Ideas

History Economics Science & Technology Law Philosophy & Religion

London’s Brutal Underground

In Patrick Radden Keefe’s London Falling, an ordinary boy’s deadly obsession with the ultrarich reveals deeper corruption at the heart of modern London.

May 14, 2026 issue

Trevor Jackson

The Aging Class

Retirement, like so much of the American economy, is a broken system that benefits private interests and exploits the most vulnerable people.

April 23, 2026 issue

Dan Rockmore

In Defense of Algebra

The mathematician Paul Lockhart believes to his core that math is the purest of the arts, and anyone can learn to love it.

April 9, 2026 issue

Caroline Fraser

The Throwaway Planet

Three books raise political and moral questions about human consumption—and the value we place on those who clean up the waste.

April 23, 2026 issue

Alice Kaplan

Misjudgment at Nuremberg

In James Vanderbilt’s film Nuremberg, about the trial of the major Nazi war criminals, the questioning of Russell Crowe’s all too charming Hermann Göring becomes a moment of invented high drama.

April 23, 2026 issue

Colm Tóibín

Reimagining the Future of Ireland

Two writers from different parts and traditions of the island argue with each other and themselves about the advantages and disadvantages of Irish unification.

April 23, 2026 issue

Clare Bucknell

Charlatans & Bores

The profile of the pedant has changed surprisingly across time periods and cultures, but what’s constant is that nobody wants to be called one.

May 14, 2026 issue

Rosa Lyster

This Bitter Earth

The world’s salt lakes are the canary in the coal mine for the climate crisis, and they are shrinking at a drastic rate.

May 14, 2026 issue

It’s All in Your Head

Gavin Francis

The Dream of Forgetfulness

Two recent books build on an insight of Borges—that to live, it is necessary to forget.

March 9, 2023 issue

Alec Wilkinson

Illuminating the Brain’s ‘Utter Darkness’

A new biography considers the peculiar life of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, whose discovery that nerve cells are individual completely overthrew the existing theory of the brain.

February 9, 2023 issue

John Gray

The Mind’s Body Problem

The belief that we’re different from other organisms may be an incurable human illusion.

December 2, 2021 issue

Gregory Hays

A Mind in Pain

For Robert Burton, describing melancholy was a way of describing the world. Two recent books on depression suggest that today, virtually all we know about the subject is still open to debate.

October 21, 2021 issue

David Cole on the Supreme Court

David Cole

Born in the USA

For the Supreme Court to accept the Trump administration’s attempt to revoke birthright citizenship, it would have to repudiate the Constitution, its own precedents, and the long-standing position of all three branches of the US government.

April 23, 2026 issue

David Cole

The Lie of ‘Preventive’ War

Never has Donald Trump’s willful blindness to legal limits been more evident than in his decision to start a war with Iran.

March 6, 2026

David Cole

Diversity by Other Means

Progressives may have lost the battle for racial affirmative action, but ironically, Supreme Court decisions should allow colleges to give advantage to groups defined by their income, geography, or heritage.

March 26, 2026 issue

David Cole

Trading with the Enemy

By striking down Trump’s tariffs, the Supreme Court acted like a court should, in response to a president who acted like a president shouldn’t.

February 23, 2026

The Latest

Christopher Benfey

A Clearing of the Ground

Hampshire College, 1970��2026

April 19, 2026

Namwali Serpell, read by Lovia Gyarkye

From the Archive: ‘The Banality of Empathy’

Episode 10 of Private Life

April 15, 2026

Michael Gorra

Living Through the Civil War

George Templeton Strong’s diaries provide the North’s best record of daily passions and woes during its struggle against the South.

April 23, 2026 issue

David Cole

Born in the USA

April 23, 2026 issue

Robert Pogue Harrison

Interminable Ignorance

Why has the will to ignorance become so virulent in our time?

April 9, 2026 issue

Joshua Hammer

A Man-Made Disaster

There has never been a moral and historical reckoning with the horrors inflicted by the Allied firebombing of Japan during World War II.

April 9, 2026 issue

David A. Bell

Who Built France?

A new history explores France’s empire from the perspective of the indigenous and enslaved people who participated, willingly or not, in its creation.

April 9, 2026 issue

Jacob Weisberg

Tick, Tick…Boom!

Andrew Ross Sorkin’s history of the 1929 stock market crash reminds us that financial bubbles are inevitable—and that another one may be about to pop.

March 26, 2026 issue

Robert G. Kaiser

Post Mortem

When Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post in 2013 and promised to find inventive ways to make journalism profitable in the digital age, he seemed like a godsend. He wasn’t.

March 26, 2026 issue