"Make America Manifest Destiny Again"

"It's why Trump and his agents respect no legal citizenship lines; some of them have called for the denaturalization and deportation of New York City's Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. Trump’s State Department is creating an 'Office of Remigration,' employing a term favored by extremists who call for, as Mother Jones puts it, 'the forcible repatriation or mass expulsion of non-ethnically European immigrants and their descendants, regardless of immigration status or citizenship, and an end to multiculturalism.' And Trump wants the power to exile by personal fiat: 'We also have a lot of bad people that have been here for a long time. . . many of them were born in our country. I think we ought to get them the hell out of here, too.' Who is deciding, without due process, who the 'bad people' are?"

Douglas Sackman at The Bulwark argues that racial nationalism "grows darkly at the heart of MAGA."

"Arguably the Most Sartorially Influential Person to Ever Hold the Presidency"

"Whether sailing off the coast of Hyannis Port or hosting a glamorous black-tie dinner at the White House, Kennedy's innate charisma and charm were merely enhanced by the approachable way in which he outfitted himself. 'JFK was almost unaware of clothes being of any great importance,' remarks Deeda Blair, whose husband served as U.S. Ambassador to Denmark during the Kennedy administration. 'He always was well dressed and I would even say distinguished, but effortless and easy—unremarkable ties and I suspect no fussing about pocket squares.'"

Andrew Nodell in a 2017 Women's Wear Daily article discusses President John Kennedy's clothes.

July 2025 Acquisitions

Books:

Torunn Gronbekk et al, Catwoman Vol. 1: Who Is Selina Kyle?, 2025.

Robert E. Johnson and Janet L. Bryon, Berkeley Walks, 2023.

Sven Kirsten and Peter Moruzzi, Palm Springs Tiki: Polynesia in the Desert, 2024. 

Jeanne Theoharis, King of the North: Martin Luther King Jr.'s Life of Struggle Outside the South, 2025.

The Pocket Oasis, 2025.

Movies:

Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin, 2003.

Don't Look Back, 1967.

Kiss Me Deadly, 1955.

Music:

Barracudas, The Complete EMI Recordings, 1990.

Fishbone, In Your Face, 1986.

Durand Jones, Flowers, 2025.

Sly Stone, Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius) Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, 2025.

Paul Weller, Find El Dorado, 2025.

X-Ray Spex, Germfree Adolescents, 1978.

Various, Come to My World: A Brief History of Indie Pop 1985-2023, 2024.

Various, These People Are Nuts!, 1989.

"A Liberty That Would Be Easily Understood by the Scots-Irish of Appalachia but Would Perplex the Puritans of New England"

"California's convoluted policies toward drugs and mental illness have combined to exacerbate its colossal homelessness problem, setting it apart, once again, from progressive Yankee states. California has the highest rate of unsheltered homelessness, followed by Oregon, whose settlement history and politics are very similar to those of Northern California. By contrast, New York City, whose upstate region was settled by Yankees, has the third lowest rate of unsheltered homelessness in America. Its success in bringing its homeless population indoors is thanks to its 'right to shelter' law—a classic top-down Yankee solution to an urgent social problem. Neither California nor Oregon has such a law."

Leighton Woodhouse at UnHerd claims that California's political problems stem from the influence of two groups from back East.

"Had I Planned This, I Would've Failed"

"He knew he was onto something when he got a surprise check for $1,000 for photos he had turned over for one of Dick Clark's Rock and Roll Years specials at ABC in the early 1970s. 'I gave him the stuff for nothing, expected nothing,' he said. 'I thought, hmm - this could be a business here. Then I began to take it real seriously and started fanatically trying to find as many photos as I could.'"

Mike Barnes at The Hollywood Reporter writes an obituary for archivist Michael Ochs.

"Both Ideological Groups—the Left and Center—Mistakenly Believe They Can Conquer the Other Faction to Achieve Electoral Glory"

"Having examined the strengths and delusions of both factions for several decades now, the most plausible path I can see to bridge these divides and reach more independents is for both the left and the center to drop their cultural, foreign policy, and single-issue demands and concentrate on restoring Democrats as the party of economic uplift for working-class Americans."

John Halpin at The Liberal Patriot asks, "Can Democratic Factions Coexist and Win Over Independents?"

