Immigration: What We’ve Done, What We Must Do
The boats were stiflingly hot in the day and freezing cold at night. Much of the upper deck was exposed to the elements, leaving passengers…
Author: Admin
A Labyrinth for Our Time
There is a House with 7,678 halls; in the House lives the eponymous protagonist of Susanna Clarke’s new novel, Piranesi. The amnesiac narrator knows nothing…
What Counts, These Days, in Baseball?
Back in the prehistoric days of 2020 spring training, when few suspected that the pandemic would soon shutter the game and send fans into a…
How to Build a World
A world made of glass, where a drug called “shatter” runs rampant. A world where a secret sect of writers writes the canon of reality…
How to Step Out of Comfort Zones
Sometimes readers need to work to leave their comfort zones. Charged with writing down her mother’s story, one woman—in Marlon James’s novel, The Book of…
The Arch of Injustice | Public Books
Asked to identify the city that best captures the long arc and ongoing dynamics of American history, most people would select New York or Philadelphia…
Why Write? Toward a Style for Climate Change
It would seem that one of the many by-products of our fossil-fuel economy is books. The atmosphere warms, species are extinguished, the poor are displaced,…
The Never-Ending Frontier? | Public Books
The United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001. Yet this thoroughly modern war—now grinding through its 19th straight year—remains haunted by the ghosts of the US’s…
Museums as Monuments to White Supremacy
We have reached a new phase in the public debate over whether to repatriate objects stolen from former colonies and now displayed in European and…