The Savage Entertainer
To win the country back from the likes of Donald Trump, the left needs to better appreciate the toxic charm of right-wing talk radio personalities like Michael Savage.
Winter 2026
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The World of Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Rich’s politics developed over many years because she came by them as an artist—which may be what allowed her to become, unusually, both more self-questioning and more combative as she aged.
Rethinking Populism
Donald Trump’s candidacy may have peaked. But, from the United States to Britain and beyond, the discontent fueling the far right won’t fade so quickly. Can a new, left-wing populism seize on it—and rebuild democracy in the process?
Austerity as Blood Sport
In The Purge: Election Year, campy blockbuster horror meets class war and offers a refreshing solution to mass, ritualized violence: collective action.
Murder, They Wrote
The new wave of true crime series has spawned an entire online subculture of amateur sleuths—not to mention vigilantes. But where do we draw the line between journalism, protest, and entertainment?
Painting with Oil 
Oil magnate David Koch stepped down from the board of the American Museum of Natural History on December 9, 2015. His departure came only months after dozens of scientists signed a letter calling on the science museum sector to sever …
Pulp Nonfiction
“Zippy” creator Bill Griffith’s new book Invisible Ink is a curious masterpiece, merging the real-life personal saga of his mother with the story of the forgotten pulps.
Who Pays Writers?
At its height, the American welfare state provided direct financial support to scores of writers. They used it to challenge the political status quo, revolutionizing literary form in the process.
Belabored Podcast #92: Don’t Mourn, Organize!
A celebration of pioneering union activist and radical troubadour Joe Hill.
Surreality TV
In his new book, Peter Pomerantsev depicts Russia as a place that has descended into a madness fed by the television programs that it itself inspires. But a crucial element is missing.
The Fictions of Finance
As the divide between finance and everyday life yawns ever wider, fiction has stepped into the gap.
Tell It to Polaris
An excerpt from Joshua Cohen’s new novel Book of Numbers.
Kill Your Idols
Sonic Youth’s DIY ethic couldn’t sustain itself in the face of a corporate world eager to market youthful anger like any other commodity. But Kim Gordon’s remarkable new book shows that no matter how institutionalized it became, punk offered a radical way of seeing the world.
For Philip Levine, Poet and Friend
(1928–2015)
Colleagues, critics, and obituary writers have described Philip Levine as “poet of the American working class,” “a large, ironic Whitman of the industrial heartland,” the poet who explored “his gritty Detroit childhood; the soul-numbing factory jobs he held as a …
China’s Dream Parks
Since 1989, thousands of theme parks have been built across China, in an uncanny reflection of the country’s economic liberalization.
