neruda follows the love-poet-cum-Communist-dissident in a cat-and-mouse chase with the Chilean government.

Michael Atkinson

The Problem With Cancer Memoirs

Popular accounts ignore the underlying race and class dynamics that determine vulnerability to the disease.

Margaret Garb

Sci-Fi Iraq: Authors Envision Their Country in 2103, a Century After the U.S. Invasion

In a new collection, Iraqi writers explore their nation's future, and ridicule their former occupiers.

M. Lynx Qualey

Brexit, Trump and What We’ve Failed To Learn From the 1930s

Perhaps dark undercurrents rest beneath every society, waiting for a depression or a demagogue to unleash them.

Jane Miller

Thomas Friedman’s Latest Book Is a Tour Through His Troubled, Neoliberal Mind

We read 500 pages of corporate platitudes and ungainly metaphor so you don't have to.

Chris Lehmann

The Hairdresser of Plaistow

The happy, often glamorous life of the man who cuts my hair.

Jane Miller

A Brief History of the Right’s Racist Hate: From 1885 to Trump

The road to Trumpism is paved with scapegoats.

Theo Anderson

From Collection to Community: The Transformation of Detroit’s Iconic, 30-Year Public Art Project

The Heidelberg Project is being partly dismantled, but hopes to live on as an artistic community.

Leyland DeVito

Inside the Tax-Avoidance Racket of “Wealth Management”

A sociologist's new book reveals how the ultra-rich starve public coffers and undermine democracy.

Chris Lehmann

The Stories We Live By: Why the White Working Class Votes Conservative

In Strangers in Their Own Land, sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild travels south to study what gives conservative ideology its power.

Theo Anderson

Big Data Isn’t Just Watching You—It’s Making You Poorer

Cathy O’Neil's new book, Weapons of Math Destruction, shows mathematical models aren't free of ideology.

Pankaj Mehta