Not simply a roof over one’s head, public housing nurtures its inhabitants’ demands for an even greater stake in the life of the metropolis.
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Public Thinker: Thomas Frank on How Populism Can Save America
The Kardashians’ Multiracial White Supremacy
Isolation and the Incomplete
Assemblage in search of insight is the guiding ethos at the heart of two dynamic recently published books by Mexican authors.
Money Is the Gatekeeper of Politics
Rather than taking money out of politics, we should inject more money into politics: but money in the service of the public good.
The Oligarchs’ Charter
Today we know that, just as Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson predicted, economic elites will never relinquish supreme power easily.
More (Public) Money in Elections!
The money given by big donors distorts the British political system. How should the voices of ordinary citizens be heard?
Transparency Alone Can’t Save Democracy
The institutions created to ensure transparency in the funding of politics find it difficult to carry out their mission.
Democracy Distorted: Money and Politics
Is it really the case, as is often alleged, that money decides everything about elections? And if so, in what ways?
E. B. White’s “Plain Style” @75
It might seem self-evident that White the author practiced what Strunk and White the style gurus preached, but the truth is more complicated.
Is American Fiction Too Provincial?
While most American fiction focuses on national concerns, its high-end, prize-winning fiction looks around the globe. Why the divide?
Merit Must Fall
What does “merit” mean in a context—like India—where caste pervades public life?
Public Thinker: Annette Joseph-Gabriel on Black Women, Frenchness, and Decolonization
A Communism of Feelings
What role should emotions play in leftist political movements?
Surviving Hard Times with al-Hariri
Forget traditional “heroes.” The protagonists of some centuries-old stories are social climbers and tricksters, even cheats and cowards.
Political Life in the Age of Catastrophe
Thanks to surveillance, political violence, and AI, we no longer have the luxury of humanist utopias to plan for the future.
This Is Not an Essay on Poetry of the Past 20 Years
Can Smart Cities Be Equitable Cities?
Tech does not arrive in a city to save it. Instead, tech’s financial success depends on dismissing and exploiting existing disparities.
B-Sides: Latife Tekin’s “Berji Kristin”
As in mythology, the characters in a 1984 Turkish novel are acted upon by forces distant and uncaring.
Facing Our Demons
I May Destroy You explores how sexual violation is entangled in relations of visuality.
