Features

How mainstream transgender appeals to bathroom privacy and equality buy into the sanitization of American spaces and lives.

Brazil’s showcasing of “The Girl from Ipanema” at the Rio 2016 Olympic Opening Ceremony demonstrated the extent to which Brazil, and the famous bossa nova song, construct a national story celebrating diversity while also relying on symbols rooted in stereotypes.

In the days when it was a piece of furniture, TV was both the dark mahogany stranger in the house and the loyal companion, both threatening and familiar, something that seemed to control and something that seemed to transport. The mistake people today make is assuming that television audiences of 50 years ago were more naïve than they are today.

“Jazz is dead!” “Long live jazz!” These competing diagnoses define the genre and its evolving boundaries. And that means a future of interesting music.

Why our culture of law enforcement—and tensions between police and communities—is a lot more nuanced and interesting than you might think.

Both the LeDoux and Inoki fights are mere footnotes on Muhammad Ali’s athletic resume. Yet Paul Levy’s biography of LeDoux, The Fighting Frenchman, and Josh Gross’s exhaustive account of Ali vs. Inoki, give readers another way of looking at fights that elevated their importance, if not for Ali, then for the men who opposed him in these bouts.

McDowell’s and Aalto’s respective books, published by the same press within two years of each other, are impressive studies of the relationship between literature and landscapes, both emotional and physical, in Potter’s Peter Rabbit and Milne’s Pooh Bear.

How state lawmakers seeking a solution to St. Louis County’s municipal revenue problems found more than they bargained for.

The recent film Miles Ahead says a lot about how Miles Davis treated women and, by extension, the ways jazz fans view his legacy.

Some grace notes to our original May 3 listicle of great films about jazz.