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Vol. 25 No. 5Fall 2014
Columns
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Democracy's New Moment
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The American Situation
The country is stuck but it is not stationary. Some things are changing—just not at the federal level.
Notebook
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In 22 States, a Wave of New Voting Restrictions Threatens to Shift Outcomes in Tight Races
The last large-scale push to curb voting access was more than a century ago, after Reconstruction. Until now. -
Road Hazard: Millions of Autos On U.S. Highways Recalled But Not Repaired
Why we have millions of cars with unfixed safety recalls — and Germany has none. -
The Targeting of Young Blacks By Law Enforcement: Ben Jealous in Conversation With Jamelle Bouie
What will it take to reshape America’s police departments, and curtail the unprompted police killings that beset us still?
Culture
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What Women Need
Can women translate symbolic victories into durable progress on multiple fronts, from financial status to physical safety? -
Abortion Without Apology: A Prescription for Getting the Pro-Choice Groove Back
Only by reclaiming abortion as a fundamental right and normal part of health care can the pro-choice movement hope to win, writes Katha Pollitt in a lively new book. -
The End of the Lavender Ghetto
As gays and lesbians gain acceptance, they are moving away from the old neighborhoods that long epitomized gay culture. -
Music and Memory
The dangerous state of Zionism invites us to cherish the diaspora as Jewish cultural and religious homeland. -
A Talent for Storytelling
Rick Perlstein tells how Reagan imagined his way into the American psyche.
Features
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Must Environmentalists and Labor Activists Find Themselves at Odds With Each Other?
The need for jobs, and the ecological limits to growth -
The Making of Ferguson: How Decades of Hostile Policy Created a Powder Keg
Long before the shooting of Michael Brown, official racial-isolation policies primed Ferguson for this summer’s events. -
Rand Paul's Millennial Quest: A Little Libertarian, A Lot of Something Else
Win or lose, the neo-libertarian stands to change the DNA of the Grand Old Party. -
Labor at a Crossroads: The Seeds of a New Movement
SEIU’s David Rolf—virtuoso organizer and mastermind of Seattle’s $15 minimum wage campaign—says labor needs radically new ways to champion worker interests. -
Elizabeth Warren's Challenge to Hillary Clinton
A more insurgent campaign, like the one the former professor waged for the Senate, could make the Democratic frontrunner a stronger candidate. -
On Realism, Old and New
With new threats to the peace, it’s more important than ever to be clear about America’s core national interests. -
Black America's Promised Land: Why I Am Still a Racial Optimist
Hope and pessimism have defined two traditions of American thinking about race. Fully acknowledging recent setbacks, the author makes the case for the tradition of hope.
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Vol. 25 No. 4July/August
Columns
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Three Reasons Liberals Lack Traction With Voters, Despite Conservative Failures
The liberal imagination has been stunted by decades of conservative obstruction.
Notebook
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Armed Resistance in the Civil Rights Movement: Charles E. Cobb and Danielle L. McGuire on Forgotten History
Cobb, author of This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible, and Danielle McGuire, a historian at Wayne State University, discuss the fundamental role of armed resistance in the civil rights movement. -
The Little-Known Force Behind the Hobby Lobby Contraception Case
How the Becket Fund became the leading advocate for corporations’ religious rights
Culture
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Race or Class? The Future of Affirmative Action on the College Campus
Focusing college-student recruitment on poor neighborhoods can overlook middle-class African Americans entitled to affirmative action. -
The Brothers Koch: Family Drama and Disdain for Democracy
Lawsuits are the billionaire brothers’ weapon of choice—against each other—writes Daniel Schulman in his first-rate new bio. But buying our democracy, and maybe killing it, is pure self-interest. -
Have Literary Prizes Lost Their Meaning? (Have They Ever Had Any?)
Cultural prizes notoriously reward the wrong works for the wrong reasons: On the long list of worthies deprived of the Nobel for literature are Tolstoy, Proust, and Joyce. -
Is 'The Fault In Our Stars' Author John Green His Generation's Pop Philosopher?
The author and phenom, with a bajillion Internet viewers, has built an avid Internet following with pep talks on how to be good. What does it mean to live like one of Green's "Nerdfighters"? -
The Road to Marriage Equality: Boies and Olson’s Wedding March
What the limelight-loving legal team did and didn’t win for same-sex couples' right to marry. -
Astronaut Sally Ride and the Burden of Being The First
America's woman space pioneer paid a price back on Earth.
Features
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Hillary Clinton's New Image: Cool Grandma. Can She Maintain It?
Her attitude—unabashedly feminist, casually in charge—was captured most effectively toward the end of her stint as secretary of state. Can she keep it as a candidate? -
Why Democrats Need to Take Sides in America's Class War
Straddling class divisions is so last century. There's a new base in town, and it includes a lot of people who used to be middle-class but aren't anymore. -
How Two Centrist Dems May Herald a Progressive Future for Georgia
As Republicans head to the polls to select a U.S. Senate candidate who will almost certainly hail from the right, Michelle Nunn and Jason Carter--daughter of Senator Sam and grandson of President Jimmy--take the middle path on a road destined to veer left. -
Can Liberalism Survive the Obama Presidency? (Yes, It Can.)
If Obama is a transformative figure, it isn’t in the ideological way he seemed after his election. -
Will Economic Populism Win Back the Midwest for Democrats?
