Before Standing Rock, There Was Alcatraz
In 1969, a group of Native activists occupied Alcatraz island. Their actions set off a wave of direct action that continues to the present day.
Winter 2026
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A Short History of American Empire
Stephen Kinzer is one of the few mainstream voices reminding Americans of our imperial identity. In The True Flag, he takes us back to where he thinks it all began—1898, when the U.S. political class pushed off on the quest for global domination.
Gilt Trip
How the “Boston Brahmins” of the late nineteenth century laid the foundations for modern American capitalism.
New York Isn’t Ready for a Constitutional Convention
Without a much larger movement to overcome New York’s political machine, a constitutional convention risks rolling back progressive victories—not adding to them.
Borgland
How did a sculptor with neo-Confederate leanings find a home in one of the twentieth century’s most influential liberal salons?
Can Labor Still Use the Wagner Act?
As American workers face down the national right-to-work regime threatened by Janus v. AFSCME, the Wagner Act’s vision of workplace democracy bears revisiting.
Booked: The Revenge of the Ruling Class, with Corey Robin
Corey Robin talks about the new edition of his book, The Reactionary Mind, and Donald Trump’s conservative pedigree.
Learning from Fannie Lou Hamer
A shrewd movement strategist, Fannie Lou Hamer rose from abject poverty to reshape the American political order.
Give Peace a Chance
In their new documentary series The Vietnam War, Ken Burns and Lynn Novick offer a sharp indictment of an atrocious war. But when it comes to portraying the antiwar movement, they lapse into troubling stereotypes.
Booked: From Welfare City to Fear City, with Kim Phillips-Fein
Kim Phillips-Fein discusses her new book, Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics, and who killed the social-democratic city.
America’s Health Care System is Even More Broken than You Think
How did private insurance companies come to control U.S. health care—and make our coverage the most expensive in the world?
Judith Stein, 1940–2017
Judith Stein was a tough and determined inspiration to multiple generations of scholars and activists.
How Tax Policy Created the 1%
From the 1920s to today, American tax policy has evolved to reflect one principle—the investor comes first—with disastrous implications for the rest of us.
When Labor Fought for Civil Rights
Two new histories show how the CIO of the 1930s and ’40s led the charge for racial equality not just on the shop floor but at the national level, precipitating the Democratic Party’s embrace of civil rights.
How Immigrants Built the American Left—And Can Build It Again
For nearly two centuries, immigrants have been among the U.S. left’s most important partisans. As a new mass movement comes into being, they must again be at the heart of it.
