Cultural Criticism

Vir Sanghvi's has been an interesting life - one that took him to Oxford, movie and political journalism, television and magazines - and he depicts it with the silky polish his readers expect of him. In A Rude Life, he turns his dispassionate observer's gaze on himself, and in taut prose tells...

Timely and thought-provoking, Nancy Reddy unpacks and debunks the bad ideas that have for too long defined what it means to be a "good" mom. When Nancy Reddy had her first child, she found herself suddenly confronted with the ideal of a perfect mother—a woman who was constantly available...

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: THE WASHINGTON INDEPENDENT REVIEW OF BOOKS HYPERALLERGIC The most personal writing yet to come from a noted scholar of race: a bold and moving look at race, gender, aging, and immigration that examines, through lenses both intimate and political, what...

From The New York Times best-selling author of Paris to the Moon and beloved New Yorker writer, a memoir that captures the romance of New York City in the 1980s. When Adam Gopnik and his soon-to-be-wife, Martha, left the comforts of home in Montreal for New York, the city then, much like today...

“The queer memoir you’ve been waiting for”—Carmen Maria Machado Grace Lavery is a reformed druggie, an unreformed omnisexual chaos Muppet, and 100 percent, all-natural, synthetic female hormone monster. As soon as she solves her “penis problem,” she begins receiving anonymous letters...

Insurrección Cultural explora los distintos panoramas (culturales, ecológicos, naturales) para encontrar un camino a seguir: la construcción de una ecología de la cultura. Jonathan Nossiter se inspira en la viticultura rebelde y en el gesto fraternal de muchos productores de vino natural que hace tiempo vienen generando nuevas propuestas para una mejora de la calidad de vida y de la cultura, artesanos de la tierra, verdaderos artistas que volvieron a retomar el papel de la protesta, la disidencia, últimamente abandonado por los artistas.

The religious right taught America to misread the Bible. Christians have misused Scripture to consolidate power, stoke fears, and defend against enemies. But people who have been hurt by the attacks of Christian nationalism can help us rediscover God's vision for faith in public life. Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove explores how religious culture wars have misrepresented Christianity at the expense of the poor, and how listening to marginalized communities can help us hear God's call to love and justice in the world.

No Longer Human (1948, Ningen Shikkaku / A Shameful Life / Confessions of a Faulty Man) was an attack on the traditions of Japan, capturing the postwar crisis of Japanese cultural identity. Framed by an epilogue and prologue, the story is told in the form three notebooks left by Ōba Yōzō, whose calm exterior hides his tormented soul. Osamu Dazai was a Japanese author who is considered one of the foremost fiction writers of 20th century Japan. A number of his most popular works, such as Shayō (The Setting Sun) and Ningen Shikkaku (No Longer Human), are considered modern-day classics in Japan.

The author of the acclaimed Advice for Future Corpses (and Those Who Love Them) brings “her singular sensibility, her genius for language, her love of our deeply imperfect world” (Karen Karbo, author of In Praise of Difficult Women) to this insightful exploration of reality TV and the...

Dancer, award-winning choreographer, show producer, stand-up comedienne, TV/film actress, and author, Norma Miller shares her touching historical memoir of Harlem's legendary Savoy Ballroom and the phenomenal music and dance craze that "spread the power of Swing across the world like Wildfire". It was a time when the music was Swing, and Harlem was king.

From Homer to Helen Keller, from Dune to Stevie Wonder, from the invention of braille to the science of echolocation, M. Leona Godin explores the fascinating history of blindness, interweaving it with her own story of gradually losing her sight. There Plant Eyes probes the ways in which...

This program is read by the author. A refreshingly honest, deeply researched, and frequently hilarious deep-dive into the cultural crisis of bad sex, as one brave sex columnist recruits the counsel of coaches, psychologists, pro-dommes, and peers in the pursuit of pleasure. Far more alarming...

An urgently needed reckoning with the harm, harassment, and abuse women face on the Internet, complicating how we think about violence online and featuring deep reporting on how women are surviving the trauma—by an award-winning reporter When Alia Dastagir published a story for USA Today as...

A reissue of Greg Tate's classic, out-of-print collection of essays, with a new introduction by Hanif Abdurraqib and a new foreword by Questlove. From one of the most original, creative, and provocative culture critics comes an eye-opening collection of essays and tales about American music and...

Всегда интересовались искусством, но не было времени его обстоятельно изучить? Все вокруг только и говорят про современное искусство, но вы в этом ничего не понимаете? В музее вы часто задаетесь одним и тем же вопросом: кто повесил эту картину вверх ногами? Представляем вам третье издание книги «Современное искусство и как перестать его бояться». После прочтения этой книги вы поймете, как смотреть современное искусство, как о нем говорить и получать удовольствие от похода на выставки.

"I dreamed of New York, I am going there." On May 31, 1953, twenty-year-old Sylvia Plath arrived in New York City for a one-month stint at "the intellectual fashion magazine" Mademoiselle to be a guest editor for its prestigious annual college issue. Over the next twenty-six days, the bright...

Is anyone ever truly lost in the internet age? A moving, original memoir of a young woman reckoning with her parents’ absence, the virus that took them, and what it means to search for meaning in a hyperconnected world. “Brilliantly innovative . . . syncing a narrative of profoundly personal...

From the popular and award-winning staff writer for The Atlantic, an eye-opening look at how the current media landscape has incentivized us to see our fellow citizens as characters in an ongoing entertainment—and how we can fight back against this phenomenon. Whether it’s our...

Dismantles the Woody Guthrie we have been taught—the rough-and-ready rambling’ man—to reveal an artist who discovered how intimacy is crucial for political struggle Woody Guthrie is often mythologized as the classic American “rambling’ man,” a real-life Steinbeckian folk hero who...

This program is read by the author A concise but wide-ranging personal history of the internet from—for the first time—the point of view of the user In a shockingly short amount of time, the internet has bound people around the world together and torn us apart and changed not just the way we...