Simple Hearts
Much of what Dave taught me had to do with the sympathy and intelligence he applied to varieties of experience that that were alien to…
The Defender
He is the ambassador of a Jewish community rooted in an old Tehran that no longer exists.
Forms of Life
On January 17, 2018, the French government announced it was canceling plans to build an airport at Notre-Dame-des-Landes, near Nantes. For fifty years, the project…
Control Groups
Politics has become about questions of life and death again in a way that blows a hole in a key aspect of the Hobbesian liberal…
Off the Wave
Justin E. H. Smith is a professor of history and philosophy of science at the University of Paris. In addition to his recent book, Irrationality:…
What Was Possible
Tariq Goddard is an English writer and publisher. Along with the late cultural theorist Mark Fisher (1968-2017) and others, he launched Zero Books in 2009,…
The Crisis of Language Project
alt right: i) right-wing racists who use leftist rhetoric. ii) establishment.
The (Updated) Dictionary of Received Ideas
Classics, the: force of oppression. Know enough to despise ~: “Plato was an authoritarian.” “Aristotle condoned slavery.”
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:…
Muellerisms
The following is a collection of statements published in the New York Times about Robert S. Mueller, from 2001 to today.
Comedy Studies
The following are actual titles of papers published in peer-reviewed academic journals.
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…
On the Hatred of Literature
The hatred of literature, though it remains almost unheard of among the general reading public, has become the default mode in the upper reaches of…
On Choosing Life
It’s reasonable to wonder whether it’s fair to bring children into a deteriorating world, and yet it’s nevertheless hard to shake the suspicion that, for…
On Left Straussianism
Nobody shares all their private complaints with an audience, but how do we know how much to share and with whom? Certainly, in the name…
Artur and Isabella
My name is Isabella, says Isabella, and then she smiles so that he, Artur, can see her full set of teeth.
Safety Meeting
I’m writing this right now two hundred feet up in the air on top of a part of the oil refinery that makes polypropylene plastic.
Limited Time
INTRODUCTION The subtitle of Martin Hägglund’s new book, This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom, indicates its ambition. In the first half of This Life,…
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…
Democracy in America
Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America arrives at an auspicious time. The French sociologist came initially to America to prepare a report on criminal justice,…
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…
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…