Journey to the Crossroads of America and the Hope of Obama Land
Can this controversial, privately funded $850 million center—dismissed by many as a vanity project, architectural folly, and dangerous precedent—really shore up democracy?
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A Star Friendship, a Story of the Depth Divers Dive
My mother would have said, “He’s a mess,” but Leon had a punk attitude, loved performative wildness, and was hugely capable. Is it a surprise what came next?
Remembering Richard Wright, Outsider
Richard Wright has in common with Thomas Hardy that the plots in his fiction are sometimes intricate to the point of distraction, and the events he depicts are often sensational, sometimes to a fault. His novels published after “Native Son” have much to recommend them. Still, “Native Son” and “Black Boy” stand as his most enduring achievements. They capture the isolation from mainstream society that is the reality of many young Black people, in the time of Wright’s youth and in our time.
Untitled Pictures in an Exhibition
The untitled photograph is not merely a breach between memory and hope, but rather an invitation to inhabit that breach from a distance.
Baseball, Battlefields, and the Beginnings of Cold War America
In “Warm Summers and Cold Winters,” Steven P. Gietschier tells the story of Charley and Bill DeWitt, owners of the perennial American League losers, the St. Louis Browns, who, in 1950, decided to hire a psychologist and hypnotist named Dr. David Tracy to help some of the players get over their “inferiority complex.”
How Super Is “Supergirl”?
The online haters celebrating what they gleefully consider its downfall simplify the matter in the way such misogynists always do: “Supergirl” 2026, in their view, is simply a bad film. The problem with this perspective is that “Supergirl” 2026 is not a bad film.
Board Games and Human Nature
Like comic books and animation, board games became more artful, more expensive, more interesting to adults. For millennia, games had been folk culture, passed down for generations, the play communal. Now they are a craft, sometimes even an art, designed and authored, often with a deliberately niche appeal.
Winning and Losing at the Great Game of Intimacy
What to call this Anton Chekhov, whom I first encountered in 1988? The Master, perhaps—of vision, decency, modesty, and industry, and, one might hope, in the old game of love.
Once Every Seventeen Years
The game here took place on several dimensions. It was, on one hand, a game with time—in the right place at the right moment—and on the other, with fish and bugs, in that moment. Once every seventeen years, maybe this might happen. But it has also become a game with memory, and with writing—and now, with technology.
Searching for Luck in Las Vegas Playing the Same Game on Two Different Floors
At the slot machine that night, I also had no control. I even lost my money. I did not feel so anxious. But at the trade show, I kept worrying more, trying harder, all the effort to feel in control, but did the odds change a lot? Maybe not.
The Difference Between Making Promises and Keeping Them
The man asking if I am a Christian is a Puerto Rican chef living in Dallas, someone I met in the strange expanse of the internet, specifically within a Chinese gaming platform called Age of Origins.
Father and Child Reunion
In the process of traveling with my youngest daughter to five races, I learned that my crude assumptions about the nature of Formula 1 drivers were wrong and that my daughter was an F1 authority to be reckoned with.
Līlā
Defending a liberal arts education is equivalent to celebrating līlā/ play. Enabling and encouraging līlā is more than just desirable, it is necessary. My thesis is thus līlā/ play is the intellectual disposition that enables epistemic humility, which in turn is the central goal of a liberal arts education.
The Woodson Boys
To become good at chess is to master skills that would allow one to succeed in a perfect world. And to lose sight of that world, to forget to dream of how things could be, is to lose a great deal, even if it is in this world that we will always be mired.
Editor’s Picks
Critical perspectives on the books, culture, and ideas that shape our world
Scoring a NYT Crossword (or Two)
ACROSS
Mac Motz remembers feeling sleepy last year in his Psych 101 class, the professor’s voice receding into the background. “No offense, it’s a great class,” he adds hastily—he is a sweet guy, tall and lanky and eager. But he had let his mind wander, and when he…
Reviews
Unpacking the ideas behind today’s most compelling works
The Lessons America Has Taught Me
Fox News Channel’s political anchor Bret Baier’s new book, “The Case for America,” is just in time for the 250th anniversary season. It feels a bit hasty in its composition, which gives a reader the sense that it was a book aimed at a ready market: people who want a book that is positive about the United States at this particularly divisive juncture, when many think the country is on the verge of its third political divorce.
The Elected King of Black America or the Black King of Progressivism
“A Dream Deferred” is a thoughtful book, especially for those who lived through and remember Jesse Jackson’s presidential runs. Abby Phillip gives us Jackson warts and all, the maddening egotism and opportunism, and the rumors of infidelity. Informed, highly readable, and even exciting at times as she recounts the thrills of the 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns.
Maverick or Misfit, a Senator Seeks the Center of Things
You might say, as the youngsters do, that Fetterman did his party “a solid” simply by winning, especially as that seemed not so assured during the campaign. The problems Fetterman encountered during his Senate campaign are mostly what “Unfettered“ is about.
Past Issues
A look back at the ideas that shaped previous editions
Winter 2024
Black History Month 2024
Essays, reviews, and reflections that celebrate African American life and legacies
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Society & Culture
Insights into the cultural shifts and societal changes shaping our time
The Comfort of Jackets
More than most clothing, jackets last for years, so their most important quality, the accretion of stories, has a chance to build modestly, privately.
My Papa Was in Purgatory
At twelve, I read that in Purgatory, souls were purified with a cleansing fire, removing small sins, whisking away tiny bits of filth, mending any cracks. My father had to be made ready to enter the presence of God.
Talking to Yourself
Self-talk, the practice is called, and after decades of research, shrinks now admit it can be quite healthy. We learn to speak, after all, by jabbering away in our crib, speaking to no one in particular, catching the rhythm and intonation before we have the vocabulary.
“They’ll Pass You By, Glory Days”
We want to live in a world of our own choosing, want this so badly it hurts. So we take revenge on that secret desire by tagging our yearnings “nostalgia” or “romanticism.” But often we are taking our own wistfulness too literally.
Science & Nature
Essays on science, technology, and the natural world
Nothing Common About It
The virus has latched on to receptors on the cells lining my respiratory tract, and it clings there, reproducing rapidly. I know this because my throat feels scorched, and though I continue bravely on with my day, it is punctuated by violent sneezes that explode without warning.
Arts & Letters
Insights on creativity and the creative process
A Coign of Vantage
A “coign” is a jutting-out corner or high point that gives you an excellent view of whatever you are trying to see. I was trying to see…what? A different world, graceful and mysterious, exquisitely colored and lit.
People & Places
Stories of the people and places that shape our world
Scoring a NYT Crossword (or Two)
ACROSS
Mac Motz remembers feeling sleepy last year in his Psych 101 class, the professor’s voice receding into the background. “No offense, it’s a great class,” he adds hastily—he is a sweet guy, tall and lanky and eager. But he had let his mind wander, and when he…
Of Learning to Pay Attention
I think more about what else in my social life I should see, ask, remember, and do, even when I can do little. Remember F. Scott Fitzgerald: Relationships are the brutality that sustains.
Journey to the Crossroads of America and the Hope of Obama Land
Can this controversial, privately funded $850 million center—dismissed by many as a vanity project, architectural folly, and dangerous precedent—really shore up democracy?
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The Common Reader, a publication of Washington University in St. Louis, offers the best in reviews, articles and creative non-fiction engaging the essential debates and issues of our time.