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On Cat Memes, Cannibalism, and Election Lead-Up Laughter
Maggie Hennefeld writes on the powers and perils of satirical laughter in the run-up to the 2024 US elections.
Cultural Studies
"Culture is an instrument wielded by professors to manufacture professors." — Simone Weil
More Than an Object of Vardolatry
Conor Williams reviews Carrie Rickey’s “A Complicated Passion: The Life and Work of Agnès Varda.”
Seeing Like a Simulation
Reviewing Chaim Gingold’s “Building SimCity,” Celine Nguyen finds similarities between tech billionaires’ attempts to build a utopian city in Solano, California, and being a godlike player in “SimCity.”
Life Finds a Way
Anne Sawyier reviews Hannah McGregor’s new book, “Clever Girl: Jurassic Park” in the context of big tech’s takeover of Hollywood.
They Haven’t Kept Austin Weird
Bill Thompson reviews Alex Hannaford’s “Lost in Austin: The Evolution of an American City.”
Bourgeois Dreams, Black Rebellion
In an excerpt from “The Black Utopians,” Aaron Robertson writes on the early years of Albert Cleage Jr. and Detroit’s Black bourgeoisie.
Arizona! You Won’t Believe It!
Michael Downs reviews Richard Grant’s “A Race to the Bottom of Crazy: Dispatches from Arizona.”
A Politics to Conjure a People
Carmen E. Lamas reviews Renee Hudson’s “Latinx Revolutionary Horizons: Form and Futurity in the Americas.”
Danger Done Safely
Elizabeth Alsop investigates how the latest season of “Only Murders in the Building” reveals the pleasures and limits of coziness, in the latest installment of Screen Shots.
More than Human
Erika Howsare reviews Kapka Kassabova’s “Anima: A Wild Pastoral.”
John E. Mack and the Unbelievable UFO Truth
Michael J. Socolow looks back at the controversial career of John E. Mack, the Pulitzer Prize–winning Harvard psychiatrist who wrote best-selling books on UFO abduction.
Tastes Like Home
Yangyang Cheng reviews Michelle T. King’s “Chop Fry Watch Learn” and Curtis Chin’s “Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant.”
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