Economic systems are like ecosystems. In America, capitalism may be the dominant species. But other species exist there, too.
Essays
Watching the End Times from the Good Place
Television responded to our cultural—and planetary—existential crisis with The Good Place.
How to Read Short Stories Like an Underdog
Departing from a fixed form, some Latin American writers employed the short story as a laboratory of writing.
Reading Against the Line: Translation, Fascism, Erasure
I’m just wary of the tendency to glorify revolutionary violence and masculinity.
The False Hopes of Homeownership
The American Dream of private home ownership has fueled a system that preys on Black people for profit.
The Dark Matter of Digital Health
Digital health is solidifying the divide between those whose health is valued and those whose health is ignored.
The Danger of Intimate Algorithms
We must reimagine our algorithmic systems as responsible innovations that serve to support liberatory and just societies.
Silicon Valley Is Not a Place
Silicon Valley has no mystical powers. It gets away with being thought of as apolitical simply because few have called its bluff.
Mexico: The Essential Neighbor
Paul Theroux’s On the Plain of Snakes is the richest portrayal of contemporary Mexico available to Americans, and an urgent one.
Lessons from Haiti on Living and Dying
If he had to write The Black Jacobins again, C. L. R. James “would only give Toussaint [Louverture] a walk-on part.”
Counterhistories of the Sport Stadium
As large spaces where different sectors of the city converge, stadiums are sites of social and political struggle.
Public Books Database
The Public Books Database is collecting the resources being offered for free by academic presses during the COVID-19 crisis.
India’s Fans and India’s Future
Obsession is one of the hallmarks of love in Indian cinema: specifically, a love that breaks down borders.
B-Sides: Graham Greene’s “Stamboul Train”
Strangers share a 1932 train ride from Belgium to Istanbul, a journey that reveals the dark changes already sweeping the continent.
The Myth of the “Sixties”
When we mythologize the ’60s, we lose sight of what’s truly ahead of us.
On Our Nightstands: March 2020
A behind-the-scenes look at what Public Books editors and staff have been reading this month.
The Kleist We Need
Heinrich von Kleist teaches how to resist heteronormativity, as well as how to imagine gender fluidity and a less restrictive masculinity.
Motherhood and Other Monsters
In The Babadook and The Need, the introduction of a monster amplifies preexisting anxieties, rather than generating fresh ones.
Babe Ruth’s New York @100
Ruth embodied a new and yet very old phenomenon—celebrity—in a technological era poised to capitalize on him.
Read Feminist Manifestos!
Early manifestos honored a high-stakes feminist anger that swept through the writing. It burns and simmers even today.
