David Marcus
@davidmarcus.bsky.social
Literary Editor @TheNation. Working on a history of socialism in the United States. Essays and more: http://linktr.ee/davidimarcus
"A hallmark of Lerner’s fiction is the very particular way that politics encroaches, or rather doesn’t, on the life of the protagonist: It is there as a backdrop, a marker of time and place but not much else." Tara Menon in @thenation.com's Spring Books www.thenation.com/article/cult...
Ben Lerner’s Novel of Fathers and Sons
His most experimental and unsettling book, Transcription as us whether art is futile or the most important weapon we have.
thenation.com
I wrote about the life of Harry Haywood and his newly republished book, Negro Liberation, for @thenation.com www.thenation.com/article/soci...
Harry Haywood and the Radical Politics of Black Communism
For Haywood, a truly radical working-class politics in the United States also required a program of self-determination.
thenation.com
My review of Alyssa Battistoni's Free Gift in The Nation: www.thenation.com/article/soci...
How Capitalism Transformed the Natural World
In her new book, Alyssa Battistoni explores how nature came to be treated as a supposedly cost-free supplement of capital accumulation.
thenation.com
@kunktation.bsky.social is right "Something of the same redemptive delight in language [in Yeats] is also going on in Pynchon, whose characters don’t seem quite capable of misery so long as history affords them jokes to make, slang to sling, and songs to join" www.thenation.com/article/cult...
The Riotous Worlds of Thomas Pynchon
From “The Crying Lot of 49” to his latest noirs, the American novelist has always proceeded along a track strangely parallel to our own.
thenation.com
Sure, you were sick of reading about Pynchon a few months ago—but now don't you miss it? Me on the new one @thenation.com www.thenation.com/article/cult...
The Riotous Worlds of Thomas Pynchon
From “The Crying Lot of 49” to his latest noirs, the American novelist has always proceeded along a track strangely parallel to our own.
thenation.com
Deeply gratified to see this rich and surpassingly engaging essay/review of my The Second Emancipation, by the estmable Adom Getachew. www.thenation.com/article/worl...
The Global Politics of Kwame Nkrumah
Through Nkrumah’s story, Howard French charts the history of African decolonization and the American civil rights movement.
thenation.com
Amidst the fixation with semiconductors and geopolitics, how did Taiwan become a center of global electronics? Who were the people that powered its rise, and what happens when the tinkerer becomes the tycoon? I review Honghong Tinn's Island Tinkerers @thenation.com: www.thenation.com/article/worl...
How Taiwan Became the Chipmaker for the World
A new book tells the story of the island-nation’s transformation into a central hub for technological development and manufacturing.
thenation.com
Grateful to be a finalist for the Nona Balakian Award for @bookcritics.bsky.social. This would not be possible without the commissions from my editors at @thenation.com @davidmarcus.bsky.social & @newrepublic.com. Congrats to Rhoda Feng (the winner) & the other finalists. www.bookcritics.org/awards/
The National Book Critics Circle Awards - National Book Critics Circle
Each year, the National Book Critics Circle presents awards for the finest books published in English in six categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Biography, Autobiography, Poetry, and Criticism. In additi...
bookcritics.org
"Your Name Here asks how literature should respond to a reality that is equal parts vapid and violent, where the celebration of mediocrity is correlated with an utter disregard for human life." Jess Bergman in @thenation.com www.thenation.com/article/cult...
Helen DeWitt and Ilya Gridneff’s Sweeping Anti-War Novel
Your Name Here dramatizes the tensions and possibilities of political art.
thenation.com
@hofrench.bsky.social in a wonderful piece for @thenation.com on Mahmood Mamdani's Uganda www.thenation.com/article/worl...
Mahmood Mamdani’s Uganda
In his new book Slow Poison, the accomplished anthropologist revisits the Idi Amin and Yoweri Museveni years.
thenation.com
5. Over at The Nation, I write about Buckley's politics of friendship, how he creating a chummy world of insiders & those excluded from the club. I raise the question: sure, Buckley was fun company but would you want to marry one of his sisters? www.thenation.com/article/cult...
