After taking on gentrification in Denver, did a successful anti-gang activist become a target of law enforcement? An excerpt from journalist Julian Rubinstein's new book, The Holly.

Two former classmates reconnect to talk about growing up in New York City cooperative housing in the 1970s.

Mateo Askaripour’s novel Black Buck skewers racism in startup culture.

Removing the symbols of the university's history with eugenics won't be enough.

Eula Biss’s essay collection Having and Being Had tries to tangle with the compromises of life under capitalism.

Stephanie LaCava’s The Superrationals tells the story of the rich and oblivious.

A man exited the back of the house and stood looking at each of them. He was rangy like a bird of prey, and Amy startled when she noticed a large gun riding on his shoulder.

The author on class, the ensemble novel, and the complexity of the human heart

The real reason every one of them backed away, scared shitless, was because of her hard, black nipples. Her nipples were more terrifying than the curses her mouth spewed or the fire in her eyes.

Much later, after everything that happened, Frank no longer found much pleasure in the Great Books—he suspected they mocked him, that they, in a way, had written his own downfall, his own eventual exile.

The author and activist on gallows humor, the need to tell stories, and helping communities thrive.

Colombian artist Ruby Rumié confronts domestic violence.

The writer discusses the complexity of migrants' lives in a world that demands their simplicity.

He started by pushing her onto the bed and kissing her, and it was then that Kenlee knew she did not want to be there. She did nothing to stop Robbie. It would not matter if she had.

“Jambo!” my client greeted me, over-cheerfully. “Jambo!” I hailed back, slightly accentuating the pitch of my voice to match his high-octane enthusiasm.

The acclaimed author on working-class anger and the glory in literature.

The historian on J.D. Vance, colonial logic, and the end of coal in the region that outsiders love to imagine but can’t seem to understand.

How a work of satire helped me embrace the stereotype.

The photographer and chronicler of the nouveau riche on how keeping up with the Joneses became keeping up with the Kardashians.

“They were out of money. Two scaffold monkeys chasing work. But too often it was down a hole, mucking street sewers beside convicts.”

The novelist on her struggle with mental health, the limits of empathy, and the necessity of suffering.

So what? The girl smelled like urine and soil, but only if you got close.

The musician and activist on the creative life of cities, the fight for economic justice in the digital era, and his quest to rescue public spaces from corporate gangsters and antipluralist militants.

NIMBYism, racial fear, and class politics: the struggles of trying to connect the divided Los Angeles.

A feature documentary considers the private lives of female sex workers at America's truck stops.

“My brave little Marxist,” she will coo, knowing that her own, modest attempts at domestic revolution will as usual come to nothing, and softening in spite of it.

The market scans my child, calculates pecuniary value.

Boundaries of Nations: The UK isn't like Downton Abbey anymore.

Block by block she maneuvers through the teeming sidewalks of Kabul’s Shar-E-Naw shopping district until she enters Ice-Milk Restaurant, stops at tables.

The critic discusses his new book on the grittier side of Paris, and the effect terrorism might have on France.

They needed a way to keep the fire going until morning—that was another thing they had on their minds.

Seasonal agricultural workers in France face more challenges than ever before.

Paying CEOs more isn't helping anyone.

Sticks and stones and Beginning Playwriting.

The mother of a black teenage son shares her worries.

Can a country so fixated on the future simply forget its recent past?

Boundaries of Taste: The Turner Prize-winning “transvestite potter” on the taste tribes of Britain.

In the face of mass displacement, unsolved murders, and discriminatory housing policies, New Orleans’ Black community survives in part through its artistic traditions and spirit of collectivity.

A squatter’s history of gentrification.

We’re on the cusp of the largest inter-generational wealth transfer in history.

We knew what was expected of us. Negro privilege had to be circumspect: impeccable but not arrogant; confident yet obliging; dignified, not intrusive.

The food writers on building a food movement that transcends class lines.

I always seek out the maids. I always want to help the janitors sweep. My wife says I have a Jesus complex. What I have is a class issue.

The Chicana filmmaker on documenting a debutante ball in honor of George Washington’s birthday in Laredo, Texas, and adopting the Mexican-American border as her "muse.”

Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone paying tuition should care.

The “father of environmental justice” on the politics of protection and vulnerability.

’d never had much interaction with people from the Hills—which is to say, other white people.

In today's debtor's prisons, incarceration is expensive and starting over is nearly impossible.

If a humane death is to become a human right, we have to address the socioeconomic barriers that block so many from proper end-of-life care.

An empire in decline (city by city, town by town).

The electoral effects of economic desperation.

He brought sushi to campus dining halls and revamped the dorms. Now he's wondering whether he did the right thing.

Catherine O'Flynn talks with Rob Sharp about the connection between humor and tragedy, the places we look for happiness, and why she set her novel in a British shopping mall.

The acclaimed author on tragedy and poverty in Missouri, America's class divide, and the rejections his novel Winter’s Bone received.

I crawled out of the bed wearing my PJ top and these little Wonder Woman Underoos.

"Oh, it’s just so fabulous in New York, you can really just learn to step over people’s suffering bodies." A response to Didion's famed 1967 essay.

"George Packer’s The Unwinding details the bitter realities of a stagnant economy, but leaves no room for malaise."

She’d forever be checking ethnicity boxes, emphasizing her parents’ work: farm laborer, housekeeping. Trying to prove that she was smart enough, committed enough, and pleasant enough to be granted a trial period in their world.

In Malibu, there lived a beautiful old woman without a nervous system.

Notes on names Boy gets called at school: fudge packer, pansy, fairy, pillow biter, cock gobbler.

Beasts of the Southern Wild's dark current.

Unwrapping the history of Mexico's real national snack uncovers classism, dynamite, and shifting definitions of culture.

Larry Abramson reflects on Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and the upcoming 45th anniversary of the Six-Day War.

Alone together in the metropolis

The making of the American 99% and the collapse of the middle class.

How to turn election year into election life.

Why it's too early to celebrate November's job growth.

A modest proposal for Occupy Wall Street.

How ten years after 9/11 Occupy Wall Street may signify a return to a civil society.

How a neoliberal shell game created an age of activism.

How the legal system was deep-sixed and Occupy Wall Street swept the land.

Why homelessness is becoming an Occupy Wall Street issue.

The deep polarization between the very rich and everyone else has been decades in the making and is a global phenomenon. Reversing it could be the task of a lifetime.

“Occupy” fine and all, but #OccupyWallStreet should consider a new verb.

A union organizer’s perspective on the Occupy Wall Street project: Is it too early to define the movement?

You thought feminists had to focus on empowering women? Stephanie Coontz on why, after a sustained assault on families and unions, that just isn't enough anymore.

Bankers figure that if global markets collapse, they might as well make money out of it.

In the wake of Freddie Gray’s death, and so many others, what can we learn from the violence in our past?