The Nation's Books & the Arts
@booksandthearts.bsky.social
Books, music, ideas, film, and criticism from The Nation's "back of the book" https://www.thenation.com/books-and-the-arts/
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
Our May issue is here! This one features an AI package as well as Spring Books. We have @jacobsilverman.com on the death of an AI whistleblower, @elienyc.bsky.social on the future of AI judges, @bentarnoff.com on "The AI Paradox," and more.
What Is Artificial Intelligence Anyway? www.thenation.com/article/soci... Artificial intelligence is both a technology and a theology, and in its latter aspect, it too often resembles a doctrinal dispute among an assortment of shrieking priests.
What Is Artificial Intelligence Anyway?
Separating out the myths and facts of AI.
thenation.com
My newest review, of Lynn Hunt's "The Revolutionary Self," in The Nation: www.thenation.com/article/soci...
The Invention of the Modern Self
How did the idea of the individual come into being?
thenation.com
Trump’s Pentagon rebrand shows what @mattduss.bsky.social ss calls “belligerent chest-thumping, not peacemaking — with dangerous consequences for U.S. security, global standing, and our armed forces.” @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2025/09/06/u...
President of Peace, Department of War. A New Name Sends Mixed Signals.
nytimes.com
“what is one to make of a book that, after detailing how Biden and his team helped perpetrate an era-defining catastrophe in Gaza, proceeds to describe that team as ‘an example of steady and purposeful leadership’?” On Woodward’s “War” @thenation.com www.thenation.com/article/worl...
The Catastrophe of Democratic Foreign Policy
A new book on the Biden’s wars serves as a stark reminder that the Democrats need to formulate a new foreign policy—as well as reckon with the one they had.
thenation.com
Baldwin’s loves helped him recover from personal crises and learn to accept himself. They also helped him find hope in an era of violence and upheaval.
James Baldwin’s Radical Politics of Love
While Baldwin was persecuted in part because of whom he loved, it was love that impelled him to bring about a more utopian future in which such persecution was not possible.
thenation.com
I wrote about Nicholas Boggs' new James Balddwin biography for @thenation.com Read here: www.thenation.com/article/cult...
James Baldwin’s Radical Politics of Love
While Baldwin was persecuted in part because of whom he loved, it was love that impelled him to bring about a more utopian future in which such persecution was not possible.
thenation.com
Read @mattduss.bsky.social in @thenation.com on Bob Woodward’s "War": In its total absence of real reflection on what the Biden admin could have gotten wrong, the book serves as a compelling brief for why Trump was reelected. www.thenation.com/article/worl...
The Catastrophe of Democratic Foreign Policy
A new book on the Biden’s wars serves as a stark reminder that the Democrats need to formulate a new foreign policy—as well as reckon with the one they had.
thenation.com
This was great and was glad it offered an audio version! @thenation.com @rodriquese.bsky.social www.thenation.com/article/cult...
James Baldwin’s Radical Politics of Love
While Baldwin was persecuted in part because of whom he loved, it was love that impelled him to bring about a more utopian future in which such persecution was not possible.
thenation.com
"Big Tech’s ambition is to create an archive of everything we do and everything we are—an aspiration that is unprecedented in human history. The only thing that comes close can be found in religion." I wrote about Vauhini Vara's Searches @thenation.com (free link!) www.thenation.com/article/soci...
The Lost Souls of the Internet
In Searches, Vauhini Vara probes the ways that we rely on the Internet and how we periodically attempt to free ourselves from its grip.
thenation.com
“‘War’ reflects how the Democratic Party establishment desperately wants to see itself…More than any other recent president, Biden embodied the foreign policy establishment, and that establishment cannot admit failure” @mattduss.bsky.social on Bob Woodward’s “War” www.thenation.com/article/worl...
The Catastrophe of Democratic Foreign Policy
A new book on the Biden’s wars serves as a stark reminder that the Democrats need to formulate a new foreign policy—as well as reckon with the one they had.
thenation.com
"There can be no real defeat of the far right until liberals learn what the right already understands all too well: Politics is telling the difference between a friend and a foe." 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
Fall Books features Matt Duss on the crisis of Democratic foreign policy, Becca Rothfeld on Ingeborg Bachmann, Laila Lalami on the Internet's lost souls, Sarah Chihaya on Susan Choi, Elias Rodriques on James Baldwin, and @jeetheer.bsky.social on William Buckley: www.thenation.com/issue/octobe...
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:
Great piece on why living an examined life can't exclude examinations of social relations and politics, especially for a species that is inherently social and political, by @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social. (Or as I almost put it, great piece of thinking about thinking about thinking.)
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · last yr."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...
Spring Books is live! Featuring @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social on Agnes Callard, Vivian Gornick on Murray Kempton, @lioneltrolling.bsky.social on Young Trump, Sarah Chihaya on Sigrid Nunez, @ednabonhomme.bsky.social on Zora Neale Hurston, and John Banville on Ireland www.thenation.com/issue/may-20...
A focus on philosophical conversation, while a useful remedy to all of today's distraction, can also become a strategy of evasion. @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social in our Spring Books issue www.thenation.com/article/cult... @thenation.com
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
Vivian Gornick in Spring Books on the many lives of Murray Kempton @thenation.com www.thenation.com/article/cult...
The Rebellions of Murray Kempton
One of his generation’s most prolific journalists, Kempton never turned a blind eye to the inequalities all around him.
thenation.com
"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
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
"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
Like Melville, Cormac McCarthy offered us a view into the rapaciousness, megalomania, and violence of American empire. https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/cormac-mccarthy-obit-melville/
Cormac McCarthy’s Unforgiving Parables of American Empire
He demonstrated how the frontier wasn’t an incubator of democratic equality but a place of unrelenting pain, cruelty, and suffering.
thenation.com