William F. Buckley Jr.’s Friends and Enemies
What was it about Buckley that made him so attractive to liberals—and what was it about liberals that caused them to be attracted to conservative figures like Buckley in the first place?
thenation.com
Thrilled to be nominated! Thanks to my brilliant editor @davidmarcus.bsky.social, who commissioned me as well as another finalist, and who has made The Nation's @booksandthearts.bsky.social section such a vital space for book criticism.
Washington Monthly@washingtonmonthly.bsky.social · 12mo agoThe Washington Monthly proudly announces the finalists of the 2025 Kukula Award for Excellence in Nonfiction Book Reviewing:
Is it that many New Yorkers find the field disappointing per NYT or rather NYT finds the preferences of many voting New Yorkers disappointing?
I reviewed Quentin Skinner’s new one www.thenation.com/article/arch...
What Is Freedom For?
Books & the Arts / June 9, 2025 Free From What? Quentin Skinner and the contested â¨history of liberty What Is Freedom For? Quentin Skinner and the contested history of liberty. Samuel Moyn Share Co...
thenation.com
Peter Linebaugh and I just published an essay about the life & work of Christopher Hill, one of the greatest historians of the 20c, in @thenation.com: “In 1965, [Hill] was elected master of Balliol College. History from below had arrived at the Oxford high table.” www.thenation.com/article/soci...
Christopher Hill’s Revolutions
The radical life and work of the historian.
thenation.com
Why should we do close reading? @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social in @booksandthearts.bsky.social on the history and future of close reading www.thenation.com/article/soci...
The Invention of Close Reading
By transforming quotations into evidence, close reading served as way to turn postwar criticism into a specialized knowledge. But what if we treated it more as an art form?
thenation.com
I wrote about close reading. What it is, why it matters, and what John Guillory gets right and wrong in his recent On Close Reading. Offers a sneak peek of a little of what @johannawinant.bsky.social and I are up to in our forthcoming Close Reading for the 21C www.thenation.com/article/soci...
What is Close Reading?
By transforming quotations into evidence, close reading served as way to transform postwar criticism into a specialized knowledge. But what if we treated it more as an art form?
thenation.com
Not a drill: *THE VIVIAN GORNICK* reviewed our new book “Going Around: Selected Journalism” by Murray Kempton, edited by Andrew Holter, for @thenation.com
The Nation's Books & the Arts@booksandthearts.bsky.social · last yr.Vivian Gornick in Spring Books on the many lives of Murray Kempton @thenation.com www.thenation.com/article/cult...
I would say more broadly that as policy you really shouldn’t allow government officials to accuse people of *terrorism* anonymously.
Dan Froomkin/Press Watch/Heads Up News@froomkin.bsky.social · last yr.You’re not supposed to grant anonymity to liars. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...
"The very first line of Open Socrates admonishes the reader, “There is a question you are avoiding.” For Callard, that question is: Why are you living this way? But this only points to a host of questions that Callard herself avoids..." me for @thenation.com www.thenation.com/article/cult...
Agnes Callard and the Examined Life
In her new book, Callard makes the case that we should all live more philosophically but where does politics fit in?
thenation.com
"You could call the business model Trump developed a kind of personality arbitrage." @lioneltrolling.bsky.social in @thenation.com's Spring Books on how the 1980s and 90s made Trump www.thenation.com/article/soci...
Donald Trump’s Long Con
Trump’s “Art of” trilogy may be full of willful exaggeration but the books also reveal how the 1980s and 90s formed his dog-eat-dog worldview.
thenation.com
The making and remaking of Capital. Epic piece by Alyssa Battistoni in latest @booksandthearts.bsky.social / @thenation.com on Marx’s masterpiece, the history of its translations, and what it means to read it today www.thenation.com/article/soci...
The Making and Remaking of Karl Marx’s “Capital.”
thenation.com
Daniel Bessner in the new @thenation.com on Chomsky and Nathan Robinson's The Myth of American Idealism and the politics of anti-imperialism www.thenation.com/article/cult...
The Worlds of Noam Chomsky
If ordinary Americans know one critic of the American Empire, it’s almost certainly Chomsky.
thenation.com
In "A Complete Unknown," James Mangold offers a faithful, reverent, and cautious account of a musician who always tried to be anything but these qualities.
What Do We Want From Bob Dylan’s Story?
In James Mangold's film A Complete Unknown, we get a cautious and reverent story of a musician who has always sought to transcend the limits imposed upon him.
thenation.com
