How War Lost Its Politics
Election years used to be occasions for pitched battles over whether to go to war. Why aren’t they still?
Winter 2026
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Kashmir Stories
At once Bildungsroman and sprawling history, Malik Sajad’s Munnu tells the story of Kashmir through the eyes of a boy and his violent, insular, emboxed world.
The Violence of Eviction
To understand how the housing market really works, we need to hear the stories of those who have been pushed out. Two essential new books shine a spotlight on those stories, and illuminate much more in the process.
Belabored Podcast #111: Workers’ Rights for Graduate Employees, with Lindsey Dayton
Lindsey Dayton from the Graduate Workers of Columbia joins us to talk about the recent NLRB ruling that graduate students who work for private universities are employees and have the right to unionize.
To Fight the Right, We Need to Understand It Better
Too many of us on the left treat the right as a monolith—and it’s keeping us from effectively fighting back.
Booked: The Origins of the Carceral State
Elizabeth Hinton discusses her new book, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime, and how twentieth-century policymakers anticipated the explosion of the prison population.
Syria’s Displaced: A Photo Essay
Za’atari refugee camp houses some 80,000 residents, making it one of the largest cities in Jordan. Views from inside the wall.
Whose Homes?
Nancy Daniel’s mortgage was repackaged and sold so many times that it was unclear who actually owned the house, until she started getting letters threatening foreclosure. Occupy Our Homes Atlanta helped her fight back.
Peru’s Rising Democratic Left
In a country where left politics has been marred by decades of sectarian strife and a devastating civil war, can a new coalition of socialists, feminists, and greens point a more democratic way forward—and win?
Belabored Podcast #110: Americans in Revolt, with Sarah Jaffe
Belabored co-host Sarah Jaffe talks about her new book, Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt.
The Pathbreaking Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik’s Notorious RBG is an insightful and charming account of a woman who, by challenging unjust and sexist laws and defending constitutional definitions of equality over a period of two decades, defined and articulated many of the freedoms that Americans—both men and women—enjoy today.
Hot & Bothered Podcast #4: Resisting Oil in the Niger Delta, with Ken Henshaw
Leading Nigerian climate activist Ken Henshaw discusses fossil fuel resistance and the uphill battle for energy democracy in Africa’s largest oil-producing region.
Into the Institutions
The left neglects the institutional structures of democracy at its own peril. In his latest book, political theorist Jeremy Waldron offers a welcome corrective.
Racial Politics After Obama
Far from heralding a “post-racial” era, the Age of Obama has fostered an intense racialization of U.S. politics and an eruption of agonistic identity politics across partisan lines. These challenges will be among the most vital of the post–Obama era, for both black politics and the resurgent American left.
Turkey’s Cyclical Coups
Amid mass purges, arbitrary detention, and a top-down restructuring of state and society, the Turkish government’s response to July’s failed military takeover is starting to look a lot like earlier coups.
