When “Who gets to go jogging without getting shot?” is an actual question a society has to ask, that society is fundamentally flawed.
History
Posted inHighlight, History, Quote Posts, Quotes
One of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s ‘Unsalvageables,’ 30 Years Later
“Even children with treatable issues—perhaps they were cross-eyed or anemic, or had a cleft lip—were classified as ‘unsalvageable.'”
Posted inFeature
Tea, Biscuits, and Empire: The Long Con of Britishness
The soft-focus Britain of Downton Abbey bears little resemblance to the real Britain collapsing under the weight of racism, austerity, and COVID-19. As Brexit plods on, it’s time for an honest reckoning of the history and future of this outsize little island.
Posted inArts & Culture, Highlight, History, Quotes
If You Love the Music of the Carter Family, Thank Leslie Riddle
“First, you exclude black people from the festivals. Then write them out by not recording them. And pretty soon, ‘you have this manufactured image of country music being white and being poor.'”
Posted inCurrent Events, Essays & Criticism, Highlight, History, Quotes
Rout the Racism From Your Very Bones
“What are you carrying dormant in your body that springs up when confronted with Black joy, Black power, Black brilliance, Black Blackness in the world?”
Posted inNonfiction
Queens of Infamy: Lucrezia Borgia
History may have pigeonholed her as Renaissance Italy’s most notorious seductress, but it’s high time we give the Duchess of Ferrara a closer look.
Posted inNonfiction
In Search of Etty Hillesum
The work of a young Jewish diarist, writing in Amsterdam around the time Anne Frank began her famous diary, shows the transformation of pain into radical altruism.
Posted inBooks, Commentary, Culture, Current Events, History, Nonfiction, Science & Nature
This Week in Books: This Moment Doesn’t Remind Me of Anything
Lawrence Wright did it again; Jordan Peterson in a coma?; Myriam Gurba forced out of her job; Woody Allen canceled by his publisher’s employees; THE VIRUS; and more.
Posted inReading List
This Month in Books: The Decameron Is Online
We can all quarantine alone, together, in one big villa in the cloud.
Posted inNonfiction
In Pocahontas County, Deep Divisions and a Gruesome Discovery
In an excerpt from ‘The Third Rainbow Girl,’ Emma Copley Eisenberg interrogates various social conditions that might have contributed to a mysterious double murder in West Virginia in 1980.