Ruy Teixeira argues that "today's progressives have abandoned their former goals of universal uplift based on universal values and aspirations."

And Justin Vassallo offers advice on "How To Rebuild the Democratic Coalition."

"This Is What We Are, and What We Are Going to Be"

"The more banal fallout of this all is that America remains a nation split between red and blue, with neither party gaining a decisive advantage. Republicans cannot triangulate or realign the electorate in such a manner to doom the Democrats to irrelevancy. Democrats can't seem to excite voters enough to revive the promise of an Obama-esque landslide. Democrats have the edge to flip the House next year, while Republicans should be the favorites to retain Senate control. The 2028 race is probably going to be a closely divided slog, no matter whom the major parties nominate."

Ross Barkan at New York looks at the state of American politics, six months into Donald Trump's second term. 

"In the 1935 Telling, Redistribution Was the Mechanism of Abundance"

"Even in those invocations of abundance, the stark differences between the socialist abundance movement of 1935 and the moderate abundance agenda of 2025 are apparent. The concept of 'production for use' is in contrast to the capitalist profit motive. In socialist thought, one of the core issues of a capitalist economy is that profit motives result in wealth accumulation becoming divorced from the creation of actual economic value. A production for use system makes production and allocation decisions based on need (or 'use value'), rather than market prices."

Dylan Gyauch-Lewis at The New Republic describes "An Altogether Different Kind of Abundance Agenda."

"But What Made His Art So Popular?"

"Kinkade's most famous subject was the humble cottage, lit from within by unsettling candlelight. Former Evangelicals may also recall the Bridge of Hope, which spans a creek and heads nowhere. A white dogwood tree stands nearby, a 'symbol of the purity of God’s grace,' according to the Kinkade company's website. Kinkade created a world that some people, maybe even millions of people, wanted to inhabit. Though he was a Christian and his work often contained religious imagery, his art did not proselytize so much as it advertised an alternative reality where proselytization was no longer necessary. In Kinkade-land, everything is serene. There is cohesion. Grandmothers love his pink skies and cobblestone paths. Even today I can close my eyes and imagine a Kinkade abode, squatting underneath some eldritch sunset. A Kinkade landscape is often lifeless. There are few human beings, and fewer complications. Sometimes Jesus appears; other times he is more of a suggestion. Sometimes the paintings light up, literally, as if the artist wanted to burn holes in our retinas."

Sarah Jones at Dissent discusses Art for Everybody, a documentary about Thomas Kinkade.

"Is It Possible to Imagine a Different Politics"?

"At a time of national division some 57 years ago, Robert Kennedy attracted disparate groups of voters who were otherwise at each other's throats. Today, as we have just come through a set of elections in which many Americans expressed dissatisfaction with their choices, RFK's example points to something more inspiring: a politics that tamps down, rather than sows, racial division; that seeks to treat all Americans with dignity; that crosses political ideologies to seize on the best ideas; and that can instill a deep pride in country. It will be fascinating to watch in the years to come which set of political leaders, if any, will seek to take up his mantle."

At The Liberal Patriot, Richard Kahlenberg and Ruy Teixeira present a "deep dive into the political worldview of Robert F. Kennedy [Sr.]."

"The Predictable Result of Public Policy"

"Until then, the term 'homeless' most often referred to people who had lost their homes in natural disasters or wars. But things were beginning to change in the 1970s, when a sequence of seemingly unrelated events conspired to drive people into the streets."

Mitchell Landsberg and Gale Holland at the Los Angeles Times present "[t]he real story of how L.A. became the epicenter of America’s homeless crisis."

To Live Is to Maneuver

"Would Buckley really be so shocked by the growth of populism and illiberal nationalism and a creeping authoritarianism on the right? Surely, those afflictions in the late Obama years were hardly new, or any more daunting than they had been in Buckley's time. The true crisis on the right, I believed, lay in the fact that it no longer had anyone of Buckley's stature to keep the tablets. It still doesn't."

Brian Stewart at The Bulwark reviews Sam Tanenhaus's Buckley: The Live and the Revolution That Changed America.

