The Best of The Nation
10+ most popular The Nation articles, as voted by our community.
Founded by abolitionists in 1865. Committed to progressive journalism. Subscribe: http://subscriptions.thenation.com.
New this Week
These are fresh off the press.
Can America Go Car-Free? Gen Z Hopes So.
Young people today are already driving less, but breaking the country’s car-dependency will require unprecedented investment in infrastructure and public transit.
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You Can’t Even Tell Who’s Rich Anymore
Billionaires dress like the guy next door, which elides the fact of our ever-worsening inequality.
The Nation on Books
Let Kids Read Roald Dahl’s Books the Way He Wrote Them
The beloved author’s books are being edited by their publisher to suit contemporary sensibilities. That robs us of the author’s vision—and any sense of history.
The Nation on Culture
The Mind-Bending Fiction of Mircea Cărtărescu
In his postmodern epic Solenoid, the Romanian novelist offers us an extraordinary and baroque elaboration of a subjectivity less than ordinary.
«he doesn’t live his life but rather “constructed” it.»
The Rise and Fall of the Mall
Alexandra Lange's Meet Me by the Fountain recovers the forgotten past and the still hopeful future of the American shopping mall.
The Nation on Music
The End of the Music Business
A century of recorded music has culminated in the infinite archive of streaming platforms. But is it really better for listeners?
The Infinite Beat of House
As raves took over the world, American electronic music kept growing in the places it began.
The Nation on Politics
It’s Time to Repeal—and Replace—the Second Amendment
The meaning of the amendment has been so badly mangled that our only choice is to start over with something that allows for real gun control.
Israeli Protesters Say They’re Defending Freedom. Palestinians Know Better.
The judiciary that protesters say protects their freedom is a key architect of the apartheid regime that has stolen so much freedom from Palestinians.
The Nation on Self Help
The Radical Origins of Self-Help Literature
How did the genre of self-help go from one focused on collective empowerment to one serving the class hierarchy as it stands?
The Nation on Transgender
Pakistan's Transgender Community Rises Up
In the wake of changing legal standards recognizing the self-determination of gender identity, transgender Pakistanis are taking steps to live openly.
Popular
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Stewart Brand’s Dubious Futurism
What did the creator of the Whole Earth Catalog stand for?
I.B. Singer’s Language of Everyday Life
By choosing to write in Yiddish rather than Hebrew, the young Singer declared his allegiance to the here and now rather than a biblical past or a Zionist future.
The Rise of Bad Art and the Decline of Political Candor
Though the language of cliché has switched from the middle-class respectability of the 1950s to our current obsessions with “inclusion” and concern for the marginalized, the practice of washing our…
The World John von Neumann Built
Game theory, computers, the atom bomb—these are just a few of things von Neumann played a role in developing, changing the 20th century for better and worse.
What Happened to Newspaper Book Reviewing?
As a mode of recommendation, the newspaper fiction review has less to recommend it than ever before.
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