2008

• 

  That Girl

  Rick Perlstein : Biography

  Was Patty Hearst really a rebel in search of a cause?

• In Congo Square

  Joshua Jelly-Schapiro : New Orleans

  Two new books uncover the colonial origins and musical roots of New Orleans.

• 

  Listening to Odetta

  Bruce Shapiro : Music

  Her voice a force of nature and her theatrical sense undimmed, Odetta-made music of extraordinary compassion, intuition and grace.

• Beyond the Bailout State

  Steve Fraser : Barack Obama Administration

  If original thinking doesn't find a home among the Obama administration's Clinton-era Brainiacs, how can we move beyond the bailout state?

• The Vietnam Exposé That Wasn't

  Nick Turse : Vietnam War

  The untold story of US-perpetrated atrocities in Vietnam and how the press killed it.

• 

  Obama Needs a Protest Movement

  Frances Fox Piven : Presidential Election 2008

  A grassroots push for reform can make Obama a great president.

• A My Lai a Month

  Nick Turse : Vietnam War

  In Operation Speedy Express, new evidence of civilian slaughter and cover-up in Vietnam.

• 

  Bloodstained Ghosts

  Ruth Scurr

  Robert Gildea examines France between the revolution and World War I.

• Rooted in Reconstruction

  Eric Foner : Non-Fiction

  Without the courage of the forgotten black legislators of the Reconstruction era, it would be impossible for a black man today to run for president.

• The Kingston Trio and the Red Scare

  Peter Dreier & Jim Vrabel : Music

  The death of Nick Reynolds, one of the Kingston Trio, last week at 75, provoked fond memories of one era and painful reminders of another.

• Looking Backward

  Steve Fraser : U.S. Economy

  As America's second Gilded Age fissions around us, we can sense the zeitgeist shift. Are we staring into the abyss of 1929 or heading for a new New Deal?

• The Communist Manifesto Turns 160

  Barbara Ehrenreich : Economics

  As Karl Marx's opus marks a big birthday, capitalism seems willing to mark the occasion by dropping dead.

• America Needs a New New Deal

  Katrina vanden Heuvel & Eric Schlosser : U.S. Economy

  We should apply FDR's principles of relief, reform and reconstruction to our current financial crisis.

• Archive: Bearing Witness in Mississippi

  Erica Landau & Marissa Colon-Margolies

  As the eyes of the nation are focused on the University of Mississippi for the presidential debate, The Nation archive yields insights on key events in Mississippi during the civil rights era.

• Wall Street and Washington

  Steve Fraser : U.S. Economy

  Washington's mission may, at this late date, be an even greater one than Roosevelt's New Deal faced.

• 

  Making History

  Victor Navasky : Convention 08

  Outside the arena, progressives are saying this is a moment of transformational politics. Is the party leadership listening?

• Stalin's Victims Return

  Stephen F. Cohen : Russia

  The freeing of the "zeks" confronted Russia with living memories of the Terror.

• 

  What Would Mao Think of the Games?

  Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom : China

  He'd feel bad that the whole Communist era was airbrushed out of the Olympic spectacle. But he'd probably like the swimming.

• From Fannie Lou Hamer to Barack Obama

  John Nichols : Civil Rights Movement

  Democrats have come a long way from the first Denver convention a century ago.

• Orthogonian Visions

  Thomas J. Sugrue : Books, Literature, & Ideas

  Historian Rick Perlstein explores the resentment and polarization sparked by the Nixon era's cultural and political strife.

• Solzhenitsyn's Life and Our Times

  Katrina vanden Heuvel : Russia

  Despite the controversies he aroused in the West and in Russia, Solzhenitsyn remains above all else a writer who bore witness to Soviet society's long-censored suffering.

• Obama From the Agora

  Tom Hayden : Greece

  Assessing Barack Obama's mythic destiny: will he become more Athenian than Spartan?

• 

  The Last Angry Man

  Jeff Kisseloff : Books

  Eliot Asinof, blacklisted author of Eight Men Out, created a lifetime of work celebrating rebels and victims of injustice.

• City of Fear

  Jon Wiener

  A new book explores the historical ties between African-American and Japanese-American communities in Los Angeles.

• 

  The Reminder-General

  Stefan Collini

  Tony Judt fears the twenty-first century has spawned a culture hell- bent on forgetting the past.