@X Archives - Public Books https://www.publicbooks.org/pbseries/x/ a magazine of ideas, arts, and scholarship Sat, 17 Jan 2026 02:18:10 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://www.publicbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/cropped-favicon-2-300x300.png @X Archives - Public Books https://www.publicbooks.org/pbseries/x/ 32 32 Making Fascism Work for Moderates https://www.publicbooks.org/making-fascism-work-for-moderates/ Tue, 06 Feb 2024 16:00:19 +0000 https://www.publicbooks.org/?p=54356 “The Southern Poverty Law Center describes The Camp of the Saints as ‘the favorite racist fantasy of the anti-immigrant movement in the US.’”

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]]> Magnificent Wreck: Samuel Taylor Coleridge at 250 https://www.publicbooks.org/magnificent-wreck-samuel-taylor-coleridge-at-250/ Tue, 14 Feb 2023 16:00:14 +0000 https://www.publicbooks.org/?p=51346 How to interpret Coleridge’s voluminous patchwork of triumphs, fragments, stolen snippets, and unrealized plans? Does any larger pattern emerge?

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]]> The Art We Do Together: “Art Worlds” 40th Anniversary https://www.publicbooks.org/sociology-of-art-howard-becker-art-worlds/ Wed, 17 Aug 2022 15:00:24 +0000 https://www.publicbooks.org/?p=49711 Howard Becker pointed out that critics, curators, suppliers, and administrators are as important to the creation of art as artists themselves.

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]]> Marshall Sahlins’s “Original Affluent Society” 50 Years Later https://www.publicbooks.org/marshall-sahlins-original-affluent-society-at-50/ Wed, 13 Jul 2022 15:00:48 +0000 https://www.publicbooks.org/?p=49077 Capitalism seeks wealth to meet desires. But foraging societies follow “the Zen road to affluence”: not by getting more, but wanting less.

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]]> “Mississippi Masala” @30: Revisiting a Film Classic in Authoritarian Times https://www.publicbooks.org/mississippi-masala-at-30-revisiting-a-film-classic-in-authoritarian-times/ Thu, 03 Feb 2022 16:00:11 +0000 https://www.publicbooks.org/?p=47169 What might it mean to forge a politics explicitly based in the places we are, rather than a politics of the places from which we came?

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]]> E. B. White’s “Plain Style” @75 https://www.publicbooks.org/e-b-whites-plain-style-75/ Wed, 14 Oct 2020 15:00:46 +0000 https://www.publicbooks.org/?p=38808 It might seem self-evident that White the author practiced what Strunk and White the style gurus preached, but the truth is more complicated.

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]]> The Secluded Self: Sinclair Lewis’s “Main Street” @100 https://www.publicbooks.org/the-secluded-self-sinclair-lewiss-main-street-100/ Thu, 24 Sep 2020 15:00:17 +0000 https://www.publicbooks.org/?p=38520 Why did Americans start distrusting small towns? The answer is one book, in which a woman moves from the city—and loses her freedom.[none-for-homepage]

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]]> Listen Closely: “Exit, Voice, and Loyalty” @50 https://www.publicbooks.org/listen-closely-exit-voice-and-loyalty-50/ Wed, 29 Jul 2020 15:00:49 +0000 https://www.publicbooks.org/?p=37631 When the Trump presidency ends, and the toll of years of toxicity and mismanagement becomes clear, we are going to need some guidance.

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]]> “The Culture of Narcissism” @40—and Counting https://www.publicbooks.org/the-culture-of-narcissism-40-and-counting/ Tue, 26 May 2020 15:00:15 +0000 https://www.publicbooks.org/?p=35835 What if today’s self-centered world was born decades before digital media, as part of a much longer transformation of American society?

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]]> Babe Ruth’s New York @100 https://www.publicbooks.org/babe-ruths-new-york-at-100/ Thu, 26 Mar 2020 15:00:23 +0000 https://www.publicbooks.org/?p=34732 Ruth embodied a new and yet very old phenomenon—celebrity—in a technological era poised to capitalize on him.

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