Volume 68, Number 18 (2021-11-18)

Colin Grant

Sins of the Fathers

In Life of a Klansman, Edward Ball’s white supremacist great-great-grandfather becomes a case study in the enduring legacy of slavery.

Life of a Klansman: A Family History in White Supremacy

by Edward Ball

Charlie Smith

I Am Your Lifeguard

a poem

Robert Kuttner

Bringing the Supply Chain Back Home

Is Biden ready to insist that national economic planning is not just ideologically permissible but urgently necessary?

Building Resilient Supply Chains, Revitalizing American Manufacturing, and Fostering Broad-Based Growth: 100-Day Reviews Under Executive Order 14017

a report by the White House

Kathryn Hughes

The White Heat of Conviction

There is nothing judicious, careful, or patient in Frances Wilson’s new biography of D.H. Lawrence, which is exactly how Lawrence would have wanted it.

Burning Man: The Trials of D.H. Lawrence

by Frances Wilson

Martin Filler

A Garden City in Queens

After nearly a century Sunnyside Gardens remains a model of how to create and sustain affordable urban housing.

Sunnyside Gardens: Planning and Preservation in a Historic Garden Suburb

by Jeffrey A. Kroessler, with illustrations by Laura Heim

Ruth Margalit

Trains to Nowhere

Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz’s novel The Passenger dwells on the hopeless roaming of a wealthy Jewish Berliner in the days immediately following Kristallnacht.

The Passenger

by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, translated from the German by Philip Boehm, with a preface by André Aciman

Jason DeParle

A Historic Decrease in Poverty

The successful expansion of the safety net during the pandemic reminds us that high levels of poverty are a political choice, not a fate.

Poorly Understood: What America Gets Wrong About Poverty

by Mark Robert Rank, Lawrence M. Eppard, and Heather E. Bullock

2021 Poverty Projections: Assessing the Impact of Benefits and Stimulus Measures

a report by Laura Wheaton, Linda Giannarelli, and Ilham Dehry

Thrifty Food Plan, 2021

a report by the Food and Nutrition Service of the US Department of Agriculture

Diane Seuss

Curl

a poem

Michael Gorra

What Fear Feels Like

Paul Auster’s biography of Stephen Crane captures the life of a writer who found his material in “extreme situations…matters of life and death: war, poverty, and physical danger.”

Burning Boy: The Life and Work of Stephen Crane

by Paul Auster

Sarah Lustbader

Making Room for Forgiveness

Even if victims or their families decide to forgive, the law rarely does.

When Should Law Forgive?

by Martha Minow

Yuri Slezkine

Arias in the Archive

Maria Stepanova wants to memorialize the dead in her family but is conflicted about the very possibility—and morality—of the quest.

In Memory of Memory: A Romance

by Maria Stepanova, translated from the Russian by Sasha Dugdale

Joshua Hammer

The Horrors of the Diamond Boom

The discovery of diamonds in German Southwest Africa in 1908 led to ruthless exploitation of the colony.

Blood and Diamonds: Germany’s Imperial Ambitions in Africa

by Steven Press

Flight of the Diamond Smugglers: A Tale of Pigeons, Obsession, and Greed Along Coastal South Africa

by Matthew Gavin Frank

Francine Prose

Laughing Last

In Molly Keane’s novels and plays, justice rarely triumphs, virtue is infrequently rewarded. Even tragedy can wear the mask of the grotesque and absurd.

Good Behaviour

by Molly Keane, with an introduction by Amy Gentry

Molly Keane: A Life

by Sally Phipps

Nicholas Guyatt

Partners in Brutality

New books investigate the brutality of the internal slave trade by focusing on a single firm, Franklin and Armfield, and examine the role of white women in enslaving Black people.

The Ledger and the Chain: How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America

by Joshua D. Rothman

They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South

by Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers

Sloane Crosley

Safe as Houses

In her new novel, Dana Spiotta tells the story of a middle-aged woman who leaves her family to restore an old house and flirt with radical politics.

Wayward

by Dana Spiotta

Tim Page

Playing Together

In the late 1980s, when composers and audiences moved in deeply divided circles, Bang on a Can’s commitment to diverse programming began to break down the divisions within contemporary music.

Industry: Bang on a Can and New Music in the Marketplace

by William Robin

Alice Kaplan

War and Memory in France and Algeria

Sixty years after the end of the Algerian War of Independence, “painful passions” on both sides continue to impede the reconciliation of the French and Algerian people.

La gangrène et l’oubli: La mémoire de la guerre d’Algérie [Gangrene and Oblivion: Memories of the Algerian War]

by Benjamin Stora

Les clés retrouvées: Une enfance juive à Constantine [Finding the Keys: A Jewish Childhood in Constantine]

by Benjamin Stora

France-Algérie: Les passions douloureuses [France-Algeria: Painful Passions]

by Benjamin Stora

Ali Boumendjel (1919–1957): Une affaire française. Une histoire algérienne [Ali Boumendjel (1919–1957): A French Affair. An Algerian History]

by Malika Rahal

I Was a French Muslim: Memories of an Algerian Freedom Fighter

by Mokhtar Mokhtefi, translated from the French and with an introduction by Elaine Mokhtefi

Letters

Stephanie Mills,
Kathleen Mogelgaard,
Martin Bunzl,
Anna Louie Sussman

Population and the Planet: An Exchange

Issue Details

On the cover: Greg Burak, Two Curses, 2020 (Greg Burak/Fortnight Institute, New York).