The Secret History Randall Kennedy’s claim that respectability politics has “improved the racial situation dramatically” [“Lifting as We Climb,” Essay, October], overstates the centrality of that phenomenon to black freedom…

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Harper’s v. Harper It is a tradition among Canadian pundits to travel abroad bearing tales — possibly because it is easier to convince a foreign audience that the current government, regardless…

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Taking the City by Storm In her article about reform in New Orleans following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, Rebecca Solnit could have mentioned that Barack Obama’s policies have only…

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The Caring Economy Trudy Lieberman [“Wrong Prescription?” Report, July] leads readers on a winding tour of what is wrong with the Affordable Care Act before acknowledging that the legislation has…

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Maybe We Can’t The query in the title of David Bromwich’s meditation on Barack Obama’s presidency [“What Went Wrong?,” Essay, June] cannot be satisfactorily explored without reckoning with the many…

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Solitary Confinement While reading Fenton Johnson’s essay [“Going It Alone,” Folio, April], I found myself thinking of Arthur Schopenhauer, a notorious misanthrope who, in solitude, developed one of the most…

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A Tale of Two Citis Despite several requests from Citi’s public-affairs department, Andrew Cockburn and the editors of Harper’s refused to discuss Mr. Cockburn’s article [“Saving the Whale, Again,” Letter…

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Thieves of Grass Christopher Ketcham’s “The Great Republican Land Heist” [Letter from Nevada, February] exposes a side of the West that few people ever see: the ecological devastation caused by…

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Eastbound and Down The world is far more complicated than Andrew Cockburn would lead us to believe. In “Game On” [Letter from Washington, January], Cockburn tells us about NATO’s irresponsible…

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