Essays
Do You Actually Have to Finish That Novel?
A critic considers the strange moral pressure we feel to read to the very last page
Michel Chaouli
The Body I Couldn't Abstract
Motherhood reshaped how I see shame, art, and the female body
Megan O’Grady
Browse
Essays
Lou Reed Didn’t Want to Be King
A biography tries to pin the rocker down
Hannah Gold
October 16, 2023
Are Twins Kinda Gay?
What Dead Ringers reveals about pop culture's latest obsession
Helena de Bres
October 9, 2023
10 Ways Ms., Sassy, and Jezebel Changed Your Life!
How contradiction drove fifty years of feminist media
Maggie Doherty
September 18, 2023
How Emily Wilson Reimagined Homer
Her boldly innovative translation of the Iliad is an epic for our time
Emily Greenwood
September 18, 2023
In the Shallows
Why do public intellectuals condescend to their readers?
Becca Rothfeld
September 18, 2023
Lorraine Hansberry’s Queer Archive
The playwright’s lesbian fiction has gone largely unpublished. But she wanted you to read it.
Alec Pollak
September 18, 2023
The Choice Plot
Why are so many new novels obsessed with whether–and how–to have children?
Sanjena Sathian
September 18, 2023
Unfathomable Life
As a philosopher, I thought I understood risk. Then I tried to get pregnant.
Anna Hartford
September 18, 2023
Service or Servitude?
The Bear and The Menu give us very different views of capitalism
Daniel W. Drezner
September 12, 2023
