Category
Essays
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Law, Written in Spray Paint
“Paying attention to the temporary markings etched onto the asphalt, we are afforded a glimpse into the otherwise hidden world that lies below the city’s surface.”
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Second Opinions
In a special holiday edition of On Our Nightstands next week, the Public Books editorial staff will talk about our favorite books of the year. Meanwhile, we’ve gathered together our reviews of the books that made best-of lists in the New York Times, the Huffington Post, the Guardian, and NPR. Some of them we loved…
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Retrofitting Totalitarianism
No sooner did the Western media learn to think of Vladimir Putin as an authoritarian ruler than the Russian regime changed again. Since Putin returned to the office of president in March 2012, Russia has experienced …
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“I Just Wanted People to Hear my Voice”: An Interview with Holly Woodlawn
On December 6, 2015, Holly Woodlawn, the film and cabaret performer known as one of the Warhol Superstars and an inspiration for Lou Reed’s famous song “A Walk on the Wild Side,” died of cancer-related complications at age 69. It was a sad day for me. I interviewed Woodlawn (born Haroldo Santiago Franceschi Rodríguez Danhakl…
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From Fifth Avenue to Jamaica Avenue: Jacki Lyden Interviews Cintra Wilson
This is the latest installment of Public Streets, a biweekly urban observations series curated by Ellis Avery. Fashion is a multi-billion dollar global industry: New York Fashion Week alone is a $900 million enterprise, bigger than the US Open, Super Bowl, or NYC Marathon. It’s not surprising, therefore, that most fashion writers toe the line of the…
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Wolves at the Door?
In the past month we’ve seen two different versions of the same phobic imaginative scenario. In it, a precious and vulnerable space, a space that must be protected, is invaded by an imposter, one in disguise, one who takes advantage of liberal sentimentality to enter under false pretenses and do terrible harm. According to the…
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Monte Ulia, Euskadi
This is the latest installment of Public Streets, a biweekly urban observations series curated by Ellis Avery. You may have visited San Sebastian, Spain—Donostia, as the locals began calling it again after Franco died in 1975 and the street signs began to revert back to Euskera. Maybe you spent a couple summer days on the…
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In the Great Green Room: Margaret Wise Brown and Modernism
When Goodnight Moon was published in 1946, no one predicted it would become a classic. Its sales began to take off in 1953, and now the book has sold over 14 million copies. I grew up with Goodnight Moon and I raised my daughters on it. The text remains bearable, charming, and even compelling after…
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Russia, Today: Part 3
Legal scholar and anthropologist Monica Eppinger explores the origins and consequences of nationalism in Russia and Ukraine, while French sociologist Cécile Lefèvre analyzes Russia’s ongoing demographic and economic crisis …
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City of the Future
This is the latest installment of Public Streets, a biweekly urban observations series curated by Ellis Avery. “Been gardening?” the Greens campaigner asks. I’ve stopped to chat, knees and hands grubby from the morning’s activity. “Yeah—just in the park back there, next to the oval!” I point behind her. “We’re planting a food forest.” “I…
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Breaking Down Walls at the Havana Biennial
The Malecón, Havana’s five miles of curving, spray-soaked seawall and esplanade, is both magnificent and intimate. Since the early 20th century, it has been the site for evening promenades, a meeting spot for lovers, and a place for fishermen to cast their lines. The far side of its roadway used to be fronted with elegant…
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Russia, Today: Part 2
Princeton historian Ekaterina Pravilova discusses the battle over rationality in Russian popular and academic circles, while French philosopher Michel Eltchaninoff explores the intellectual history of Putin’s political ideology …
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This Bird Thinks He’s a Person… and it’s ADORABLE
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore— While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. “’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door— Only this and…
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True Last Judgment
Every reader gets one writer like this. The writer whose eyes you trust, whose mind fits your exact contours. A writer whose books order the world for you. You might first read him or her in college, as I did, and then go back to the books over and over again, through every contingency. My…
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Keep It Dirty, Durham
This is the latest installment of Public Streets, a biweekly urban observations series curated by Ellis Avery. They call it “Bull City,” though, with the exception of a downtown statue, there are no bulls and there’s no evidence that there ever were. The nickname comes from the old tobacco brand “Bull Durham,” which was named…
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What to Do If Yer Bit By a Snake
This is the latest installment of El Mirador, an ongoing series curated by Francisco Cantú. Spanish for “the lookout point,” El Mirador collects original nonfiction, translation, and visual art on the American West, the US/Mexico borderlands, and Indian Country. In the middle of mind-numbingly boring days at work as an online content manager, Ronald Stanage challenges…
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Russia, Today: Part 1
Amid the annexation of Crimea, the frozen conflict in eastern Ukraine, and an emerging proxy war in Syria, many commentators have proclaimed the beginning of a new Cold War between Russia and the West. But as ideologues on either side spread their messages through international organizations and news media, it has become increasingly difficult to…
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John Cage’s Mycological Legacy: Green Mountain National Forest, VT
This is the latest installment of Public Streets, a biweekly urban observations series curated by Ellis Avery. When it comes to wild mushrooms, morels get a lot of love, but the chanterelle is the sexiest of fungi, and one of the tastiest. Sun-yellow to orange, its silhouette can be vase-like and curvy, voluptuous even, and…
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Bergen, Norway: Discourse and Context
This is the latest installment of Public Streets, a biweekly urban observations series curated by Ellis Avery. This past spring I found myself in Bergen, Norway, undertaking an arts residency and witnessing the intermingling of urban space, art, and politics in that remote coastal city. Whether looking out at the expanse of the harbor from…
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A Bus Ride in Old Mexico
This is the latest installment of El Mirador, an ongoing series curated by Francisco Cantú. Spanish for “the lookout point,” El Mirador collects original nonfiction, translation, and visual art on the American West, the US/Mexico borderlands, and Indian Country. The bus from Hermosillo had rimmed out and leveled off on top of the Sierra Madre to…
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A Small, Simple Stone: Looking for Barbara Pym in Oxfordshire
This is the latest installment of Public Streets, a biweekly urban observations series curated by Ellis Avery. In the summer of ‘14, as my family was planning a trip to England, I learned that I would be missing the annual meeting of the Barbara Pym Society in London. It gave me pleasure to imagine the…
