The Best of The Nation

A history of social media from the perspective of the poster, Taylor Lorenz’s Extremely Online examines the roots and rise of our sponsorship-saturated ecosystem.

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 strangely short history of a publishing niche.

Inside the soul-crushing, morally bankrupt, top-secret world of our most powerful consulting firm.

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.»

Alexandra Lange's Meet Me by the Fountain recovers the forgotten past and the still hopeful future of the American shopping mall.

Millions of American adults are impaired by long Covid. They have a vision for what our society owes to chronically ill and disabled people.

A century of recorded music has culminated in the infinite archive of streaming platforms. But is it really better for listeners?

For decades, Americans have argued over the icon’s legacy. But his archives show that he had his own plans.

A conversation with Daniel Zamora Vargas and Anton Jäger about why a “basic income” isn't such a progressive welfare idea.

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.

How did the genre of self-help go from one focused on collective empowerment to one serving the class hierarchy as it stands?

In the wake of changing legal standards recognizing the self-determination of gender identity, transgender Pakistanis are taking steps to live openly.

What did the creator of the Whole Earth Catalog stand for?

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.

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…

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.

«“If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.”»

As a mode of recommendation, the newspaper fiction review has less to recommend it than ever before.