Portside

Harry Burt became the frst ice cream vendor to move from pushcart to truck, a move that changed how countless Americans eat—and how they experience summer.

The Plot Against America—Philip Roth’s 2004 novel, as well as David Simon and Ed Burns’s recent television adaptation—imagines what might have transpired if the fascist tendency in the United States had gained power.

After nights of fire and looting, the poet Jed Myers asks in “False Flag” the simple question: who is shifting the blame to whom?

Susan Reverby’s riveting biography of Alan Berkman is a magnificent book. Berkman was imprisoned in the 60s, convicted for his political work. On regaining his freedom he devoted his life to public health and helping those the system abandoned.

An eloquent and moving call for voting rights reform shows the former Georgia House minority leader is ready for higher office.

“Homemade,” a wondrous and mostly satisfying anthology of 17 short films made round the world over the past two months - reveal a scattershot collage of the world in 2020.

Undermined by displacement and centuries of cultural assimilation, indigenous foodways are careening toward extinction. A number of increasingly prominent Native chefs hope to change that.

The duality of Hamilton is difficult and challenging and frankly upsetting. That’s probably why Hamilton has since its Broadway debut spawned countless takes and critiques attempting to navigate its competing readings, trying to define it as either

“I’d like us to rethink/What it is to be a nation,” writes the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet.

I often used to look at the union work as something like walking a tightrope backwards while juggling without a net … The wire must be made of grassroots. The moment the union highwire artist feels those grassroots under foot, they know they are safe