"Good Societies Need Good Social Critics; but They Are Not Made of Critics Alone"

"It also leaves a lot out. In any survey text there are inevitable absences. But, for example, A People's History makes virtually no mention of religion—surely an important part of the national experience. It doesn't discuss conservatism in any serious way. Geopolitics is scarce. Zinn's Nye-inflected explanation for World War I, for example, replaces ideology with interests, and assumes them to be the same. If the goal is to understand Woodrow Wilson's thinking about entry into World War I, for example, A People's History is a very poor guide."

Patrick Iber at The New Republic reviews Dave Zirin's The People's Historian: The Outsized Life of Howard Zinn.

As does Heath W. Carter at The Atlantic.

Always on the Run Now

"This also began Steinem's career as a provocative journalist, penning articles including If Men Could Menstruate, which ran in Ms, a magazine co-founded by Steinem and Dorothy Pitman Hughes in 1971. The first issue featured Wonder Woman on the cover; the superhero had recently given up her powers to stay with her male love interest, and the essay argued that DC Comics should restore her powers and return the character to her feminist roots. Steinem also wrote articles such as What It Would Be Like If Women Win in Time, and After Black Power, Women's Liberation, the 1969 New York magazine article that would make her name as a feminist leader."

Sian Cain at The Guardian writes an obituary for Gloria Steinem.

"I Wanted the Subject Matter to Have Scope, Depth, Structure, and Dignity"

"I can't say the same of today's nineteen-year-olds with the same aspirations and bookish bent. English and the humanities generally have lost their grand allure. There's no point in rehearsing the fall for the umpteenth time, only to say that during the '80s canon became a bad word, a dead-white-male artifact. Perhaps the skeptics believed their takedown of the Big Picture was a liberation, and it may have been for some. But not for many. In 1970, English took one in thirteen of all four-year degrees in the United States. Now, it stands at one in sixty."

Mark Bauerlein. at Portico reminisces about being an English major at UCLA.

August 2026 Acquisitions

Books:

Steven Beeber, The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB's: A Secret History of Jewish Punk, 2008.

Torunn Grønbekk et al, Catwoman Vol. 3: Court of Fools, 2026.

Movies:
One of Them Days, 2025.

Music:

Beatles, Anthology 4, 2025.

Paul Carrack, Twenty-One Good Reasons: The Paul Carrack Collection, 1994.

Charli XCX, Music, Fashion, Film, 2026.

Damned, Not Like Everybody Else, 2026.

Lemon Twigs, Look for Your Mind!, 2026.

Squeeze, Trixies, 2026.

Womack Sisters, The Womack Sisters, 2026.

"There's a Reason 'Democratic' Is There at the Front of the Label"

"One of the ironies of this is that as terms developed over the first half of the 20th century, 'socialism' (in the sense of socialist parties and so forth) generally became self-identified as socialist over and against the anti-democratic elements of communism which, of course, also claimed the socialist label. Old news for people who know this history but a lot of the most intense anti-communists were socialists, though that can seem odd to those outside these sectarian debates. Indeed, the DSA, which Michael Harrington helped found in 1982, was at the forefront of that element of socialist politics."

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo warns against "[t]his vanguard, Marxist-Leninist revolutionary party claptrap" in the Democratic Socialists of America.

And Joshua Zeitz at The Bulwark asks, "[d]oes the DSA genuinely admire the social-democratic European model?"  

"What Happens When You Combine Free Trade, Shrinking Unions, Wall Street Bailouts, Growing Corporate Monopoly Power, and the Abandonment of Campaign Finance Reform?"

"You get an economy favoring the wealthy and a political system favoring the powerful, while workers without college degrees suffer declining real wages and dwindling job security."

Robert Reich at The Guardian says that "[w]e are finally witnessing the decline of corporate Democrats."

"Spring From Desperate Human Needs in the Absence of Religion"

"And the good news, I think, is that it's finally happening. Cult leaders, however charismatic, are usually sociopaths when they aren't simply sexual abusers, and so cults tend to implode when the leader's flaws emerge beyond any denial. Fixed dogmas can also collapse when the lies required to sustain them simply become too absurd, too huge to believe, when the avatars of the system are exposed as frauds and liars. And to my eyes, the emperors' clothes on both sides are now unmistakably falling."

