Essays by

The Editors

Issue 21

The annotated table of contents below offers a sneak peek at what’s in issue 21. To get the issue delivered straight to your door, subscribe […]

Best of 2019

As 2019 draws to a close, we’re proud to present our top-ten most-read print essays of the year, listed below in reverse order. Although their […]

Being a Kid

What do you think is the best part of being a kid?

Working with the Earth

This fall and winter we invited people who work with the land—farmers, ranchers, foresters, ecologists and others—to tell us what they think the earth is […]

Skin in the Game

After the midterms, we had our writers and editors reflect on what the election meant to them.

Letter on Justice

Franz Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony” begins with a Traveler, described as a “great Western explorer,” learning about a “peculiar apparatus” of justice.

Living in Prison

This summer, in partnership with Chicago Books to Women in Prison, we distributed a short survey to incarcerated women across the country, inviting them to tell us about their experience of living in prison.

Intellectuals in Crisis

Intellectual Ex-Radicals and World Reaction: The Crisis of the Disillusioned Fellow-Travelers of Bolshevism Is Not the Same as a “Crisis of Marxism” (Trotsky 1939) The Intellectual: […]

The Life of the Mind

By some indicators we are entering a new Dark Age: anti-intellectual fervor is raging, suspicion of experts is at an all-time high and appeals to reason are dismissed as passé.