Spring 2017

Cover Story

A Brief History of Secession

Why Calexit might not be as crazy as you think

by Richard Striner

Articles

On Political Correctness

Power, class, and the new campus religion

by William Deresiewicz

Interstates

How My Italian-American husband ate his way into the good graces of my African-American family

by Emily Bernard

The Cloistered Books of Peru

A convent in the Andes is home to a treasure trove of rare, and possibly unique, early volumes

by Helen Hazen

Keeping Faith

After a loss from which there is no recovery, I turned to books—not for solace or forgetting, but simply to survive

by Mark Lane

The Ultimate Pawn Sacrifice

My brother’s life mirrored that of Bobby Fischer, the deeply troubled chess master

by Jay Neugeboren

Departments

Book Essay

Found in Translation

Found in Translation

A poet learns how to feel and see and think and sound in the language of his adopted home

Piotr Florczyk

Book Reviews

More Than Human

More Than Human

The dawn of a technologically enhanced super-species is upon us

Michael Shermer
Robocops and Robbers

Robocops and Robbers

Criminal justice in the age of digital spying and surveillance

Jill Leovy
One Nation Under God

One Nation Under God

The contentious role of Christianity in politics

Dennis Covington
“Time to  Plant Tears”

“Time to Plant Tears”

An intimate biography of one of the 20th century’s great poets

Dana Gioia
Taking Old  Abe to Task

Taking Old Abe to Task

A historian’s uncommonly grim view of the Great Emancipator

David S. Reynolds
Travels in Literary Time

Travels in Literary Time

A writer’s excursions beyond mere archives

Jay Parini