Andrew Sullivan at The Daily Dish writes that "[t]he cult of Trump and the cult of wokeness are taking huge hits from reality."

"And They Must See This as Not Three Fights but One"

"Thus will changing the paradigm be the work of many years. Can the Democrats, and the people in their orbit, do it? I think they can. They have popular policies, but they have to remove those policies from their silos and connect them to values and offer people a vision for themselves as individuals and for society at large, a vision that stirs people's souls as Americans. They have to connect their economic ideas to ideals that Americans cherish—democracy and freedom. You can't get much more American than democracy and freedom. They are core to our national project. And they are not separate from economic justice. They are inseparable. It is up to the Democrats to defend all three."

In 2022, The New Republic ran an excerpt from Michael Tomansky's The Middle Out: The Rise of Progressive Economics and a Return to Shared Prosperity.

"Marx in the Twenty-First Century"

"This is not to say that Marx thought that industrialization, mechanization, or globalization were bad things. He was no Luddite. His concern was the disconnect between profits and human need: Much like today's industrial regions, the slums of nineteenth-century Manchester that Marx observed were filled with workers who were exhausted, unhealthy, and miserable while the factory owners dined on beef bourguignon and claret in their mansions. The factories these days just happen to be in Shenzhen or Dhaka, not the other side of town. Unlike the British machine wreckers of a generation before, Marx saw no way to stuff the technological genie back into the bottle. New tools must be utilized for the greatest good: Instead of getting rid of the factories, the public should take ownership of them."

Max Holleran at The New Republic reviews David Harvey's The Story of Capital: What Everyone Should Know About How Capital Works.

"The Real Story of Trump's Presidency"

"But the Democrats will almost certainly retake one, if not both, chambers of Congress in the fall. When they do, their biggest task will be to restrain this administration—and a huge part of that will involve investigating this corruption. But to do that effectively, they must weave these scandals into a larger narrative, not just pick one or two that seem particularly odious or emblematic. This should be easy. The Democrats will spend the fall campaigning primarily on what has been the biggest issue of the post-pandemic era: the affordability crisis. Prices are rising, real wages are going down, and Americans are anxious and pissed off. While many voters are struggling to get by, one man is doing better than ever. He made more than $2 billion last year alone. And he did it by selling the highest, most sacred office in the land."

Alex Shephard at The New Republic calls Donald Trump "the most corrupt politician in American history."

July 2026 Acquisitions

Books:

Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, 2024.

Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, Five Gears in Reverse: A Criminal Book, 2026.

Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch, The Authority: Relentless, 2025.

Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, 2005.

Reuel Golden, New York: Portrait of a City, 2025.

Chris Robinson (ed.), All-Negro Comics: America's First Black Comic Book, 2025.

Movies:
Michael, 2026.

Music:

Angine de Poitrine, Vol. II, 2026.

Little Barrie, Gravity Freeze, 2026.

Dyke and the Blazers, The Funky Broadway: The Very Best of Dyke & the Blazers, 1999.

Madonna, Confessions II, 2026.

Raye, This Music May Contain Hope, 2026.

Bobby Womack, J.J. Johnson, Across 110th Street, 1972.

Various, The Best of Blaxploitation, 1999.

Various, Digging Your Scene: New Pop and All That Jazz 1982-1987, 2026.

Various, In the Beginning There Was Rhythm, 2001.

Various, Thom Bell: Didn't I Blow Your Mind: The Sound of Philadelphia Soul 1969-1983, 2024.

"Power All the Way Down"

"Already during his lifetime some scholars complained that, as the historian Lawrence Stone put it, Foucault's 'dominance and control' model 'reduces the actors in history to two, the controllers and the controlled.' In a recent book, 'Left Is Not Woke,' Neiman goes further. For the political left, she argues, Foucault's legacy has been disastrous: a reflexive distrust of Enlightenment ideals—including tolerance, universalism and progress itself—which are viewed as cynical ploys by European states to justify imperialist ambitions. His theory does not allow for a human collective bound by shared values and fighting for the common good, she writes, only for 'a bunch of tribes jockeying for power.'"

