In “USS Callister,” a much-discussed episode of Black Mirror, a reticent computer programmer collects DNA around his office from discarded objects like lollipops and coffee cups. He uses that DNA to ...
Essays
Birth of a Mother
What exactly is motherhood? I’ve been mulling it over the past few months, during which time I again experienced pregnancy and childbirth, and again dealt with the confusion and sleep deprivation ...
Are Sharp Women Enough?
Twitter was a medium made for Dorothy Parker—alas, a century too late. Her famous poem “Resumé” is 141 characters. Her breakout feature in Vanity Fair, a series of Hate Songs, begs for a hashtag ...
Helen DeWitt, Hand to Mouth
Is Helen DeWitt a genius? Readers familiar with the author’s fiction will not find this question out of line. Genius is a word that comes quickly to the lips of ...
“Wendy and Lucy” @10
Quick! Name an important fiction film of the Great Recession. The Big Short? Yes, surprisingly fun, considering the topic. Margin Call? Love it, except for the ...
Financial Markets Were Not Designed to Manage the Planet
In a market economy, almost by definition, it is the price of things that ...
The Failure of Climate Philanthropy
For most large climate funders, environmental protection and a liberal economic order are not only compatible but mutually reinforcing.
The State Will Not Save Us
In policy circles today, the primacy of the capitalist state in efforts to confront climate change is a given. This is a premise worth questioning.
Who Will Save the Planet?
Might the market provide us with solutions to fighting climate change, or is it part of the very problem that lies before us?
Gap Year in Stockholm
What was the Nobel Prize in Literature? Everyone seems to think it’s over. December 10 is the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death and the date on which the prizes in his name are traditionally ...
B-Sides: Erskine Childers’s “The Riddle of the Sands”
Ever since James Cook nearly wrecked his ship on the Great Barrier Reef in 1770 ...
Why an Age of Machine Learning Needs the Humanities
It isn’t easy to be a citizen in 2018. We are told to watch out for bots and biased ...
A Thousand and One Translations
In an era of increasing protectionism and nationalism, it may seem surprising (though encouraging!) that translated literature is actually on the rise in the ...
And the Women Shall Lead Us
Our historical and contemporary images of black nationalism privilege the masculine. This is true whether in distant or recent memory. Images of black men dressed ...
On Our Nightstands: November 2018
At Public Books, our editorial staff and contributors are hard at work to provide readers with thought-provoking articles. But when the workday is done, what is ...
What Was Public Housing?
Any debate about American public housing will eventually have to reckon with Chicago. More specifically, it will have to reckon with that city’s wrecked projects. Those closest to the issue have ...
Passion and Presence: Maria Irene Fornes, 1930–2018
In 1999, in an interview I conducted with Maria Irene Fornes on the eve of a ...
“Overpopulation” Is Not the Problem
I first encountered the biological concept of population in high school. We were introduced to the experiment of flour beetles in a jar of flour; each week, we ...
Public Thinker: David Blight on Frederick Douglass, Abolition, and Memory
Puzzling out the meaning of the Civil War and its aftermath has been David Blight’s lifelong work ...
Our Drugs, Ourselves
Is the term “drugs” still meaningful? Many of us would confess to being at least mildly dependent on some substance, be it single-origin coffee or Sancerre, antidepressants or anti-inflammatories ...