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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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The Little-Known Force Behind the Hobby Lobby Contraception Case
How the Becket Fund became the leading advocate for corporations’ religious rights -
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.
Culture
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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. -
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. -
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. -
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"?
Features
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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. -
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.
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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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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. -
The Politics of Pain
How do liberals and conservatives view suffering? Two leading experts discuss.
Culture
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The Soul-Killing Structure of the Modern Office
Our artless workspaces have been the twisted end result of utopian thinking. -
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
Features
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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? -
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?
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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 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. -
The Doctor Is Out
Conservative governors are pushing abortion politics onto health boards—and threatening doctors’ independence on other medical issues.
Culture
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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. -
Sit and Wait for the Sadness
The Ozarks—land of hillbillies and a few vast modern fortunes—are the setting for recent literary thrillers.
Features
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When Shareholder Capitalism Came to Town
The rise in inequality can be blamed on the shift from managerial to shareholder capitalism. -
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
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Vol. 25 No. 1January/February
Columns
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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." -
Health Reform's Next Test
Will low enrollment in 2014 drive premiums higher for 2015?
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 Moment of Creation
Do America’s current challenges in the Middle East trace back to Harry Truman’s 1948 missteps? -
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
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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Vol. 24 No. 6November/December
Columns
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Fruits of Republican Folly
Public support of the GOP has dipped sharply, but it falls to the Democrats to find a way to take advantage of the moment. -
Fifty Shades of Purple
If the parties started competing for votes across the map, the real winner wouldn't be Democrats or Republicans; it would be small-d democracy.
Notebook
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Poor, with Savings
New York is helping low-income families pay down debts and cover expenses. But don’t expect this program to go national. -
In the Weeds
Can Colorado and Washington make legal marijuana work?
Culture
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Bretton Woods Revisited
John Maynard Keynes’s monetary strategy was awkward and utopian. Don’t underestimate what it accomplished. -
Korean Lit Comes to America
The country frets that it trails China and Japan, which have won literary Nobels. -
Eric Schlosser, Bard of Folly
What the Command and Control author is teaching Americans about our reliance on technology. -
Jezebel Grew Up
The website used upstart humor to teach feminism to a generation. Now it’s a media “influencer.” -
Dave Eggers Is Worried about America
The famously hopeful novelist's move to dystopian fiction in The Circle. -
Soul Food's Contested History
Does a new account with recipes get it right?
Features
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What Divides Democrats
It’s economics: Cory Booker’s Wall Street liberalism versus Bill de Blasio’s anti-corporate populism. These divisions will shape the 2016 presidential contest. -
The People's Court?
If you want to see where the problems of unaffordable housing and low wages and poor education play out every day, go to Detroit's 36th District Court.
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