Culture
Culture
Reflections on Barack Obama: A Great and Disappointing President
Hope, change and the limits of the office.
Salim Muwakkil
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
Culture
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
Culture
The High Priest of the Church of Trump
How Stephen Bannon is using evangelical narratives to spread the gospel of Trumpism.
Theo Anderson
Culture
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
Culture
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
Culture
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
Culture
The Android Manifesto: Finding Marx in Westworld
The HBO drama is a surprisingly astute tale of alienated labor and false consciousness.
Eileen Jones
Culture
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
Culture
The Problem With Cancer Memoirs
Popular accounts ignore the underlying race and class dynamics that determine vulnerability to the disease.
Margaret Garb
Culture
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
Culture
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
Culture
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
Culture
The Hairdresser of Plaistow
The happy, often glamorous life of the man who cuts my hair.
Jane Miller
Culture
A Brief History of the Right’s Racist Hate: From 1885 to Trump
The road to Trumpism is paved with scapegoats.
Theo Anderson
Culture
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
Culture
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
Culture
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
Culture
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
Culture
Walking While Black
Encounters with police in New York City.
Garnette Cadogan
Culture
In Ixcanul, Guatemala’s First-Ever Oscar Entry, Feminism Erupts in a Small Mayan Community
Filmed entirely in Kaqchikel, Jayro Bustamante’s new movie explores a clash between reproductive rights and tradition.
Michael Atkinson
Culture
Can There Be a Party of the Left in Britain?
Party brass may not like it, but Jeremy Corbyn's popularity could herald a new era for Labour.
Jane Miller
Culture
Werner Herzog Wants To Know: “Does the Internet Dream?”
In Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World, the septuagenarian filmmaker explores online gaming, self-driving cars and soccer-playing robots.
Michael Atkinson
Culture
James Baldwin’s Many Heirs
In the essay collection The Fire This Time, a new generation of Black writers keeps Baldwin's flame alight.
Erin Aubry Kaplan