The Dark Side of Nice
D. Berton Emerson on Carrie Tirado Bramen’s “American Niceness: A Cultural History”...
Nomads
On Jessica Bruder's "Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century."...
Getting to the Middle of Nowhere: On Jon K. Lauck’s “From Warm Center to Ragged Edge”
Stephanie Foote navigates “From Warm Center to Ragged Edge: The Erosion of Midwestern Literary and Historical Regionalism, 1920–1965” by Jon K. Lauck....
Radical Optimization: On “Desperately Seeking Self-Improvement”
On Carl Cederström and André Spicer's "Desperately Seeking Self-Improvement" and the obsession with optimization in a neoliberal world....
A Messiah-cum-Surrogate-Dad for Gormless Dimwits: On Jordan B. Peterson’s “12 Rules for Life”
Houman Barekat questions “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos” by Jordan B. Peterson....
Whose Survival Is Wrapped Up in Mine: An Interview with Benjamin Bateman
Alex Espinoza talks with Benjamin Bateman about his new book, “The Modernist Art of Queer Survival.”...
Let Me Take a Selfie: Possibility, Performativity, and Politics in Alicia Eler’s “The Selfie Generation”
Alicia Eler’s “The Selfie Generation” dilates on perhaps the seminal photographic genre of our time to think about its possibilities and pitfalls....
Reading Bad
Bruce Robbins reads Merve Emre's "Paraliterary: The Making of Bad Readers in Postwar America."...
What We Talk About When We Talk About Translation
Deborah Smith, whose rendition of Han Kang’s “The Vegetarian” won the Man Booker International Prize, reflects on the controversies of translation....
An A to Z of Iain Sinclair on the Occasion of the American Publication of “The Last London: True Fictions from an Unreal City”
Geoff Nicholson goes through the alphabet to describe the multifaceted work of Iain Sinclair....
To Petrify Time: On Grigory Kanovich’s “Shtetl Love Song” and Sergey Kanovich’s Lost Shtetl Project
Linda Kinstler considers two Lithuanian Jewish memorial endeavors, Grigory Kanovich's novel “Shtetl Love Song” and his son Sergey’s “Lost Shtetl” project....
Permanent Precarity for American Millennials
Reece Rogers is rallied by “Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials” by Malcolm Harris....