The decline of industrial unions and significant demographic changes portend challenging times for the region’s Democrats. -
Meet the Billionaires Backing Team Blue With a Megaphone Only Money Can Buy
Conservatives have the Kochs and Rupert Murdoch, but progressives have their mega-donors, too.
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Vol. 25 No. 3May/June
Columns
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Can Reformers Save Our Election System from the Supreme Court?
Slowly but steadily, SCOTUS is decimating every legal justification for campaign-finance rules. -
The Three Curses Faced By Democrats -- And How to Lift Them
In creating a better political future, it is better to be cursed with youth than blessed with age.
Notebook
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The Politics of Pain
How do liberals and conservatives view suffering? Two leading experts discuss. -
Breaking the School-to-Prison Pipeline: Rethinking 'Zero Tolerance'
A new approach to discipline seeks to keep kids in school and, ultimately, out of prison. In one high school, the number of serious incidents of misbehavior plummeted 60 percent, after the start of a "restorative justice" program.
Culture
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Karl Polanyi Explains It All
Want to understand our market-crazed era? Rediscover the 20th century’s most prophetic critic of capitalism. -
Too Big to Fail. Not Too Strong.
Nomi Prins’s new book traces America’s propping up of banks since the robber barons. -
Food TV’s Sadistic Glee
Competitive cooking shows and our yearning for what we dare not eat -
The Soul-Killing Structure of the Modern Office
Our artless workspaces have been the twisted end result of utopian thinking.
Features
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The Revolt of the Cities
During the past 20 years, immigrants and young people have transformed the demographics of urban America. Now, they’re transforming its politics and mapping the future of liberalism. -
For the U.S., Israel and Palestine: What's Plan B?
As a concept, the two-state solution is more broadly accepted than ever, even as achieving it seems more remote. -
The Next Christian Sex-Abuse Scandal
As sex-abuse allegations multiply, Billy Graham’s grandson is on a mission to persuade Protestant churches to come clean. -
The Great American Chain Gang
Why can't we embrace the idea that prisoners have labor rights? -
The Hidden History of Prosperity
In the crisis of World War II, the nation made the political choices that created the robust egalitarian economy of the next 30 years. Can we respond to the climate crisis with similar policies to rebuild the middle class?
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Vol. 25 No. 2March/April
Columns
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This Year’s Moderates
Given the GOP's base, even the party's middle-of-the-road conservatives are pretty extreme. -
The Inequality Puzzle
A new study shows there's been no decline in intergenerational poverty in the last 30 years, but it doesn't tell the whole story.
Notebook
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The Doctor Is Out
Conservative governors are pushing abortion politics onto health boards—and threatening doctors’ independence on other medical issues. -
The Conversation: Joshua Steckel and Andrew Delbanco
Steckel, a high school college counselor and author of Hold Fast to Dreams, and Delbanco, author of College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be, discuss the collegiate experience of low-income students.
Culture
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Sit and Wait for the Sadness
The Ozarks—land of hillbillies and a few vast modern fortunes—are the setting for recent literary thrillers. -
Loving the Opera in HD
Once controversial, Metropolitan Opera broadcasts for movie-theater audiences have become a gateway for new (and returning) fans. -
Francis and His Predecessors
Why the new pope’s tenure may be less liberal but more countercultural than it seems. -
Piketty’s Triumph
Three expert takes on Capital in the Twenty-First Century, French economist Thomas Piketty's data-driven magnum opus on inequality.
Features
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Is There Hope for the Survivors of the Drug Wars?
Criminalized and discarded, falling at the bottom of every statistic, they want something better. -
Plowed Under
Across the northern plains, native grassland is being turned into farmland at a rate not seen since the 1920s. The environmental consequences could be disastrous. -
The Quality of Mercy
An evangelical Christian and former prosecutor, Mark Osler has become one of the country’s most effective advocates for criminal-justice reform. -
How to Raise Americans' Wages
Eight proposals to jump-start the incomes of workers -
When Shareholder Capitalism Came to Town
The rise in inequality can be blamed on the shift from managerial to shareholder capitalism.
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Vol. 25 No. 1January/February
Columns
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Health Reform's Next Test
Will low enrollment in 2014 drive premiums higher for 2015? -
Want to Rock the Vote? Fill the Election Assistance Commission.
Long lines and broken machines could be fixed with proper oversight. All congress needs to do is fill the empty slots on the "zombie commission."
Notebook
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The Conversation: Elizabeth Kolbert and Bill McKibben
Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, and McKibben, founder of 350.org, discuss raising awareness about environmental catastrophe.
Culture
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The Coen Brothers' Goodbye Song
Inside Llewyn Davis deepens the duo's turn from satire to elegy -
The Urban Poor Shall Inherit Poverty
Sociologist Patrick Sharkey proves a mother’s insecure upbringing harms her child as surely as a neighbor’s broken window. -
The Man Who Knew Too Little
A CIA memoir whose emptiness is something to contemplate -
The Moment of Creation
Do America’s current challenges in the Middle East trace back to Harry Truman’s 1948 missteps?
Features
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The Fed Transformed
Ben Bernanke rescued the economy. Now Janet Yellen needs to remake the financial system. -
Dan Cantor's Machine
New York’s Working Families Party has built the most effective political operation the American left has seen in decades. Can it duplicate its success in other states? -
James Madison’s Worst Nightmare
Today’s Republicans have become the very kind of obstructionist faction—with apocalyptic politics—that the primary author of our Constitution warned us against. -
This Land Was Your Land
In Utah and other Western states, the country's most pristine wilderness faces new threats from Big Energy and its powerful allies.
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