"Your Name Here asks how literature should respond to a reality that is equal parts vapid and violent, where the celebration of mediocrity is correlated with an utter disregard for human life." Jess Bergman in @thenation.com www.thenation.com/article/cult...

@hofrench.bsky.social in a wonderful piece for @thenation.com on Mahmood Mamdani's Uganda www.thenation.com/article/worl...

5. Over at The Nation, I write about Buckley's politics of friendship, how he creating a chummy world of insiders & those excluded from the club. I raise the question: sure, Buckley was fun company but would you want to marry one of his sisters? www.thenation.com/article/cult...

Thrilled to be nominated! Thanks to my brilliant editor @davidmarcus.bsky.social, who commissioned me as well as another finalist, and who has made The Nation's @booksandthearts.bsky.social section such a vital space for book criticism.

Is it that many New Yorkers find the field disappointing per NYT or rather NYT finds the preferences of many voting New Yorkers disappointing?

I reviewed Quentin Skinner’s new one www.thenation.com/article/arch...

Peter Linebaugh and I just published an essay about the life & work of Christopher Hill, one of the greatest historians of the 20c, in @thenation.com: “In 1965, [Hill] was elected master of Balliol College. History from below had arrived at the Oxford high table.” www.thenation.com/article/soci...

He’s got the grannies

‪Why should we do close reading? @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social in @booksandthearts.bsky.social on the history and future of close reading www.thenation.com/article/soci...

I wrote about close reading. What it is, why it matters, and what John Guillory gets right and wrong in his recent On Close Reading. Offers a sneak peek of a little of what @johannawinant.bsky.social and I are up to in our forthcoming Close Reading for the 21C www.thenation.com/article/soci...

Not a drill: *THE VIVIAN GORNICK* reviewed our new book “Going Around: Selected Journalism” by Murray Kempton, edited by Andrew Holter, for @thenation.com

I would say more broadly that as policy you really shouldn’t allow government officials to accuse people of *terrorism* anonymously.

"The very first line of Open Socrates admonishes the reader, “There is a question you are avoiding.” For Callard, that question is: Why are you living this way? But this only points to a host of questions that Callard herself avoids..." me for @thenation.com www.thenation.com/article/cult...

"You could call the business model Trump developed a kind of personality arbitrage." @lioneltrolling.bsky.social in @thenation.com's Spring Books on how the 1980s and 90s made Trump www.thenation.com/article/soci...

I read Donald Trump's books for @thenation.com www.thenation.com/article/soci...

The making and remaking of Capital. Epic piece by Alyssa Battistoni in latest @booksandthearts.bsky.social / @thenation.com on Marx’s masterpiece, the history of its translations, and what it means to read it today www.thenation.com/article/soci...

Daniel Bessner in the new @thenation.com on Chomsky and Nathan Robinson's The Myth of American Idealism and the politics of anti-imperialism www.thenation.com/article/cult...

In "A Complete Unknown," James Mangold offers a faithful, reverent, and cautious account of a musician who always tried to be anything but these qualities.

Daniel Bessner in the new @thenation.com on Chomsky and Nathan Robinson's The Myth of American Idealism and the politics of anti-imperialism www.thenation.com/article/cult...

If the left ever hopes to change US foreign policy, it needs to move beyond the shibboleths of the past. We must stop fetishizing information politics and mass protests and instead must develop an institutionalist understanding of how state power functions. www.thenation.com/article/cult...

“The study of history is a collective and cooperative endeavor, not a competition for personal academic eminence.” —David Montgomery www.thenation.com/article/soci...

Noam Chomsky is the most famous critic of US empire in the world. How have his views on empire and anti-imperialism change?

"I write for the future / because my present is demolished. / I fly to the future / to retrieve my demolished present / as a legible past." Even in their silence, these poems call us to act. Hussein Omar in Books and the Arts @thenation.com on Fady Joudah www.thenation.com/article/cult...

"The Brutalist provides its audience with a window onto a side of architecture that is always lurking in the shadows: who makes it, and for whom." The always great @katewagner.bsky.social in @BooksandtheArts on why The Brutalist might be the best film of the year www.thenation.com/article/cult...

Kim Phillips-Fein in latest @BooksandtheArts on the incredible David Montgomery--his early radicalization, his years as a UE worker, his time in the CP, and his histories of work and the vital message they still impart www.thenation.com/article/soci...

Where's the party? My latest (a review essay) for @thenation.com www.thenation.com/article/poli...

Really recommend this Kim Phillips-Fein essay on the life and legacy of the one and only, the legendary, David Montgomery www.thenation.com/article/soci...

Trump's success in politics "never existed in isolation. It was a fundamental expression of a host of unresolved pathologies." Chris Lehmann in @BooksandtheArts on the long unraveling of the Democratic Party www.thenation.com/article/poli...

A core part of my caloric intake for half a decade 🥲 www.nytimes.com/2024/12/12/n...

The idea that class is what you are born into (or what education you have) and not something defined by social relations and experience is one of the more pernicious aspects of US discourse

One consequence of the housing crisis: Every year, roughly one electoral vote shifts from blue states to red states. www.nytimes.com/2024/12/12/o...

Despite what you might hear on the Ezra Klein show, Manchin is not some kind of avatar of a moderate working-class electorate; he’s just a politician who will sell his own base short day in and day out

“Is such a history even possible?" @davidavrombell.bsky.social in @booksandthearts.bsky.social on the challenges of writing communism's vast and globe-spanning history www.thenation.com/article/poli...

My newest book review, in which I am not particularly kind to a new history of communism. www.thenation.com/article/poli...

What happened to Michel Houellebecq? The great @colestangler.bsky.social in @booksandthearts.bsky.social on Houellebecq's politics and strange evolution www.thenation.com/article/cult...

My review of Michel Houellebecq’s latest novel (and more!) in the December issue of @thenation.com www.thenation.com/article/cult...

Outch " It’s easy to imagine one of the tortured characters of his earlier books strolling through a Monoprix, glancing at the cover of this one, shrugging his shoulders, and picking up a frozen pizza instead." www.thenation.com/article/cult...

I wrote about blaming the left and the need to shape public opinion, not just respond to how Republicans do newrepublic.com/article/1885...

“While the first slavery era was a product of colonial wars and the struggle for new republics, the second was an offspring of industrial capitalism and the growth of the world market.” @profmsinha.bsky.social in @booksandthearts.bsky.social www.thenation.com/article/soci...

How the left used to resolve Twitter beefs

“We don’t know a great deal about Juan de Pareja—but then again, we know more about him than we do many other European artists of the early modern period.” https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/juan-de-pareja-art-slavery/

“This uncertainty [makes] Hemon a perfect writer for the early 21st century.” Adam Kirsch in @thenation.com on Aleksandar Hemon and his fiction of war and peace https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/aleksandar-hemon-fiction-war-peace/

I give this a week in our household

It’s funny in a sad kind of way that we now have four nearly identical social media platforms but still no high speed trains from New York to Chicago or Boston to DC

“When we think of Anderson’s films, we might think of his meticulously designed sets, the symmetrical, planimetric framing, and the lateral tracking shots. But just as crucial is his preoccupation…with how a film becomes a film.” https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/asteroid-city-wes-anderson/

Apologies to the dogs

Marx, never giving a comrade a pass

Good biography but chapter starts third sentence