At The New York Times, Emily Eakin marks the 100th birthday of Michel Foucault.

And at Slate, Laura Miller reviews Eakin's The Frenchmen: Or, My Life in Theory.

"Intense Politicisation, with Neither Institutional Roots nor Ambitions"

"'On the surface,' Jäger writes, 'the Black Lives Matter protests would seem to have little in common with the mob that stormed the Capitol in January 2021. Morally, they are worlds apart … Organisationally, however, these movements exhibit a striking set of similarities: fleeting in duration, they maintain no membership rolls and struggle to impose any real discipline on their adherents.' As a consequence, everything explodes and nothing changes; movements surge suddenly forward and yet no territory is taken. He quotes political theorist Paolo Gerbaudo’s evocative phrase 'bodies without organs'. Modern political movements, he writes, are 'concentrated and muscular, yet without an internal metabolism'."

Zoe Williams at The Guardian talks with Anton Jäger, author of Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization without Political Consequences.

"A Cesspool of Prissy Repression and Recklessly Moronic Freedom That Now Stands as an Embarrassment to One and All"

"Like every decade, the '90s had its cathartic heights. And like the '60s, it seemed like a period in which the culture was moving forward, albeit fitfully, toward a more progressive, enlightened future, at least in our fuzz-pedal-hazy minds. But it was also a decade of repulsive depths, craven money-grabs, and Pauly Shore's film career."

Charles Aaron in a 2013 Spin article presents "The 50 Worst Moments of the '90s."

Now or Never

"Having staged a remarkably successful coup within Britain’s ruling Labour Party in response to outgoing leader Keir Starmer's chronic irresolution on virtually all issues, Burnham has calculated that he needs to appear decisive and pragmatic straight out of the box. The former Manchester mayor comes off as a gregarious, upbeat fellow with an admittedly nerdy overlay. If he's not exactly John F. Kennedy, he clearly outdoes Starmer on charisma (not a high bar). He begins with a considerable reservoir of goodwill, but whether improved vibes can correct the Labour government's toxic drift remains to be seen."

Andrew O'Hehir at Salon reacts to Andy Burnham becoming the latest UK prime minister.

As does Larry Elliot at The Guardian.

"Optimistic Researchers Say There Still Time to Head Off Climate Change Before It Starts Killing Rich People"

"Despite its overall conclusion, the report stated that the climate crisis had already worsened to the point at which rich people really ought to start thinking about selling their private islands in the Caribbean."

From The Onion.

"These Changes Have Already Begun"

"And yet, strangely, Americans are probably reading more words than ever before. What has changed is what they read, and how. People are bombarded with emails, text messages, X posts, Reddit threads, Instagram captions. This explosion of textual fragments has come at the expense of devoting sustained attention to longer written works that convey rich and complicated information. Maryanne Wolf, a cognitive neuroscientist at UCLA, argues that people are losing the ability to think deeply about writing. That doesn't mean they are forgetting how to decode individual words. Rather, they are losing the higher-order abilities of comprehension and synthesis. America, in other words, isn't illiterate. It's postliterate."

Rose Horowitch at The Atlantic declares that "The End of Reading Is Here."

"The Reckoning Coming When the MAGA Sleeping Giant Awakens"

"A January New York Times and Siena poll found 65 percent of voters say a middle-class life is simply out of reach, and 77 percent say it’s harder to reach now than it was for their parents. That isn't a 'left' or 'right' number: that's my dad's vanished paycheck and benefits, expressed as despair, across the whole country.

Which is precisely why the morbidly rich oligarchs and their lickspittle politicians, and the billionaire-owned media, work so hard to keep us in these neat little categories and at each others' throats."

Thom Hartmann at Alternet writes that "[t]he instant working people stop asking 'who's the enemy who looks, prays, or loves differently than I do' and start asking 'who took my dad's paycheck,' the whole game is over."