Check out my latest in @newrepublic.com - a double review of two incisive new books (AIDS IN THE HEARTLAND and FROM VICE TO NICE, both @uncpress.bsky.social) chronicling the histories of HIV/AIDS far from NYC or SF - in places like Kansas and Minneapolis. newrepublic.com/article/2004...

"The United States and its satellites, having taken the centre stage of history to great fanfare after the fall of the Soviet Union, are now exiting in disgrace." This looks like a promising new publication. www.equator.org

This is a massive story that the U.S. press is almost entirely ignoring. A week ago, union dockworkers warned this would happen: “If we lose contact with the boats, even for twenty minutes, we’ll shut down all of Europe.” www.politico.eu/article/ital...

Thrilled to see this review of EXTRACTION by @scottwstern.bsky.social in @theatlantic.com. A very thorough essay that situates the book in broader debates about mining, the energy transition, the history of global capitalism, and the possible green futures ahead www.theatlantic.com/books/2025/1...

Check out my latest in @theatlantic.com, wherein I review EXTRACTION (@wwnorton.com), a dazzling new book by @triofrancos.bsky.social. I argue that it is "by far the most clear-eyed of mining’s many recent chronicles." www.theatlantic.com/books/2025/1...

"A literature which is made by machines, which are owned by corporations, which are run by sociopaths, can only be a 'stereotype' — a simplification, a facsimile, an insult, a fake — of real literature. It should be smashed, and can." www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/the...

“Of all the women incarcerated worldwide, one in four is imprisoned in the US. Over the past four decades, the number of women in state prisons has grown by almost 600 percent.” — @scottwstern.bsky.social

“The members of the Indiana Women’s Prison History Project demolish many of the myths surrounding the institution, proving that its founders…were far more abusive than conventional accounts suggest.” — @scottwstern.bsky.social

Scott W. Stern @scottwstern.bsky.social on how a group of incarcerated women rewrote the history of their prison

check out scott's latest in @nybooks.com -- reviewing a history of a women's prison in indiana written by those currently incarcerated there. beautifully written and devastating. in the oct. 9 print edition!

Writing Their Prison’s History: A recent study by a group of incarcerated scholars at Indiana Women’s Prison reveals how progressive reforms turned into profitable abuse. www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

Check out my latest in @nybooks.com! It's a review of a brilliant book - a history of the nation's oldest women's prison, written by inmates in that same prison. It was a true privilege to engage with their scholarship. www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

"It seems western leaders have summoned precisely enough political will to fail to stop a world-historic crime." nymag.com/intelligence...

I'm still walking on air hours later - this @nytimes.com review so perfectly and concisely gets the point of THERE IS A DEEP BROODING IN ARKANSAS (@yalepress.bsky.social) Check it out - the Times calls the book "powerful new history"!! www.nytimes.com/2025/07/02/b...

Beyond thrilled to receive a glowing review in today's @nytimes.com!!! THERE IS A DEEP BROODING IN ARKANSAS is a "powerful new history"! An enormous thanks to @alexiscoe.bsky.social for her deep engagement with my work! www.nytimes.com/2025/07/02/b...

Check out my latest in @newrepublic.com - a review of "Downtime: The Twentieth Century in Slow Motion" by @goblemark.bsky.social! The review asks why this one particular special effect resonates - and concludes it's because "our world is, obviously, ending" newrepublic.com/article/1962...

as for the upshot of the decision, the republican court has put the citizen children of non-citizens in a position similar to that of free blacks during the antebellum period. their right to enjoy the privileges and immunities of american citizenship will vary according to state borders

The left better start figuring out how to weaponize today's decision rather than just (rightfully) criticizing it. - Go back into Judge Kaczmaryk's court to dissolve all of his nationwide orders. - Pass gun bans and insist any order applies only to plaintiffs.

Wow wow wow wow wow

A thrill to be interviewed about my new book, THERE IS A DEEP BROODING IN ARKANSAS (@yalepress.bsky.social), in the @arktimes.bsky.social. Check it out in print and online. Thanks to Guy Lancaster for the insightful questions! arktimes.com/arkansas-blo...

I can't emphasize enough that the most important thing journalists can do right now is publish exactly this kind of article

Wild that the NYT insists on assigning Malcolm Harris books to the least sympathetic possible reviewers. This one calls for "something more modest and, admittedly, conservative than what Harris suggests," which ... isn't critique! It's just a call for a different book www.nytimes.com/2025/04/15/b...

