Essay

Only an Apocalypse Can Save Us Now

by Mark Lilla,

On the politics of nostalgia

The Origins of Speech

by Tom Wolfe,

In the beginning was Chomsky

Hashtag Prescription

by Helen Ouyang,

The hidden cost of crowd-sourcing a cure

American Imperium

by Andrew J. Bacevich,

Untangling truth and fiction in an age of perpetual war

Save Our Public Universities

by Marilynne Robinson,

In defense of America’s best idea

Left of Bernie

by Garret Keizer,

You say you want a revolution

What Came Before the Big Bang?

by Alan Lightman,

The physics and metaphysics of the creation of the universe

The Charmer

by Fredrik deBoer,

Louis Farrakhan and the Black Lives Matter protests

The Bed-Rest Hoax

by Alexandra Kleeman,

The case against a venerable pregnancy treatment

Bombast Bursting in Air

by Lewis H. Lapham,

The story, so far, of the 2016 election

Lifting as We Climb

by Randall Kennedy,

A progressive defense of respectability politics

The Neoliberal Arts

by William Deresiewicz,

How college sold its soul to the market

The Trouble with Israel

by Bernard Avishai,

Netanyahu takes the country to the brink

What Went Wrong

by David Bromwich,

Assessing Obama’s legacy

The Quietest Place in the Universe

by Kent Meyers,

Digging for dark matter in an abandoned mine

Giving Up the Ghost

by Leslie Jamison,

The eternal allure of life after death

A Grand Juror Speaks

by Gideon Lewis-Kraus,

The inside story of how prosecutors always get their way

Stop Hillary!

by Doug Henwood,

Vote no to a Clinton dynasty

PBS Self-Destructs

by Eugenia Williamson,

And what it means for viewers like you

On Free Will

by Edward O. Wilson,

And how the brain is like a colony of ants

Francis and the Nuns

by Mary Gordon,

Is the new Vatican all talk?

The Civil Rights Act’s Unsung Victory

by Randall Kennedy,

And how it changed the South

Diagnose This

by Heidi Julavits,

How to be your own best doctor

Nothing Left

by Adolph Reed Jr.,

The long, slow surrender of American liberals

Wrong Answer

by Nicholson Baker,

The case against Algebra II

The Devil’s Bait

by Leslie Jamison,

Symptoms, signs, and the riddle of Morgellons

Poetry Slam

by Mark Edmundson,

Or, The decline of American verse

Blinded by the Right?

by T. M. Luhrmann,

How hippie Christians begat evangelical conservatives

Sentimental Medicine

by Eula Biss,

Why we still fear vaccines

Our Place in the Universe