"A Funny Thing Happened in the Wake of These Triumphs"

"But this huge increase in funding was no longer primarily about gay, lesbian and transgender civil rights, because almost all had already been won. It was instead about a new and radical gender revolution. Focused on ending what activists saw as the oppression of the sex binary, which some critical gender and queer theorists associated with 'white supremacy,' they aimed to dissolve natural distinctions between men and women in society, to replace biological sex with 'gender identity' in the law and culture, and to redefine homosexuality, in the process, not as a neutral fact of the human condition but as a liberating ideological 'queerness' meant to subvert and 'queer' language, culture and society in myriad different ways."

Ten years after the Supreme Court's decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, Andrew Sullivan argues in The New York Times that "the Gay Rights Movement Radicalized, and Lost Its Way."

At The Advocate, Marcie Bianco reacts to Sullivan.

"No Problem the World Faces Has an Answer That Can Be Found in America"

"It is clear that we have to start looking for answers to the world's problems elsewhere, in ourselves and in others. There is a celebration of independence this Independence Day and it is real; it's just for countries other than America. The lesson the Americans once taught the British, they are teaching the rest of the world: there are no necessary nations. There are no exceptional countries. There are no permanent global orders. There's just more history, and trying to survive to stay yourself it."

Stephen Marche at The Guardian says that "[t]his Independence Day, the world is declaring its independence from the US."

"To Put Down Roots and Then Oppose New Development"

"Glaeser and Gyourko go one step further. They hypothesize that as Sun Belt cities have become more affluent and highly educated, their residents have become more willing and able to use existing laws and regulations to block new development. They point to two main pieces of evidence. First, for a given city, the slowdown in new housing development strongly correlates with a rising share of college-educated residents. Second, within cities, the neighborhoods where housing production has slowed the most are lower-density, affluent suburbs populated with relatively well-off, highly educated professionals. In other words, anti-growth NIMBYism might be a perverse but natural consequence of growth: As demand to live in a place increases, it attracts the kind of people who are more likely to oppose new development, and who have the time and resources to do so. 'We used to think that people in Miami, Dallas, Phoenix behaved differently than people in Boston and San Francisco,' Gyourko told me. 'That clearly isn't the case.'"

Rogé Karma at The Atlantic writes that "[t]he Sun Belt, in short, is subject to the same antidevelopment forces as the coasts; it just took longer to trigger them.

June 2025 Acquisitions

Books:

Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange, 1962.

William Golding, Lord of the Flies, 1954.

Arnaud Le Gouëfflec and Nicolas Moog, Underground: Cursed Rockers and High Priestesses of Sound, 2024.

J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, 1951.

The Little Black Songbook: Oasis, 2010.

Music:
Chuck D, Chuck D Presents Enemy Radio: Radio Armageddon, 2025.
Pulp, More., 2025.
Rain Parade, Crashing Dream, 1985, 2025.
Rain Parade, Emergency Third Rail Power Trip, 1983, 2024.
Talking Heads, Live on Tour '78, 2025.
Brian Wilson, Playback: The Brian Wilson Anthology, 2017.

You Got Two Ways to Go

"Ceasing to think of freedom as the possession of many options would be no small rupture. What might take its place? Abandoning a consumerist worldview might not be the worst thing for humanity, and for Americans in particular—it might lead to a sturdier value system, maybe one more concerned with the common good. But the resulting vacuum could just as easily be filled by Trump's idea of freedom, one based on power and sovereignty over others, and on screwing the other guy before he screws you. The cruelty of this vision almost demands a reinvigoration of choice, an effort to salvage what had made this human impulse so liberating to begin with."

Gal Beckerman at The Atlantic reviews Sophia Rosenfeld's The Age of Choice.

"Three Ms Are Key: Messaging, Medium and Movement"

"Mamdani may not win the Democratic nomination. Even if he does, Cuomo will stand as an independent candidate, although the socialist challenger may do this, too. His campaign's weaknesses reflect those of the wider US left: too little inroads among Black and older voters, as well as those with little online political engagement. But Mamdani's against-the-odds success underlines why the far-right surge doesn't have to weaken the left–far from it."

Owen Jones at The Guardian discusses the rise of Zohran Mamdani in New York City politics.

Holly Otterbein at Politco gets Bernie Sanders's reaction to Mamdani's success.

And Anita Chabria wonders at the Los Angeles Times about what the NYC primary means for the Democratic Party.