Damn. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

The ‘can machines do creative writing’ thing is mostly a distraction from the use of the machines to go through text and images to cancel grants and put people on deportation lists

“BigLaw firms are not going to save the legal profession, because what they care about is preserving their positions of power within it. If an unlucky few are going to go down, the others are going to try to make a buck off their demise.”

I am honored beyond words at this event happening today, honoring many women abused by the U.S. government, including several I wrote about in The Trials of Nina McCall! montpelierbridge.org/2025/03/herv...

"It is tempting, because of the sudden severity of our situation, to imagine that there is a secret, hidden reason driving it all. There’s not. This is the outcome of the class war ... This is what happens when it is lost." www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/the-underl...

A new book tracks how the garbage of rich countries ends up in some of the world’s poorest places, exacting a devastating environmental toll, writes Scott W. Stern:

Question: What do people like this think normal deportation is? Presenting some elements of this story like they are novel and "just like Putin" is not what is needed to reckon with longstanding US practice. The tools and capacities Trump will use are already here.

Check out my latest in @theatlantic.com! I write about "dystopian reality" of the global waste trade, reviewing a brilliant new book by @alexclapp.bsky.social (@littlebrown.bsky.social) "A colonoscopy in book form, an exploration of the guts of the modern world" www.theatlantic.com/books/archiv...

"Contemporary AI is best understood ... as the latest in a long line of efforts to increase the power of the boss." www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

Spot-on analysis by @hamiltonnolan.bsky.social www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/strike-or-...

Interracial marriage did not cross 50% approval in the US until 1996, when I was 30 years old. Good political messaging drives opinion, it doesn't follow it.

“No Other Land shows up as useless the computer-generated nonsense of Hollywood and European films about inclusion.” www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/...

This has been two weeks of constant events that are more dangerous than January 6th or, I’d absolutely argue, even 9/11, and it is a damning indictment of American media that so many publications and reporters are too cowardly, too docile, to act like it.

Check out my excerpt in @literaryhub.bsky.social, in which I discuss the varied responses to Maya Angelou's writing. And if you're really interested, check out my new book, THERE IS A DEEP BROODING IN ARKANSAS, out NOW from @yalepress.bsky.social! lithub.com/how-black-an...

Check out my essay in Time, in which I discuss Maya Angelou's anti-rape activism. And if you're really interested, check out my new book, THERE IS A DEEP BROODING IN ARKANSAS, out NOW from @yalepress.bsky.social! time.com/7206199/maya...

Check out another essay adapted from THERE IS A DEEP BROODING IN ARKANSAS, this one in Time! time.com/7206199/maya...

@scottwstern.bsky.social explores how America reacted to Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: “Many of the reviewers betrayed their own racial politics, seeing in Caged Bird confirmation of what white writers hoped to see from Black literature.”

Thanks to everyone who came out to Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn last night! It was a wonderful launch for THERE IS A DEEP BROODING IN ARKANSAS!

Happy publication day for THERE IS A DEEP BROODING IN ARKANSAS, out today from @yalepress.bsky.social!!! Check out an excerpt from the book in @literaryhub.bsky.social! lithub.com/how-black-an...

feel like there’s a term for when you “clean out” a group of people from the place they live

nyc friends! scott's NYC book launch is happening this coming monday, january 27, at 7:30pm! he'll be in conversation with the fabulous historian elizabeth hinton. come thru!!!! @scottwstern.bsky.social @greenlightbklyn.bsky.social www.greenlightbookstore.com/event/scott-...

We are in scary times with immigration sweeps, executive orders & farmworkers laboring in thick wildfire smoke. We're scrambling to do everything at once & our resources are stretched thin. Be there for farmworkers. Make a donation today ufw.org/scarytimes or paypal.com/paypalme/ufwdonate #WeFeedYou

But compared to 2016, a popular front against Trump is much harder now. The nearly unanimous support for the genocide by liberal university administrators, politicians and newspaper editors has completely hollowed out any semblance of ethical integrity 5/19

So thrilled with this wonderful review of THERE IS A DEEP BROODING IN ARKANSAS (@yalepress.bsky.social) in ArtsFuse, by the great Bill Littlefield (longtime NPR host)! He calls the book an "extraordinary study" with an "ambitious and compelling narrative" :) artsfuse.org/303400/book-...

THERE IS A DEEP BROODING IN ARKANSAS comes out (from @yalepress.bsky.social) a week from today (Jan. 28)!!! I'll be posting a passage from the book each day leading up to publication! Today, a description of the Jim Crow legal system (from pg. 22)