The pro-Israel Democratic voter should be very worried. If one of their candidates doesn’t win or come especially close to ...

Democratic socialism is ascendant for now, and media outlets are dedicating far more time to covering the phenomenon. The New Yorker’s Benjamin Wallace-Wells just published a large piece about the ...

A few days ago, Michelle Goldberg, the New York Times columnist, wrote about the challenge of her child’s application process for New York City public high schools. “New York has an almost purely ...

The other day, I was in my mother’s apartment trying to watch television. The remote could not change the channel. The television was stuck on the USA Network—a Fast and Furious movie was playing—and ...

Once in a while, I find myself catching a Bari Weiss news cycle. Given the enormous amount of consolidation in media and the power she now wields as David Ellison’s mogul, that’s not very hard. He has ...

“Saw a ‘Mx.’ the other day and the first BIPOC sighting in a year. Are we back?” the writer Jay Caspian Kang asked on X a few days ago. His post was a response to Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey, who ...

One of my ongoing drum-banging exercises is that more people, especially on Substack, should review books. I’ve been slowly, between my other commitments, trying to do this myself, and I’ve hoped to ...

Some of you might know I’m the editor-in-chief of The Metropolitan Review, one of the great young literary magazines in the country. I’ve got a great team with me, and they make the magic happen. On ...

This is Ross Barkan's newsletter - original essays on politics, society, and culture. Click to read Political Currents by Ross Barkan, a Substack publication.

In 1963, Mary McCarthy published The Group. A ranging social novel that follows eight female friends after their graduation from Vassar College in 1933, The Group was a smashing success, soaring to ...

Like many in the literary world, I read, with great interest, Naomi Kanakia’s recent exegesis on the “little” magazines like the Partisan Review and their various descendants, including n+1, The Drift ...